The Boxer

Federico Bonelli, is the dynamic new artistic director of Northern Ballet, based in Leeds, which also boasts major opera and modern dance companies. He still looks very much like a Royal Ballet principal dancer. Familiar to cinema audiences worldwide through his starring roles in The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Giselle, Manon, Dances at a Gathering and many others, he is equally charismatic offstage. He is in great shape and still does class. Softly spoken, with a generous smile, his dark eyes exude a quiet, almost spiritual intensity.

Conversing in his office, located at the top of the award-winning building his company built, he is almost unnervingly open about every aspect of his outstanding career as a dancer and his recent role as director of one of the United Kingdom’s top ballet companies.

Born in Genova to Piemontese parents, Bonelli started training at the age of five in his home-town of Casale. At 14 he attended the Turin Dance Academy, where his teachers featured many Cubans. After winning a scholarship at the Prix de Lausanne, he joined Zurich Ballet in 1996, being promoted to soloist in 1997. “I promptly got to dance Romeo at 19 years old, Heinz Spoerli’s Goldberg Variations and Albrecht in Giselle. I had been used to living on a shoestring, but Zurich is a wealthy city, and I was on a good salary, so I could buy a tv and a computer, and I felt financially independent for the first time. I made good friends and met my future wife Hikaru Kobayashi who was also in the company. I learned French in Zurich, not German, which I have always regretted because German is a wonderful language.

“In 1999 I joined the Dutch National Ballet as a demi-soloist because I wanted to join a larger company and perform more classical roles. Hikaru joined with me (our relationship was always very serious from the outset) and Wayne Eagling promoted me to principal in 2002. I loved Ashton’s choreography and was given my first opportunity to dance The Prince in Cinderella and Symphonic Variations, roles I later danced with the Royal Ballet. I performed the male leads in Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, and many Balanchine roles, but not Apollo. I was also introduced to the ballets of Hans van Manen: Five Tangos, Sarcasmen and Adagio Hammerklavier, the latter which I recently acquired for Northern Ballet. I was only in the company for four years but I danced a lot!

“You never stop learning, and I looked to expand my horizons again and after Hikaru danced the Rose Fairy in Sir Peter Wright’s Nutcracker in Japan, he suggested we audition for the Royal Ballet, a company I had watched many times as a student, but which had always seemed an unobtainable artistic goal. The company had recently lost some top male dancers to Tetsuro Kumakawa’s K Ballet, so my timing was opportune, and I joined the Royal Ballet as a principal. Initially, I had only one show as Romeo after three months of preparation. One evening, watching Johan Kobborg dance the Prince in Sleeping Beauty from the wings, he suddenly injured himself and I thought “Shit! I will have to go on!” I hadn’t been due to dance the role until much later in the season. Monica Mason dyed my white shoes with a teabag to get them to the right colour while I prepared myself. The Aurora was Alina Cojocaru who I had never danced with before. I picked up the rest of the shows and I was perceived as reliable, so the following year I was cast as the Prince for the live cinema broadcast. 16 years later I did the same role with Fumi Kaneko as Aurora, so in many ways the Sleeping Beauty Prince has been my most significant career role.”

It is impossible to do justice to the many major roles he danced, but Bonelli cuts a romantic figure on stage, his dark good looks being perfect for many roles, like Romeo and Des Grieux, although Crown Prince Rudolf in Mayerling was far from being type-casting. He famously danced Armand in Ashton’s Marguerite and Armand with partners which included Tamara Rojo, Alessandra Ferri and Zenaida Yanowsky. “Dancing with many wonderful partners that included Miyako Yoshida, Alina, Tamara, and Lauren (Cuthbertson) I learned so much about partnering and good acting in the English tradition. Many Ashton and MacMillan roles were entirely new to me, which I found very stimulating. At this time Wayne McGregor created a role for me in Chroma and later others in Woolf Works and The Dante Project; but I was also cast in Wheeldon’s Alice and he created Polixenes for me in his Winter’s Tale and Dr Pozzi in Strapless. Liam Scarlett created the role of Victor Frankenstein in his Frankenstein. There was always a feeling that something was happening in a great creative surge in the Royal Ballet at this time, and of course, choreographers all work in different ways. Chris (Wheeldon) and Wayne (McGregor always preferred a team around them, but Liam (Scarlett) preferred to work alone, without a dramaturg. I also guested with Northern Ballet as Romeo in Massimo Morricone and Christopher Gable’s Romeo and Juliet at the Villa Borghese in Rome. I loved this production so much, that as a dancer I wanted to take it to Japan. Sadly it didn’t work out”

When asked what he felt he had to offer Northern Ballet as a director, he outlined the preparations he had made: applying for a Clore Fellowship to train on the year-long programme for artistic leaders; the practical elements of shadowing Tamas Dettrich in Stuttgart, Ingrid Lorentzen in Oslo, the Ballet Boyz and Kevin O’Hare in London. He graduated in 2019. He was also familiar with the Northern repertoire of Cathy Marston (Jane Eyre) and Kenneth Tindall (Casanova) and David Nixon (Nutcracker). “This all felt familiar. The strong tradition of narrative that was part of my background at the Royal Ballet and the classical ballet vocabulary. I felt it was a match for what I knew. At this moment, the financial situation is almost a perfect storm, but we are in the same boat as all other arts organisations: Covid repercussions; the financial crisis; Brexit. Our grant from the Arts Council England has gone up very little and we are a touring company with 37 dancers and 38 musicians, so our costs are escalating.” In the next breath, Bonelli is outlining his ambitious artistic programme: “After a gap of 13 years, the revival of the seminal production of our fully restored Romeo and Juliet, touring, as always with live musicians, with Greg Doran, former director of the Royal Shakespeare Company joining the company to direct drama workshops on Shakespeare’s play. The creators of the title roles, Jane Regan and William Walker will return to work with the company.  As will Jonathan Howell, the original fight director, because the swords are very realistic, and one could get seriously injured without proper training. We have a group of young adults with learning disabilities (ABILITY) who we intend to use in the marketplace scenes because we at Northern Ballet can learn things from these young people.   

“The young South African choreographer, Mthuthuzeli November, has been commissioned to create a response in a 45-minute ballet, inspired by Hill of Fools, a novel based on Romeo and Juliet. I also intend to announce in the very near future, two full-length narrative ballets which are on traditional themes but have great relevance for people today.”

Bonelli has a vision for the company which is not restricted to narrative work. His recent triple bill, Generations, put an old master, Hans van Manen, alongside Tiler Peck of NYCB, fulfilling her first European commission, and Benjamin Ella of the Royal Ballet presenting his first work for Northern Ballet. It was a powerful and interesting evening that thrived on the unusual juxtaposition of such diverse dance-makers. Like all good directors, he is educating the palate of his audience to appreciate fare that is new and stimulating.

“The most important thing is that we are sustainable as a company, which we will achieve by often taking difficult decisions. Our biggest problem is rising costs, but we are a medium sized company and deliver excellent value for money. We punch well above our weight! I have an excellent relationship with my CEO, David Collins, who came to us from Opera North, also based in Leeds, and we share the same desire to create exciting new ballets. We will do it!”