From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In a 2005 performance as Aminta, from Frederick Ashton's ballet
Sylvia
Ángel Corella (born November 8, 1975) is a Spanish dancer, currently the
Artistic Director and principal dancer of Corella Ballet Castilla Y
León as well as principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre. He has
been honored with the prestigious Prix Benois de la Danse award
for his performance of Jerome Robbins' Other Dances
with ballerina Julie Kent and has also
been bestowed the National Award of Spain.
How it
started
Born and raised in Madrid,
Corella trained with Karemia Moreno and Víctor Ullate
and began winning dance awards at a young age, including the First
Prize in the National Ballet Competition of Spain in 1991 and three
years later, the Grand Prix and Gold Medal at the Concours
International de Danse de Paris.
When the world-renowned, Russian ballerina Natalia Makarova, saw the young
Corella in competition, she contacted the artistic director of American Ballet Theatre and
recommended that he be auditioned for the company. He was accepted
into ABT as a soloist in April 1995 and was promoted the following
year (August 1996) to the rank of principal dancer.
Professional
work
Ángel Corella has performed as a guest artist with such
companies as The Royal Ballet in London, the La Scala Ballet
in Milan, the New York
City Ballet, the Australian Ballet, the Ballet of Tokyo, the
Asami Maki Ballet, Ballet Contemporaneo de Caracas, and the National Ballet of Chile. In March 2008, Corella made
his debut with the Kirov Ballet at the Mariinsky
Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, dancing the role of
Prince Siegfried in Swan
Lake.
Corella has also performed in numerous festivals, galas, and
special performances around the world, including The Kings
of the Dance which premiered, in February 2006, at the Orange County
Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, CA, immediately followed
by an East Coast premiere at City Center. He performed
alongside dancers Gudrun Bojesen of The Royal Danish Ballet; Alina Cojocaru
and Johan
Kobborg of the Royal Ballet, London; Ethan Stiefel of
ABT; and Nikolay Tsiskaridze of the Bolshoi Ballet. In 2007, Kings of the
Dance toured to Russia with performances in St. Petersburg,
Moscow, and Perm, Russia. The next
year, Angel Corella was the sole returning original cast member to
perform it at the Mariinsky Festival. Prior to 2008, he toured
Spain extensively with his own company Ángel Corella &
Stars of the American Ballet. He is now Artistic Director of
Corella Ballet.
In recent years, Corella has danced for Elizabeth II of the
United Kingdom and the President of the United
States. He has performed all of the classics (see extensive
listing below), and has received critical acclaim for his
technique, musicality,
and for his sensitive, dramatic interpretations of roles in ballets
by Sir Kenneth MacMillan, specifically
Romeo and Juliet and more recently, Manon.
He has had the opportunity to partner many well-known ballerinas
including Alessandra Ferri, Xiomara Reyes, Julie Kent, Gillian Murphy,
Diana
Vishneva, Alina Cojocaru, Nina
Ananiashvili, Paloma Herrera, Irina
Dvorovenko, Viktoria Tereshkina, Alina Somova, Evgenia
Obraztsova, Alexandra Ansanelli, Michele Wiles,
Stella Abrera and Letizia Giuliani, among
others.
In the spring of 2010, he will reprise roles in both Romeo
and Juliet and in Don Quixote with ABT at the Metropolitan
Opera House, Lincoln
Center.
Corella Ballet Castilla y
Leon
In April 2008, Corella established the first classical ballet
company in Spain in 20 years—Corella Ballet, Castilla y León.
The company currently consists of 35 dancers chosen from over a
thousand applicants coming from 9 countries: Ireland, Italy, Japan,
Kazakistan, Portugal, Republic of Georgia, Russia, Spain United
Kingdom and U.S.A.
