There was a time when Roberto Bolle thought mastery meant control. However, since celebrating his 50th birthday, the Italian ballet star now understands it as communication.
For such a physically demanding art form, Bolle says he has learnt to be more attentive regarding his body as he continues to tour the world with his self-curated gala performance, Roberto Bolle and Friends, which is coming to Dubai Opera on Thursday.
“You must constantly listen,” he tells The National, describing his morning routine as a checklist of questions that determines how the day will unfold on stage.
“The smarter you are in that, the better. Every morning I start by working on my body, and every day it’s different. I’ve learnt that daily practice is very important. You have to be regular and disciplined. You can’t push and then stop; it has to be steady. If you go step by step, little by little, you reach your goal. Don’t think you have to go fast.”
These steps have been ingrained for more than three decades. Trained at La Scala Theatre Ballet School, he joined the company as a teenager and by 21 had become a principal dancer. More than a decade later, he joined the American Ballet Theatre in New York as a principal, becoming one of the few Italians to hold that distinction with both institutions.
Bolle reflects on how those early years were driven by a ruthless youthful ambition. “At the beginning, I wanted to be perfect. Now I want to be true. When you are young, you think of steps; when you are older, you think of feeling,” he says.
“Maybe part of my ambition was driven by the fact I was more scared and more insecure when I was young. So at this stage, I’m much more aware of who I am and who I am as a dancer. And so on stage it reflects this personality as to where I am in this moment of my life.”
These threads come together in Roberto Bolle and Friends, the gala project he conceived in the early 2000s as a way to dance alongside artists he admired. What began as a one-off performance in Milan has since evolved into a long-running international production, with guest stars along the years including Polina Semionova and Marianela Nunez, and stops ranging from Tokyo and London to Abu Dhabi and Muscat.
As the Dubai programme moves between classics and contemporary work – including solo and ensemble performances from modern and classic ballets Flames of Paris, Moon Light, Don Quixote and Carmen – and guest dancers including Hungarian National Opera principal Tatyjana Melnik, Bolle says he no longer worries about proving range.
“I just want to be comfortable in what I do and to really give the audience an experience, to take them into a story. That’s what matters to me now,” he says. “Where I am now in my career, it is even more important for me to focus on sharing something honest, and I think that comes with time.”
That desire to connect is not limited to theatres. Each summer, Bolle brings his annual festival On Dance to Milan’s Piazza del Duomo with open dance classes and performances. The audience here is deliberately tailored to those in the city who never experienced him at La Scala.
“We bring thousands of people who are not part of the dance community and it is really beautiful because they start to understand that dance is not something distant, not something just for theatres or professionals,” he says.
“It’s a language everyone can feel. When we are in the square, people stop, they watch, they try, even if they have never danced before. That’s the most emotional part for me, to see them smiling, moving, feeling free. It’s important that people feel dance belongs to them.”
Yet for all the desire to make dance accessible, Bolle admits a career in classical ballet is born from early discipline.
“It must start very young, otherwise it’s difficult,” he says. “Classical ballet is really a discipline. It needs time, patience, and a lot of work from an early age. If you start later, of course you can dance and enjoy movement, that’s beautiful, but to reach a professional level in classical ballet, it’s almost impossible. The body needs to learn when it’s young; it becomes part of you, like a language you speak without thinking.”
His Roberto Bolle Foundation, he explains, is a way to plug the gap for the relative late bloomers with 10 schools across Milan where youngsters take an hour of ballet each week. “It’s not to make professionals,” he says. “It’s to make them aware of what the body can do, to learn balance, respect, concentration.”
Bolle elucidates these themes further in the foreword to the book Effetto Danza (Dance Effect) by Italian pharmacologist Paolo Mariconti.
“What I was saying in that is that moving your body with music creates a new awareness that has very positive effects on body and mind,” he says. “It’s something science is studying now, but for us dancers, it’s already part of our daily life. When you move, you activate parts of the brain that connect memory, co-ordination, and emotion. It’s like you wake up everything inside you. That’s why I think dance can help people at any age, it’s not only about performance, it’s about well-being.”
The commentary that won’t help a new generation of dancers, Bolle notes, comes from social media. He is concerned at how these platforms, not prevalent at all in his youth, have the potential of snuffing out promising talent through abuse or overconfidence.
“You can be beautiful online doing 15 pirouettes,” he says. “But then you have to go on stage and perform, be consistent, portray a character. That is the goal. Social media can show talent, but it can’t teach you presence. The real test is in front of an audience, feeling their energy, holding the silence, telling a story through movement. That’s something no video can give you.”
These initiatives and concerns point towards what could be Bolle’s greatest legacy, to keep ballet in the public conscience, particularly in Italy where opera still dominates the cultural field.
“We have to protect ballet,” he says. “It is part of our culture. Sometimes people think it’s something old or distant, but it’s not. It’s a living art that still speaks to people today. We just need to show it in the right way, to make it accessible without losing its quality. For me, that’s the balance, to respect the tradition but keep it alive for the next generation.”
It’s also the kind of clear-eyed reflection that can only come from a seasoned veteran. “You know, I am not romanticising anything,” he says. “You cannot dance the same as when you are 20. But you can understand better what you are doing. When I move now, I think of the meaning. Every step has to speak.”
Roberto Bolle and Friends at Dubai Opera on Thursday. Show starts at 8pm; tickets from Dh290
