The reign in Spain
Boston Ballet on tour
By: CHRISTINE TEMIN, The Phoenix
August 7. 2007
MADRID — Ballet companies need to tour. Performing for different audiences, on different stages, refreshes dancers. It makes them wake up and get out of whatever home-town rut might exist. They get the opinions of other critics in other cities, and if the reviews are positive, they arrive back home feeling like conquering heroes.
Boston Ballet hasn’t toured internationally since 1991. In his six years as artistic director, Mikko Nissinen has worked mightily to take the company abroad. Now he’s succeeded. The troupe is currently in the last stages of a five-week tour of Spain, with most of the seven venues being the delightful outdoor festivals that are such a popular fixture of Spanish summer life. The reviews in Spain have been largely positive.
I caught up with the company in Madrid, the Spanish capital and by definition the most important stop on the tour. Watching Boston Ballet dance at the 1700-seat Patio del Conde Duque theater was a totally different experience from observing them from the dim recesses of the Wang Theatre, their Boston home. I never feel that I’m close enough to the dancing at the Wang, and the sight lines are so poor that I find myself wagging my head from side to side even when sitting in an aisle seat in the orchestra. The steeply raked outdoor bleachers of the Conde Duque afforded everyone a clear view.
The house was generally sold out during the four-night Madrid run, and the Ballet’s reception was nothing short of rapturous — a standing ovation every time. The dancers deserved it. Nissinen has turned this once-provincial group into an ensemble of international stature.
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