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Nabarralde | Nabarra Papers
Lucia
Lacarra: Dancing is about Feelings;
About Communicating Those Feelings
Gigi Bidarte.
When San Francisco Ballet drafted one-of-a-kind Basque-born
ballerina Lucia Lacarra, 24, from Ballet National de Marseille,
we really lucked out. A long-limbed and exceptionally lyrical
dancer, Lacarra made her big splash in Jerome Robbins's The
Cage, as the Novice who takes charge, following it up with
George Balanchine's Agon pas de deux before her season
was cut short by a stress fracture. At City Center in New York,
she danced those two choice roles, returning the ballets to
the stage where they had their premieres in the 1950s.
"The
Cage is really something special," Lacarra says of the
work that launched her. "You are like a beast; you have to kill
the man, because that's your way of life. All the steps are
so clear, so pure. It's so intense; people don't breathe!"
Lucia
Lacarra has worked with the celebrated choreographer Roland
Petit. An unforgettable performance had Lucia Lacarra and first
dancer of the La Scala Ballet Massimo Murru in "Le Boléro",
Roland Petit's 1996 choreography of Basque composer Maurice
Ravel's famous orchestral work. Lucia Lacarra and Massimo Murru
danced a classical pas de deux. The production was recorded
on a barge in the port of Marseilles. Unlike the many other
choreographies of Ravel's famous work, this one has the ballerina
dance on point for the first time.
This season she has demonstrated her versatility with dramatic
roles as well as her remarkable technical prowess; she has tackled
the classics as Giselle, and in the local premiere of Sir Kenneth
McMillan's The Invitation, her turn as the Girl was an affecting
portrayal of youthful innocence irrevocably shattered.
Lucia Lacarra recently performed in Donostia, the capital of
the Basque province of Gipuzkoa where she was born. There she
danced a portion of Swan Lake act II adagio with Ballet Nacional
de Cuba's celebrated first dancer, Oscar Torrado.
"I
joined the San Francisco Ballet as principal ballerina in 1997,
and it is very possible I would remain there for a few years
because I feel I still have a lot to offer and much to learn,"
Lucia Lacarra told the Basque newspaper Gara during her stay
in Donostia this summer.
"I
don't pay much attention when critics come to me after a peformance
and say that I have been technically perfect... fantastic. But
if someone who doesn't know anything about dance technique comes
to me and says that seeing me dancing has made her cry, I know
I'm going in the right direction, because dancing is not about
making a few pirouettes more or less right, but about feelings,
and about communicating those feelings.
San
Francisco, September 3, 1999
Pictures: Courtesy
of 1. SFB; 2. All Ballet; 3. Colette Mason.
Gigi
Bidarte is a musician and free-lance writer living
in San Francisco, California.
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