Léonide Massine at Positano
Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes influenced the
destiny of dance even more than one might imagine. Who would think that the
ancestry of the Positano Léonide Massine Prize for the Art of Dance could be
traced back – albeit somewhat indirectly – to that famed dance
company?
The
year was 1917. Léonide Massine and the Ballets Russes were in Naples, dancing
at the Teatro San Carlo. Afterwards, Russian writer Misha Semenov invited
Massine to take a few days off as his guest at the water-mill he had bought in
Arienzo, near Positano. Massine fell under the spell of the Amalfi coast, and
was so enchanted with the three islets called Li Galli that he decided they
must be his. Massine finally managed to acquire the islands in 1922, and
thereafter used them as a summer place for himself and his family. After his
death, Li Galli were bought by Nureyev.
Alberto Testa – former dancer, now choreographer, dance
critic, scholar and teacher of dance history, not to mention founder and
artistic director of the Positano Prize – was chosen by Massine in 1952
to portray Judas in his "Laudes Evangeli", first performed the
following year in Perugia and after that elsewhere in Italy and Europe. Testa
recalls that the rehearsals of this "choreographic mystery" were held in
Positano in August, and that Massine would arrive from Li Galli by boat in the
morning and return there in the evening.
The
idea of creating an annual dance award for Italian artists (who were, and often
still are, obliged to search their fortune abroad) was born in 1969. In 1979,
the year of Massine's death, the Positano Prize was named after the great
choreographer who so loved the area. A gala performance is held on the first
Saturday of September, when the prize is awarded to promising young dancers as
well as to étoiles of international fame.
(Patrizia Vallone for Ballet Dance Magazine, September 2004)
|