A Starry Night in Verona

For twenty-five years, Roberto Bolle has brought together a constellation of celebrated stars and rising talent to share the stage with him. This year, fresh from a stop in Osaka, “Roberto Bolle and Friends” returned to enchant the Terme di Caracalla in Rome, the Teatro Antico in Taormina, and, for their grand finale, the Arena di Verona. In November, the tour continues with a one-night performance at London’s Sadler’s Wells and three shows at Milan’s Teatro degli Arcimboldi. Verona—the city of fabled love and enduring ruins—offered a fitting backdrop for Bolle’s philia, his affectionate bond with the artists he has tirelessly championed, and for a dancer who, at fifty, still seems to defy the passage of time.

Performance

Roberto Bolle & Friends

Place

Arena di Verona, Verona, Italy, July 22, 2025

Words

Elsa Giovanni Simonetti

Roberto Bolle in “Memories” by Juliano Nuñes. Photograph courtesy of Roberto Bolle & Friends

The evening opened with a pas de deux excerpted from “Borderlands,” a ballet created by Wayne McGregor for San Francisco Ballet. Inspired by the geometric world of painter Josef Albers and conceived in close collaboration with composers Joel Cadbury and Paul Stoney, the piece translates visual abstraction into movement and emotional texture, interlacing choreography with a hypnotic electronic score. This duet, set to the track “Variant IV,” is already familiar to audiences in Italy and beyond: Bolle, a long-time interpreter of McGregor’s work, performed it—as here—with Royal Ballet principal Melissa Hamilton in the 2022 television programme Danza con me, and the video has since circulated widely online. Years of shared work surfaced in their palpable chemistry, in breathless extensions and gravity-defying lifts. Hamilton’s sculptural, sensuous presence met Bolle’s controlled power. Two sculpted bodies—like adjacent fields of colour—converge briefly, shift, and dissolve: an image of the difficulty of truly meeting another. A falling star crossed the sky during their performance, as if sealing the spell.

A well-paced alternation brought us next to “Grand Pas Classique,” Victor Gsovsky’s distilled celebration of classical technique, set to the triumphant music of Daniel-François Auber. The interpreters were Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko—both étoiles of Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, and a couple whose personal and artistic bond lights up the stage and captures hearts. Fresh from a run of sold-out “Swan Lake” performances in Milan, they brought renewed brightness to this familiar piece, dancing with elegance and assurance. Andrijashenko is a confident and generous partner—a true danseur noble. He offers strength, grace, and attentiveness, allowing his partner to shine. Manni, in turn, dazzled with breathtaking balances, precise turns, and refined musicality, culminating in a diagonal of rélevés followed by a series of piqué manèges that radiated superhuman energy and poise. He followed with explosive jumps, executed with lightness and control. Together, they embodied the spirit of what is becoming La Scala’s distinctive style—and drew unanimous enthusiasm from the audience.

After a musical interlude—“Spring Waters” by Sergei Rachmaninoff, performed by pianist Marco Madrigal—the program continued with a male duet choreographed by Juliano Nuñes and set to Debussy’s “Clair de lune” (also elegantly played by Madrigal.) In contrast to McGregor’s angular abstraction, this piece unfolded in soft, continuous lines, with the dancers moving in near-perfect unison—like parts of a single, breathing organism. Roberto Bolle danced alongside Toon Lobach, formerly of Nederlands Dans Theater 2 and now an independent artist. Dressed in pale trousers and bathed in soft white light against the night’s natural darkness, the two created a quiet, poetic vision. Their fluid partnering dissolved into trembling hand gestures—flickers of moonlight breaking the stillness.

Nicoletta Manni and Roberto Bolle in “Fino a farci scomparire” by Stefania Ballone. Photograph courtesy of Roberto Bolle & Friends

One of the evening’s most unexpected highlights came with the “Le Corsaire” pas de deux by Marius Petipa, set to Riccardo Drigo’s sparkling score. Tatiana Melnik—principal dancer of the Hungarian National Opera since 2015 and a graduate of the Perm Ballet School—appeared alongside Giorgi Potskhishvili, the young Georgian talent who trained in Tbilisi and rose swiftly through the ranks of Dutch National Ballet, becoming a principal in 2023. Their interpretation ignited the stage with a blend of technical brilliance and radiant charisma. Potskhishvili dominated the duet with expansive, airborne jumps, drawing gasps and bursts of applause. Melnik, precise and luminous, embodied classical refinement with a magnetic stage presence. Her performance captivated the audience entirely: spectators began clapping in rhythm during her most emphatic passages and erupted in cheers at the climax of her impeccably controlled fouettés. It was a display that fused classical grandeur with individual presence—and sent a surge of energy through the arena.

Robert Bondara, director of the Poznań Opera Ballet, choreographed the following piece in 2021 to Radiohead’s “Reckoner”—a song that meditates on impermanence and the quiet reckoning with transience. Titled “Take Me with You,” the duet—performed by Melissa Hamilton and Roberto Bolle, both dressed in oversized white shirts and short trousers—unfolds as a fragile attempt to preserve human connection amid the slow drift of time and loss. With Hamilton on pointe, their movements evoked both intimacy and ephemerality, holding on to connection even as it threatened to dissolve.