- Principal Dancers
- Angel Corella, Herman Cornjeo, Iain Mackay, Adiarys Almeida,
Carmen Corella, Natalia Tapia
- First Soloists
- Kazuko Omori, Jospeh Gatti
- Soloists
- Cristina Casa, Ashley Ellis, Maria Jose Sales, Fernando Bufala,
Kirill Radev, Yevgen Uzlenkov
- Artists
- Alexandra Basmagy, Ana Cabral, Leire Cabrera, Ana Calderón,
Yoko Callegari, Alba Cazorla, Tracy Jones, Carla López, Marta
Ludevid, Georgia Molina, María Sordo, Ion Agirretxe, Yerlan
Andagulov, George Birkadze, Russell Ducker, Sergey D'yachkov,
Daniel Fajardo, Luca Giaccio, Toby Mallitt, Iván Sánchez, Roberto
Sánchez
This new company had its world premiere in La Granja, Segovia,
Spain on July 11, 2008 performing a mixed program of Bruch Violin
Concerto, Clear and In the Upper Room. Its first full-length ballet
was La Bayadere (staging by Natalia Makarova) on September
4, 2008 at the Teatro
Real in Madrid, Spain.
Corella Ballet has since gone on to expand its repertoire and
gain a great following across both Spain and the rest of the world.
They will perform in the New York City Centre in March of 2010 as
their first international tour as well as adding another full
length to its repertoire in February 2010 - Swan Lake.
The company's current repertoire includes:
- La Bayadere (Natalia Makarova after Marius
Petipa)
- Swan Lake (Angel Corella after Lev Ivanov and Marius
Petipa) * to be premiered in Valladolid, Spain in February
2010*.
- Bruch Violin Concerto (Clark Tippet)
- Clear (Stanton Welch)
- We got it good (Stanton Welch)
- In the Upper Room (Twyla Tharp)
- Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux (Balanchine)
- Who Cares (Balanchine)
- After the rain (Christopher Wheeldon)
- VIII (Christopher Wheeldon)
- DGV (Christopher Wheeldon) * to be premiered in New
York, March 2010*
- Don Quixote Pas de Deux
- Corsaire Suite
- Diana and Acteon Pas de Deux
- String Sextet (Angel Corella)
- Epimitheus (Russell Ducker)
- Fancy Free (Jerome Robbins)
- Apollo Pas de Deux (Balanchine)
- Satanella Pas de Deux
Roles
- Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake
- Des Grieux in Manon
- Romeo in Romeo and Juliet
- Albrecht in Giselle
- Peasant Pas de deux from Giselle
- Colas In La Fille Mal Gardée
- Conrad in Le
Corsaire
- Ali the Slave in Le Corsaire
- Birbanto in Le Corsaire
- Lensky in Onegin
- The Prince in Cinderella
- Solor in La
Bayadère
- The Bronze Idol in La Bayadere
- Basilio in Don Quixote
- Gypsy King in Don Quixote
- Danilo in The Merry Widow
- Camille in The Merry Widow
- James in La
Sylphide
- Franz in Coppélia
- Cassio in Othello
- The Bluebird Pas de deux from The Sleeping
Beauty
- Prince Désiré in The Sleeping Beauty
- The Nutcracker Prince in The Nutcracker
- The Cavalier in The Nutcracker
- Henry VIII in VIII
- Petruchio in The Taming of the
Shrew
- The Blue Boy in Les Patineurs
- The Rose in Le Spectre de la Rose
- The Son in The Prodigal Son
- The Peruvian in Gaîté Parisienne
- Billy in Billy the Kid
- Aktaion in Artemis
- Petrouchka in Petrouchka
- Her Lover in Jardin aux Lilas
- The First Sailor in Fancy Free
- The Third Sailor in Fancy Free
- Aktaion in Artemis
- The Man from the House Opposite in Pillar of Fire
- Misgir in The Snow Maiden
- Her Lover in Weren't We Fools?
