Marianela Núñez and Thiago Soares in Winter Dreams

Marianela Nunez and Thiago Soares in Winter Dreams, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, choreography Kenneth MacMillan. Benois de la Danse 2015 laureates Gala concert. Shot on 26th of May 2015 in The Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow.

 

Marianela Nuñez is a Principal of The Royal Ballet. Nuñez was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. When she was six she began training at the Teatro Colón Ballet School, later She joined The Royal Ballet School in 1997 and the next year graduated into the Company. After 18 months she was promoted to First Soloist and in 2002 to Principal, aged 20. She has performed all the leading roles in the classical, dramatic and contemporary repertory. Nuñez’s awards include Best Female Dancer at the Critics’ Circle Dance Awards in 2006 and 2013. She received the 2013 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance. She is married to Royal Ballet Principal Thiago Soares, who proposed between curtain calls for a performance of The Sleeping Beauty in which he had danced Prince Florimund to Nuñez’s Princess Aurora.

Thiago Soares is a Principal of The Royal Ballet. Soares was born in Rio de Janeiro and from the age of 12 trained at a circus school. He focused on ballet from the age of 15, training at the Rio de Janeiro Centre for Dance. In 1998 he graduated into the Municipal Theatre Ballet, and moved from there to The Royal Ballet. He joined the Company as a First Artist in 2002 and was promoted to Soloist in 2003, First Soloist in 2004 and Principal in 2006.

Sir Kenneth MacMillan (1929 – 1992) was a British ballet dancer and choreographer who was artistic director of the Royal Ballet in London between 1970 and 1977, and its principal choreographer from 1977 until his death. Earlier he had served as director of ballet for the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. He was also associate director of the American Ballet Theatre from 1984 to 1989, and artistic associate of the Houston Ballet from 1989 to 1992. From a family with no background of ballet or music, MacMillan was determined from an early age to become a dancer. The director of Sadler’s Wells Ballet, Ninette de Valois, accepted him as a student and then a member of her company. In the late 1940s, MacMillan built a successful career as a dancer, but, plagued by stage fright, he abandoned it while still in his twenties. After this he worked entirely as a choreographer; he created ten full-length ballets and more than fifty one-act pieces. In addition to his work for ballet companies he was active in television, musicals, non-musical drama, and opera. Although he is mainly associated with the Royal Ballet, MacMillan frequently considered himself an outsider there and felt driven to work with other companies throughout his career as choreographer. His creations for the Stuttgart Ballet and the Deutsche Opera ballet include some of his most frequently revived works.

Winter Dreams is a one-act ballet created by Kenneth MacMillan in 1991 for the Royal Ballet. The music is by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with some traditional Russian music. The first performance was on 7 February 1991, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Along with the former Bolshoi principal dancer Irek Mukhamedov, who joined the Royal Ballet in 1991, Bussell was MacMillan’s final important muse. For the two of them he created Winter Dreams (1991), inspired by Chekhov’s Three Sisters.

Photos by Jack Devant Ballet Photography with kind permission of the Benois de la Danse and Bolshoi Theatre Moscow, special thanks to Nina Kudriavtseva-Loory, Regina Nikiforova and Denis Savchenko.