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Alessandra Ferri joined American Ballet Theatre as a principal dancer in 1985. Born in Milan, Italy, she trained at the Teatro alla Scala and then The Royal Ballet School in London. In 1980 she won one of the three Prix de Lausanne; later that year, she joined The Royal Ballet.
GREAT PERFORMANCES: Do you remember the first Ashton ballet you ever danced?
Alessandra Ferri: Yes I do, in fact, because it was the very first thing I did when I joined The Royal Ballet. [Ferri danced with TRB from 1980 to 1985 and then joined American Ballet Theatre.] I was 17, and Fred chose me to do "The Two Pigeons." I did the Gypsy Girl and The Young Girl.
GP: What was your first impression of Ashton's choreography? What made it different from the work of other choreographers?
AF: Well, I was so young then. I had no experience of very many other choreographers, since it was the very first piece I did with The Royal Ballet. But his ballets are first of all very charming and very cultured. You can tell that he was a very cultured man. They're very poetic and always very delicate. There is never a moment of ... crude. Nothing is ever crude in his ballets. The choreography is very difficult, in fact. Technically the ballets are very demanding without being obvious. They're not show pieces, you know; it's not like, "Here I'm about to do a very difficult step." They're always disguised, so the audience may not be aware of how hard they are.
GP: Are there physical adjustments you need to make when dancing Ashton?
AF: His most apparent distinction is the use of the arms and the shoulders, especially for the women. He loved how a woman can be seductive just through the use of the shoulder[s] and the neck, which comes a little bit from the Romantic ballets. You know, in the Romantic ballets those were the only parts that were exposed, and that's how a woman would show her sensuality. And Ashton really followed that and made it very, very prominent. And then his footwork is also very fast, he likes the feet to move very, very fast. So you have these two ... the opposition of your feet being an intricate work, you know, lace, you're making lace with your feet, and then on the top you are totally languid.
GP: In Ashton there is a lot of twist or tension between the upper and lower body.
AF: Exactly. It's like a pianist doing something very rhythmical and fast with one hand and very lyrical with the other at the same time. I think always Ashton's women are extremely feminine. It was never enough for him, how much you could move in his ballets.
GP: He wanted more?
AF: Yes.
GP: What was Ashton like?
AF: Well, when I met him he was already quite old, and it was like having in front of you this aristocrat, an English aristocrat. At the time, for me, he was a little bit intimidating. I was a very, very young girl when I worked with him. But he was a very cultured and intelligent man, very well spoken. And you can tell that in his choreography. Again, the way he spoke, his English was so beautiful and so proper, and so is his choreography.
GP: Do you recall anything he said to you -- words of wisdom that you've remembered through the years?
AF: I think the memory I have mostly of him is ... he loved energy. Often, you know, things are understated, yes, but he also wanted you to move very much. He loved a lot of energy in his pieces. You know, he loved theater. He was a man of the theater. So I remember him really pushing me to move from one side of the stage to the other. There was a lot of that, which then helped me in everything else that I've ever done.
GP: Is this the first time you've danced "The Dream"?
AF: Yes.
GP: How did you prepare for it? Who taught it to you and coached you?
AF: Well, I actually happen to know "The Dream" very well because, of course, when I was in London with The Royal Ballet it was performed very often. At the time, I never got to dance the leading role in it, but I was very familiar with the ballet, and I was lucky enough to have seen it performed by Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley. So it was something I have seen done as he wanted it to be done, many times. Then I worked on it like everybody else in American Ballet Theatre, with Anthony, which was wonderful because he obviously knew exactly what Sir Fred wanted and also he was really very much able ... you know, Anthony, apart from being a great dancer, was also a wonderful partner, and the pas de deux are difficult. Ashton's pas de deux are always difficult, again because he wanted the woman to move so much and he really wanted the man basically to do everything for her, he never wanted her to look stressed out, so Anthony was really able to help us through that.
GP: What do you strive for in your dancing of Titania?
AF: I very much feel that in this version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" the two main roles have another side to them. Yes, she's a fairy, but she's also a dark fairy. She's proud and spoiled. She plays with Oberon, and she's a woman who's used to having what she wants. So there's a whole side which is interesting, because it's not just pretty, a pretty role. There's a lot of humor in it. Again, that's the other thing about Ashton. He had that British sense of humor, and there's a lot of that in the ballet.
Also, the choreography is always very classical, but as I was saying before, there are these extreme moments of sensuality where you can suddenly become something else. Suddenly the classical just melts into some unusual way of moving. So that's what I was aiming for. And that's how the characters come through, you know, through the fact that it's this sort of hot weather with these two weird creatures sort of in love in this enchanted forest. You have to use a lot of imagination to feel like you are a creature not of this world.
GP: The climactic pas de deux between Titania and Oberon is very famous, very beautiful, but also -- I'm going to borrow your word -- weird. It seems less a duet of romantic love than of deep affinity and renewed equality.
AF: It's not a Romeo and Juliet. They remind me more of Antony and Cleopatra. I mean, here we have two warriors, two people who have strong will and strong personalities, so it's almost more of a sexual rapport than a love rapport. There's a lot of power attraction.
GP: Those jackknife lifts and very rococo upper body work -- that strikes me as difficult to perform.
AF: It is. It's difficult to make it become natural and not just contrived movement. It's tough. We are not used to doing that anymore. There aren't many people who ask you for that. And also we have to remember it was done for a dancer, Antoinette [Sibley], who was like that naturally. She moved like that herself, and that's what Ashton loved in her. So it's hard to reproduce and make it be your own true movement. When a dancer is so particular and something is made on them, it's hard for the people who follow to keep that, but somehow translate it -- make it your own.
GP: How does it feel now?
AF: It took me a few performances, I have to admit, to feel that I was stepping on my own ground. I'm a real believer that you really only get to the role once you're performing. You can rehearse for months and months, but it's only when you're onstage that something happens.
GP: "The Dream" ends happily. Do you feel different at the end of a ballet like this, versus tragic works like "Giselle" or "Romeo and Juliet"?
AF: I've been dancing tragic work all my life, so it's always nice when I don't die at the end. I enjoy that.
Interview by writer Laura Jacobs for GREAT PERFORMANCES Online. (Photos: Julio Bragado-Young as Bottom and Alessandra Ferri as Titania [top banner] and Alessandra Ferri [top left] by Marty Sohl -- Thirteen/WNET.)
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