Starting to Say Good-bye to Ferri

June 14, 2007

I was so choked up that I couldn’t bravo or whoop. Alessandra Ferri had just done Macmillan’s Manon with Roberto Bolle. She had transformed from powerful to passionate to pathetic. A feast for the eyes and the heart. This is what you go to see ballet for: the possibility of being utterly transported. When you watch her dance, you don’t think about how she does the steps; you drink in her womanliness, her voluptuousness, her delicacy, her desire, her daring, her despair. There are many fantastic ballerinas onstage today, but none (that I have seen) come close to this kind of all-consuming, totally natural drama. Every time she unfolds her leg, you feel it until it is all the way extended to the tip of her beautiful toes. Her dancing oozes with sensuality and bursts with emotion. At the end, the entire audience at the Met rose for an ovation, and roared each time she came out for a bow. We were preparing ourselves for the final good-bye that happens next Saturday, when Ferri dances Juliet for the last time.