- The Dancemaster in The Lesson
- Oberon in The
Dream
- Leading roles in other ballets include the
following: Symphony in C, Other Dances,
Push Comes to Shove, The Sleeping Beauty Act II,
Within You Without You: A Tribute to George Harrison,
Variations on America, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux,
Theme and Variations, The Brahms-Haydn
Variations, Bruch Violin Concerto, Drink To Me
Only With Thine Eyes, Ballet Imperial,
Sinfonietta, Gong, Who Cares?,
Variations For Four, The Leaves Are Fading,
Mozartiana, Without Words, A Brahms
Symphony, Stepping Stones, Americans We, and
Spring and Fall, Concerto no. 1 for Piano &
Orchestra, Sinatra Suite, In the Upper Room,
and Allegro Brillante, among others.
- Ballets created on Corella by today's
choreographers: For 4 by Christopher Wheeldon, Non
Troppo by Mark
Morris, The Pied Piper by David Parsons, HereAfter by
Natalie Weir & Stanton Welch, Meadow by Lar Lubovitch,
Baroque Game by Robert Hill, Concerto No. 1 for Piano
and Orchestra by Robert Hill, Known by Heart by Twyla
Tharp, Getting Closer by John Neumeier, Sin and Tonic by
James Kudelka,
and both Clear and We Got it Good by
choreographer Stanton Welch.
- Ballets in Opera
Productions: Dance of the Hours in Ponchielli's La
Gioconda choreographed by George Iancu in Barcelona 2005 as well as
Christopher Wheeldon's new Dance of the Hours in
Ponchielli's La Gioconda for the Metropolitan
Opera in New York City, 2006. (Debut performances).
Television appearances
- 1996 Kennedy Center Honors
- 1998 Sesame Street
- 2001 Charlie Rose
- 2000 PBS presentation of documentary film Born To Be Wild -
The Leading Men Of American Ballet Theatre
- 2005 (Emmy Award-winning) PBS presentation of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, with
Gillian Murphy and Marcelo Gomes (Staging by Kevin McKenzie)
Corella's DVD
recordings
Angel Corella backstage at the Metropolitan Opera House in 2007 -
Photo by Hermine Weiss
- Swan Lake with Gillian Murphy
(American Ballet Theatre - 2005)
- Romeo and Juliet with Alessandra
Ferri (La Scala Ballet - 2000)
- Le Corsaire with Julie Kent/Ethan
Stiefel (American Ballet Theatre - 1998 VHS, 2001 DVD)
- Born To Be Wild - The Leading Men Of American
Ballet Theatre (Biographical Documentary- 1999) with
Vladimir Malakhov, Jose
Manuel Carreño, and Ethan Stiefel.
- Don Quixote Pas de Deux with
Paloma Herrera (American Ballet Theatre) on a mixed bill DVD titled
American Ballet Theatre Now - Variety and
Virtuosity (1996)
Awards
- National Ballet Competition of Spain - First prize, May
1991
- Concours International de Danse de Paris - Grand Prix / Gold
Medal, December 1994
- Prix Benois de la Danse,
2000
- National Award of Spain, 2003
- Dance Europe Magazine DANCER OF THE YEAR Award
2007
- Leonid Massine Award, 2008
- International Medal of Arts, Madrid, Spain 2009
Foundation
- La Fundación Ángel Corella
"The Angel Corella Foundation was formed in 2001 to promote
classical dance in Spain and to offer the opportunity for the
finest professional training to all dancers, regardless of their
economic or social condition".
At this stage of his career, Corella has created this ambitious
educational, artistic and cultural project consisting of a
Residence School for Dancers and a Ballet Company - Corella Ballet
Castilla y Leon, both sited in the Palace of Santa Cecilia at the
Royal Location of La Granja de San Ildefonso in Segovia, Spain.
The repertoire of the Ballet Academy and Corella Ballet will
include classical, neoclassic and contemporary works.
This high-profile project in Spain is already attracting a great
deal of international interest.
External links and
reference articles
References
Wikis
Quiz
Search
