The flamboyant French choreographer Yanis Marshall and his dance troupe are bringing their unique diva moves, performed while wearing high heels, to the Middle East for the first time.
The trio, who reached the final of this year's Britain's Got Talent reality-TV competition, will show off their moves at the Sharmila Dance Gala in Dubai this weekend.
Students from the Sharmila Dance School will be matching Marshall and his dance partners Arnaud and Mehdi step for step at the fourth edition of the gala tomorrow at Dubai Community Theatre and Arts Centre.
Videos of the dancers’ fast-paced high-heel routines, inspired by the music of Madonna, Beyoncé and The Spice Girls, have gone viral, with several pop stars, including Ciara and Natalia Kills, sharing their quirky videos.
Marshall was also recently chosen as the choreographer for Cirque du Soleil's Zumanity show in Las Vegas.
Also appearing at the gala are principal dancers from the Romanian Ballet and Stuttgart Ballet. They will join resident performers, trained by the school’s founder and creative director Sharmila Kamte, for a mash-up of jazz, hip-hop, classical ballet, contemporary, tango and salsa dance styles on stage. The Latin troupe Ballet Nacional Firulete will also perform a set for the show.
“Our event has grown year after year, introducing a variety of performances from high-calibre dancers,” says Kamte.
They have tried to bring the world’s best dancers to perform with the “crème de la crème of locally based artists,” she adds.
One of the highlights of the gala will be a performance of The Dying Swan by the Spanish principal ballerina Alicia Amatriain of the Stuttgart Ballet.
The short solo ballet, which was famously performed by the legendary Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova 4,00 times in the early part of the last century, dramatises the final moments in the life of a swan. Choreographed by Mikhail Fokine and first performed in St Petersburg, Russia, in 1905, it went on to influence performances of the 1875 ballet Swan Lake by the Russian composer Tchaikovsky.
Amatriain will interpret the famous solo ballet during a 90-minute production. She will also team up with David Moore, from her ballet company, for the Holberg Suite duet, which was produced by the late South African choreographer John Cranko. Moore will also perform the contemporary solo Affi by Marco Goecke.
Loredana, the former principal dancer of the Romanian Ballet, will join John Freddy for a pas de deux (dance duet) from act two of the romantic ballet Giselle.
•The gala will be staged tomorrow at 2.30pm and 8pm. Tickets, from Dh150, are available at www.virginmegastores.ae and www.ductac.org. For more information, visit www.sharmiladance.com
aahmed@thenational.ae
