You may recall that I was recently floored by a dancer with the Kyiv City Ballet Gala at Southampton Mayflower theatre, and that I couldn't locate his name or the extraordinary music he danced to.
Well, I received a lovely email from the artistic director who corrected a few errors I'd made (now updated) and shared with me the dancers name and the music that was driving me nuts trying to locate. When I looked down the concert program the first name I picked out was Yassaui Mergalyev because of the Asiatic name, and my brief experiences of former Soviet Union states, yet still I managed to get the music wrong or clicked on a different rendition of the classical piece called November by Max Richter. If you haven't heard it, I hope you find a few minutes to listen at some point.
Now then, as soon as I had Mr Mergalyev's name I did a search and saw a bunch of videos but two of them appealed to me because they were so grainy and posted well over a decade ago. The location, Kazakhstan I believe, might not be The Bolshoi but on that stage, you and I can view those minute and a half clips, from a (distant galaxy) or generation ago as if we are talent spotters trawling the planet for the new and the best, and it's among the most extraordinary footage you or I could have ever expected. You can see for yourself how exceptionally talented a dancer Yassui Mergalyev is.
Those unbelievable pirouettes that I've seen world class ballet dancers misstep when drawing to a halt, because everybody is vulnerable to dizziness, no amount of training takes it all away, a lot yes, but not all, yet Mr Mergaliev delivers easily the most unprecedented number of turns for a male dancer that I've yet witnessed.
Finally in the first clip, the dances' denouement ends in a what looks like for a microsecond, a stumble or fall, but no. The music is surgically severed exactly on-point and we apprehend all of a sudden that it's a choreographed collapse and thus takes us somewhere I've not seen outside of Nureyev or any of the biggest names. It's a large claim but you can see for yourself.
It's a real treat even to the untrained eye.
First Draft. I'll clean up later as I must crack on.
