Whipped Cream by New York’s American Ballet Theatre preview for Hong Kong Arts Festival: interview with Daniil Simkin
Russian ballet dancer Daniil Simkin talks about playing a boy who eats too much whipped cream in upcoming Hong Kong Arts Festival ballet, and reveals his favourite dance roles and why he is joining Germany’s Staatsballett Berlin
Daniil Simkin, principal dancer for the American Ballet Theatre, is one of the new superstars of the ballet world – but he has not just let the audience come to him.
The Russian 30-year-old is one of the first ballet dancers to use social media effectively, and he has been using YouTube, Twitter and Instagram to make the point that ballet is not just for the cultural elite.
Svetlana Zakharova and Vadim Repin entertain Hong Kong with dazzling virtuosity and some help from their friends
“I was one of the first ballet dancers to have a website. I have technological streak – I taught myself HTML when I created my website,” says the dancer, who has 18,000 followers on Twitter and YouTube video views that run into the millions.
It is all part of a mission to popularise an art form that is sometimes thought of as old-fashioned, Simkin says in an interview with the South China Morning Post from the dance company’s New York headquarters. “As artists, we have to work out where our art stands in these times,” he explains.
Simkin will be Hong Kong to dance in Whipped Cream as part of this year’s Hong Kong Arts Festival. The ballet is an unusual story ballet by Richard Strauss that was first performed in Vienna, Austria, in 1924. It was adapted and choreographed by the American Ballet Theatre’s legendary artist-in-residence Alexei Ratmansky last year, and the new production is a colourful fantasia about a boy who enters an Alice In Wonderland-like world in a pastry shop in Vienna.