English National Ballet is set to be the first British company to stage Le Corsaire

David Bellan talks to Anna-Marie Holmes L e Corsaire (The Pirate) was first mounted at Paris Opera in 1856. Two years later it was performed at the Bolshoi Theatre, with Marius Petipa — later the great choreographer — in the lead.

Since then it’s been very much thought of as a Russian ballet, and it was Petipa’s restaging in 1899 that is the basis of the work as it’s known today.

It’s a swashbuckling drama, based on Byron’s poem Corsaire, of a beautiful girl sold as a slave to an oriental potentate, and her rescue by Conrad, the dashing pirate whom she loves.

Canadian Anna-Marie Holmes had a distinguished career as a dancer, finishing her training at the Kirov under legendary teachers such as Natalia Dudinskaya and Alexander Pushkin – who was Nureyev’s mentor. She was the first North American to be invited to dance with the company. Since then she has become a renowned teacher choreographer and producer of ballets.

It was at the Kirov that she got to know Le Corsaire, which she has mounted for several companies including American Ballet Theatre and Boston Ballet. The work was also filmed.

“I cut and changed a whole bunch of stuff because of the timing,” she told me, “and when I did that I liked it better. But I always asked Dudinskaya, whether it was OK to do, and she said: “Yes, I trust your judgement, go ahead.”

Today, many classical companies are concentrat-ing on widening their contemporary repertoires and commissioning new works. Reviving a 19th century showpiece could be seen as a step backwards, so I asked Anna-Marie what she thought was its appeal.

“The appeal is that it has the most amazing dances for men. It’s very spirited, and I’ve made a lot of it funny, because to me a lot of it was so stupid that I had to make it funny. Some of the stuff they were doing was ridiculous, so I said ‘let’s make it funnier’.”

There are lots of dancers who have danced many times in the work without ever knowing more than their own particular role. I wondered how it came about that Anna-Marie not only starred in it, but learned everyone else’s steps as well.

“Well, I danced the famous pas-de-deux all over Europe and all over America with my ex-husband, so I knew that, but that’s not the whole ballet, and that is a big thing to learn. I first staged it in Boston when I was ballet mistress, and I learnt everything there. When I was mounting it in Boston, my teacher Dudinskaya, who had been a very great ballerina, was there too, and she was a great help.”

Le Corsaire is a spectac-ular romp — with music by those Russian ballet favourites Minkus and Drigo among others — but the plot is complicated with people in disguise, in-fighting among the pirates and all sorts of intrigues. The choreography is at times wildly exciting and daring, and also sensual and sexy for the girls. It’s so demanding that, to put this ballet on successfully, they have to put seven principal dancers on the stage for every performance. I wondered about the differences between the way companies work; were things running smoothly at ENB ?

“There are not really any problems. I think it’s good, because you have a chance to change a few little things and adapt it to each company. That makes it more interesting, so it’s not the same ballet everywhere. It’s the same plot and the same basic steps with the Petipa choreography, but there are little changes for each company.” How have the ENB daners responded to working on this production, I asked.

“Oh they seem enthusias-tic. They’re fun to work with. I was a ballerina in this company in the sixties, and I danced the pas de deux from Corsaire with them.

“Today we have several casts and I find huge differences between one cast and another. Some dancers find this technically challenging. It’s not easy choreography, and the ballerina has to jump and turn and do a lot of highly technical dancing. The male role is unbelievable. He has the pas de deux with the ballerina, of course, but he is also jumping around all over the place. And then there’s the famous role of the slave, who comes on with a bare chest, and everybody ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ about him, which isn’t fair, as he hasn’t done half the work that Conrad has done, but the slave has a sexy appeal, and the audience goes crazy over him.”

Le Corsaire
New Theatre, Oxford
October 30 until November 2
Tickets: 0844 871 3020