The Royal Ballet: Don Quixote

-Hello, ladies...

-And gentlemen.

Welcome to the Royal Opera House,

to this, a special performance of Don Quixote by the Royal Ballet.

-I am Carlos Acosta.

-And I'm Marianela Nunez.

And we are both very happy to be dancing for you tonight.

Especially as this is Carlos's new production of Don Quixote.

-He's been making us work very hard.

-That's right.

But before curtain up, we have some time

to show you some of the preparations that's gone into

producing my version of this wonderful classical ballet.

And we really hope you enjoy it.

Don Quixote is based on the famous 17th-century novel

by Miguel de Cervantes.

And it's about the adventures of knight-in-waiting Don Quixote

and his sidekick Sancho Panza.

It was turned into a ballet a century later,

but the first popular version was created in 1869

for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, with music by Ludwig Minkus

and choreography by Marius Petipa.

It was legendary Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova

who first brought Don Quixote to the West in the 1920s.

Since then, the world's greatest dancers

have been inspired to create new versions of Petipa's choreography,

including Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

THEY CHEER

Now it's the turn of our own Carlos Acosta

to tackle Don Quixote and infuse it with his Latin spirit.

It's very special to him and it's him, really. It's his blood.

More bounce, bounce.

I have danced this everywhere

and with everybody. I've danced with Paris Opera,

with the Kirov, with the National Ballet of Cuba.

On and on and on.

And so I tried to study all the previous productions,

and then, with a critical eye, or where critically, I saw

that the moment is required more of a boost, and what is lacking

and what is kind of old and dated.

Everybody, it's power.

I like sounds.

More like a cacophony of sounds and rhythms and noise.

Back in the time, everything was silent.

And I wanted to break that.

In act one, we have this solo which is iconic. It's a great solo.

And we're going to be playing castanets while we're dancing.

Which is very hard, actually!

I think Carlos was really, really keen to find

a new way of telling the story and to free it up visually.

It's still dance, it's still classical

and it's still traditional in many ways, but we chose to find...

To inject it with colour and also look at pantomime

and find the fun in the dance.

We are trying to exchange ideas

and I sort of tried to convey what it was that I was aiming for

and tried to break with this stigma and rigidity of classicism.

I see it as a sort of heightened reality.

A lot of it comes from Carlos's character

which is that that's great fun

and he wanted it to be a fun and lively production.

The dancers have been fantastic.

And they are so up for the things that we're throwing at them.

Yes, they're moving furniture,

picking up chairs, dancing on tables.

THEY CHEER

Carlos wanted very much that the male dancers

looked incredibly strong.

He wanted the toreadors to really look...

have an arrogant, strong look.

It's very Spanish, it's red-blooded kind of, you know...

And you've got matadors and that energy had to come into...

And that's what transcends.

You know? And, of course, it's very important

that they deliver that essence of what they're dancing.

ALL: Hey!

The main challenge for me now is telling everybody what to do

and taking care of my body, you know, because I also have to dance.

Are you OK, Carlos?

Carlos has a million challenges.

More than any of us have.

It's very interesting watching the other dancers react

because he is full of life.

He's full of energy and he loves everything he's doing.

You get drawn in.

The heart of the ballet is Don Quixote.

I think he's a hero at the end of the day.

Slightly dreaming of the past,

that, "I was a great warrior

"or someone going off on a quest to save the world."

And, "My next journey."

I mean, he doesn't find his woman, but he helps others find love.

And helps others appreciate their love.

And then moves on to the next quest.

Definitely he is in heart of this ballet,

but of course what everybody came to see

is the technical display of the main characters,

Kitri and Basilio.

Dancing with Carlos is always an amazing experience.

You know, as a person and as a dancer, he's got this big heart.

He's very generous on the stage. This is what I love.

It's not just about him.

And, at the same time, you know,

I see him dance and I want to dance more.

It's just we feed off each other.

I think Marianela was born to play this role.

I mean, she can jump higher than anybody.

She can turn, you know, more than anybody,

but also her positions are wonderful.

She had the right spirit.

They are Latino.

You know, that makes very interesting chemistry.

-We did it, we did it!

-To the dress!

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ALL: Oh!

ALL: Oh!

THEY CHEER

THEY CHEER

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HE SHOUTS

THEY SHOUT

CROWD FALLS SILENT

ALL: Hey!

ALL: Hey!

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TUNELESS TRUMPETING

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ALL: Hey!

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CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Act two begins with Kitri and Basilio

arriving somewhere out in the woods, the forest.

They don't realise that they've stumbled onto the gypsy camp.

The gypsies think they've come to steal their stuff.

They explain they're just in love, they want to run away

and get married and they're like, "OK, fine, join us."

This version of Don Q, as we call it, has music by Ludwig Minkus,

who was an Austrian composer.

I have written an extra piece of music,

although I have based it on Minkus's melodies.

In the second act,

I sort of wanted to bring live elements

to the stage, music elements, other than the orchestra.

In the past, you would have had actors or ballet dancers

walking around with an empty guitar with no strings pretending to strum.

And we've done away with that.

Having the music live up on the stage is obviously, you know, again

part of the way we're going to make this very naturalistic and realistic.

I wanted to break with the stereotypes of the gypsy

with their whip and, you know, all this kind of thing.

I wanted to break a little bit with that

and then add a little bit more contemporary movements.

He wanted the gypsies to be very earthy and, in fact,

male and female gypsies are very strong.

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THEY SHOUT AND JEER

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THEY JEER

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THEY JEER

BAND PLAYS

THEY CHEER

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By act three, all the characters and dancers end up in the tavern

for a beer and a little bit of dancing

and a bit more raucous feel to it.

I think I like the tavern

because I tried to lift the role of Espada and Mercedes

almost to the point of principal roles, Basilio and Kitri.

And also when Basilio and Kitri arrive into the tavern

and they do this dance on the table

and then Kitri's doing this dance on the bar and then Mercedes joins her,

I think that moment is really, really great.

And, again, it breaks with the whole classicism feel.

I wanted the tavern to be underground and dark and mysterious

and not lit by natural daylight,

but lit with candlelight and much darker.

I hope we'll manage to make it, you know, plenty bright enough

to see what's going on, and see what we want you to see,

but feel really atmospheric.

It's got shadowy corners

and people are doing all sorts of things

in the corners you probably don't even want to think about,

but it's a really interesting scene.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

THEY CHEER

ALL: Hey!

ALL: Hey!

ALL: Hey!

ALL: Hey!

APPLAUSE

LAUGHTER

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LAUGHTER

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THEY CHEER

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

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BELL TOLLS

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