Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
MeIs there such a thing as being too perfect? Marianela Nuñez is definitely one of the best ballerinas around. At 44 years old, he still has great skill and total command. He can drop some wild fouettés (like tonight from Le Corsaire), whip his leg around, then come to a slow stop, the smoothest brake you’ve ever seen. It is without controversy; that is beauty and potential and selflessness. And this may seem unfair, but do we sometimes need a little more?
Timeless is Nuñez’s first solo show. Not solo, but he is a star, it’s his choice of repertoire, and he does everything “properly”, paying tribute to the Royal. Balletthe company he joined at the age of 16, and its composers: Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, Christopher Wheeldon, Wayne McGregor. He also gives a wonderful presentation of the dancers of the company and generously allows them to be seen, so that Matthew Mpira and Mayara Magri dance on the balcony from Romeo and Juliet is a great show, Magri giddy as he watches his Romeo jump nervously around the stage. Akane Takada and Calvin Richardson are lovers in a duet from McGregor’s Infra, and Fumi Kaneko and Lukas B Braendsrød dance Wheeldon serenely After the Rain – though they can’t fill the long lines the way Nuñez did with Thiago Soares.
For himself, Nuñez chooses Jerome Robbins’ In the first Night, it was set to Chopin’s Nocturnes. It’s a great three-piece set, full of simple, airy elegance. Nuñez dances with Ball, all the smooth moves to the jumps and lifts and the awkwardness of their relationship. It is a subtle and beautiful piece. Ashton’s Marguerite and Armand is different, a melodrama, not that of Nuñez suffering from tuberculosis, coughing on a chaise longue.
But Nuñez has a reserved and reserved part that makes this a dance of resistance and surrender rather than passion and fire. His classical and neo-classical pas de deux textbooks are in some ways very arresting; as well as the Corsaire, there is Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux with the new director of the Royal Patricio Revé, a promising collaboration for the future. You can ask for more, but you can’t blame him.
