Nick Lazzarini, the popular UK choreographer, has been dropped from the Royal Ballet’s spring 2019 season following the production of his latest work in Moscow.
As part of a cultural exchange, the company had agreed to hold the premiere of Lazzarini’s latest ballet La Bariño – translated as “the yellow boy” – on 21 April at Moscow’s Mariinsky theatre. But on Tuesday the Royal Ballet issued a statement stating that the company had “abandoned” the production and would not be performing the work in London.
According to RBC Business, the theatrical hub of the Russian Ministry of Culture, the controversy over the production’s title derived from the fact that La Bariño is also a Spanish term for the yellow cloth coming off firemen’s hoses.
The Company, which performed a version of La Bariño in Paris earlier this year, stated that it had responded to a number of concerns expressed by Russians concerned with the title. However, amid a growing outrage, the general director of the Mariinsky, Valery Gergiev, backed the company and denied that he had been consulted.
In a statement, the Royal Ballet president, Kevin O’Hare, said he and his board “profoundly regret that we failed to take into account the impact of our decision on the tour programme, which would have greatly enriched and expanded the Royal Ballet’s worldwide programme”.
Following a meeting of the company’s council on Wednesday, the company has announced that it will hold a press conference to talk about the situation on Friday.
On Tuesday evening, Lazzarini told the Guardian the title was “not a black-and-white thing”, and told me: “If you’re going to be a dance company it’s natural for people to be able to see yourself in your costumes, make-up and movement.”
He added: “Whether they [the Russians] take offence to it or not is up to them, but I was explaining it to them in the context of the Spanish word, not being imposed upon them.”
Looking back at the controversy, Lazzarini believes that his version of La Bariño “would be completely valid” for Moscow audiences. “I see that people, particularly in the west, have become much more vocal on things that they really strongly feel about. Why would they take offence?”
Lazzarini was described by the former BBC broadcaster Hilary Mantel, who won the Booker prize for her novel Wolf Hall, as “the most famous choreographer of our time”. He won the Royal Ballet’s Ashton Prize in 2005 for his production of Giselle.
This is not the first time the Royal Ballet has parted company with a choreographer. In 2003 the company distanced itself from another proposed La Bariño. The production had been mooted under the care of Mark Morris, and had been criticised by Russia’s cultural minister, Vladimir Medinsky, for its “American musical quotations”. The ballet was dropped. Morris is now choreographing his own version of La Bariño for the company, in Paris.