As though summoned by Sergei Prokofiev’s music, Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko appeared as luminous embodiments of Shakespeare’s lovers in the iconic “Romeo and Juliet” balcony pas de deux. In Kenneth MacMillan’s lyrical, sinuously entwined choreography, their chemistry felt sincere and immediate—a portrait of love unfolding beneath the stars. Especially evocative was the image of Manni, dressed in white, standing on the elevated platform above the Arena’s main arch, her gown billowing in the night breeze as she leaned forward in anticipation. Beautiful, in love, and perfectly attuned to one another, Manni and Andrijashenko affirm their place among today’s great ballet partnerships—with a poise reminiscent of iconic duos from another era.

Oleksandr Ryabko, principal of the Hamburg Ballet, and Roberto Bolle performed “Opus 100 – Für Maurice,” a duet choreographed by John Neumeier to music by Simon & Garfunkel. Created in 1996 to mark Maurice Béjart’s 70th birthday, “Opus 100” pays homage to Béjart’s own “Les Chaises”—a work once performed by Neumeier himself. Drawing on Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist play, Béjart’s ballet evokes the surreal vision of an elderly couple preparing to deliver a vital message to a growing crowd of invisible guests, represented by an ever-increasing number of empty chairs. In “Opus 100,” the staging is pared down: two chairs, two men. Dressed first in oversized jackets and dark trousers, later bare-chested, the two engage in a finely measured dialogue. It is a quiet homage to Béjart’s aesthetic and legacy, as well as a portrait of masculine tenderness and trust. Their performance was sober and quietly resonant—the two moved with the ease and unspoken understanding of long-time companions.

Roberto Bolle in “Memories” by Juliano Nuñes. Photograph courtesy of Roberto Bolle & Friends

Then we were plunged into a space carved by laser-like beams of colour, shifting from cold to warm tones and animated by reflexive, conceptual movement—supple, loose-limbed phrases and fluid floor work. Titled “I,” the work—choreographed by Philippe Kratz and set to music by the Soundwalk Collective—resists direct narrative. It immersed the audience in a world of abstraction and sensation, where dancers traverse an ambiguous sonic landscape. Freelance artists Mikaela Kelly and Toon Lobach amazed the public with their expressiveness, fluidity, and powerful physical presence, fully embodying Kratz’s distinctive style, which probes meaning through spatial tension and sensory interplay.

And so the evening closed with two especially meaningful works—both offering a glimpse into Roberto Bolle’s identity. “Memories,” by Juliano Nuñes to the second movement of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, is an embodied meditation on his artistic legacy. The stage was framed by a semicircle of full-length mirrors, multiplying Bolle’s image and inviting the audience into a space of reflection, where he pays tribute to the iconic roles that have shaped his career: “Apollo” by Balanchine, Don José in Petit’s “Carmen,” and the solo from Béjart’s “Boléro.” Bolle moves seamlessly through these stylistic evocations—a living archive of ballet history—and ends the piece as a powerful dying swan. As his image fractured and echoed across the mirrors, a quiet question emerged: Who is Roberto Bolle?

That question found an echo in the final work of the soirée—a medley of two ballets set to contemporary Italian songs by Antonio Diodato, who sang live from the platform above the Arena’s main arch. The first, “Fino a farci scomparire,” created by Stefania Ballone—a choreographer and dancer based at La Scala—was performed by Manni and Bolle. A tender duet that recalled Manni’s early appearances in Bolle’s productions and celebrated their lasting creative friendship. It was followed by “Fai rumore,” choreographed by Massimiliano Volpini—a long-standing partner in Bolle’s many projects. For this piece, he brought together the evening’s two central couples, this time inverted: Hamilton with Andrijashenko, Manni with Bolle. The set, the music, the dance—everything converged into a final tableau that was both emotionally resonant and visually striking.

On this night, Roberto Bolle danced in five contemporary duets, brought together three classical and one experimental pas de deux, and appeared once more in a luminous finale set to live song. Around him, a constellation of styles and personalities gathered—and the Arena filled well before the cast had even been announced. But who is Roberto Bolle? He is a protean figure who moves in and out of the television screen, in and out of the codified language of ballet. He crosses boundaries between academic rigour and popular appeal, between elite and mass culture. He is a liminal presence—at once an immortal symbol and the man next door, an idealised model and a living dancer, a figure who inspires from afar and yet makes dance feel close and possible. And if Italy, a country of deep contradictions that so often turns against its own icons, continues to love him with rare unanimity—that, too, is part of his magic.

Elsa Giovanna Simonetti

Elsa Giovanna Simonetti is a Paris-based philosopher researching ancient thought, divination, and practices of salvation at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. With over a decade of ballet training, she studied History of Dance as part of her Philosophy and Aesthetics degree at the University of Bologna. Alongside her academic work, she writes about dance.

comments

Featured

REVIEWS | Karen Greenspan

Mishima’s Muse

Japan Society’s Yukio Mishima centennial series culminated with “Mishima’s Muse – Noh Theater,” which was actually three programs of traditional noh works that Japanese author Yukio Mishima adapted into modern plays.

Continua a leggere