Gabriella Komleva
Gabriella Komleva was a leading dancer at the Kirov Ballet from 1957 until her
retirement 31 years later. She was born in Leningrad on 27 December 1938 and
studied at the Vaganova School under the celebrated teacher Vera Kostrovitskaya.
She came to notice very quickly in the Kirov Ballet and was
soon dancing solo roles, firstly under the guidance of
Alla Shelest and then with Natalia Dudinskaya who was
a leading influence through her formative years in the company.
Komleva took part in the first tour to London in 1961, dancing small roles in
The Sleeping Beauty and in the Shades Act from La Bayadere.
On the subsequent tours in 1966 and 1970 she enjoyed great success in the
major ballerina roles as Aurora, Cinderella, Paquita and in The Leningrad Symphony.
Komleva was a first rate classical dancer and a superb actress.
Her stage creations were always highly charged dramatically and allied to an
exemplary classical technique and an innate musicality.
Her diversity was quite astonishing. She has triumphed in
the pure classicism of Swan Lake and La Bayadere, the romanticism of La Sylphide,
the epic dramas of the Grigorovich repertoire, and also in modern works by Russian
choreographers, notably in the role of Asiat in Vinogradov's Goryanka, in Igor Belsky's
Shore of Hope and Leningrad Symphony, and in Boris Eifman's controversial version of The Firebird.
Hers is a complex talent not limited in any way to one style.
She has the rare ability to change her plastique to suit the particular needs of a role.
Hence the pure lyricism of the Shades Act of La Bayadère contrasting with
piquant staccato required for Kitri in the first act of Don Quixote.
Of perhaps all the classics, it was her interpretation Nikiya in La Bayadère which
showed her qualities to their utmost. This was considered a yardstick interpretation by a major
stage personality within the confines of the Kirov classical style.
Whilst Komleva was a very dynamic technician able to despatch the virtuosic
classical creations of Petipa, such as Paquita, she never departed
from the classical roots of the choreography and avoided any excesses which
would be stylistically out of place.
She was a mistress of
the theatre able to judge the exact dynamic of any given moment for it to
make the greatest impact, both technically from a dance perspective and also from a
theatrical one. A rare unity indeed. Her modern creations are infused
by the same commitment to this dramatic and dance impetus. This gave her
renditions of Mekhmene Banu in The Legend of Love and the Mistress of the Copper Mountain
in The Stone Flower the required epic quality.
In divertissement programmes Komleva has performed a very wide range of smaller
pieces by modern choreographers such as Roland Petit and Georgi Alexidze
alongside classically inspired pieces such as the pas de six from
Esmeralda and the Grand Pas Classique both of which have fortunately
been preserved on film, alongside her Nikiya and Cinderella.
It’s almost impossible to say which if her roles were indeed her
greatest as all of her stage creations were stamped with her own
personality and strong vivid dramatic interpretations. Roles requiring passions
on a large scale, be they comic as in Don Quixote, or tragic as in La
Bayadère gave the greatest scope for her theatrical talent.
Since leaving the stage in 1988 Gabriella Komleva has been an active coach and repetiteur with the Kirov.
Of the current generation of dancers, Daria Pavlenko, Veronika Part, Irina Golub and Ekaterina Osmolkina were or are still
coached by Komleva. She is
also on the Faculty of the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, given the title of professor in 1994.
She teaches widely internationally and has supervised new productions of
the major classical ballets across Russia and in Germany.
She was made a
People's Artist of the USSR in 1983.
Geoff Whitlock
Her repertoire includes:
- Nikiya in La Bayadère (Petipa, staged by Ponomarev, Chabukiani)
- Giselle and Myrtha in Giselle (Coralli/Perrot, Petipa)
- Kitri and Queen of the Dryads in Don Quixote (Petipa, Gorsky)
- Diamond Fairy and Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty (Petipa, staged by K. Sergeyev)
- Odette-Odile in Swan Lake (Petipa-Ivanov, staged by K. Sergeyev)
- title role in Raymonda (Petipa, staged by K. Sergeyev)
- title role in Cinderella (K. Sergeyev)
- title role in La Sylphide (von Rosen after A. Bournonville)
- soloist in Chopiniana (Fokine)
- Jacinta in Laurentia (Chabukiani)
- Mistress of the Copper Mountain in The Stone Flower (Grigorovich)
- Mekhmene Banu in The Legend of Love (Grigorovich)
- Butterfly in Carnaval
- a Planet in A Distant Planet (K. Sergeyev)
- Sara, Lizzia in Paths of Thunder (K. Sergeyev)
- Lost Love in Shore of Hope (Belsky)
- Girl in Leningrad Symphony (Belsky)
- title role in The Firebird (Eifman)
- Asiat in Goryanka (Vinogradov)
- Ophelia in Hamlet (K. Sergeyev)
Divertissements:
- soloist in Esmeralda Pas de six (Petipa, staged by Vaganova)
- soloist in Grand Pas Classique (Gsovsky)
- soloist in Paquita Grand Pas (Petipa, staged by Vinogradov)
- Grahn and Grisi in Pas de Quatre (Dolin)
- soloist in Choros (Petit)
- The Cowboys (Jakobson)
- Sviridov Romance (Bryantsev)
- Cacchucha (Lacotte)
Copyright © 2003
Text of Gabriella Komleva Copyright © 2003 Geoff Whitlock. All rights reserved.