2:37pm Friday 12th March 2010
Dancing with Margot Fonteyn, Eva Evdokimova, Elaine McDonald and other ballet greats are just some of the many highlights in the glittering career of Austrian dancer Peter Mallek. Beginning at the age of 14 when he joined the corps de ballet at the Vienna State Opera, Peter has worked tirelessly, firstly as a performer and subsequently as artistic director of the much loved Vienna Festival Ballet (VFB), which celebrates its 30th anniversary with a UK tour, calling in at The Watersmeet Theatre in Rickmansworth this month.
I caught up with Peter just days before he and wife Gill took time out from their three month tour to accompany four soloists selected to perform at the Kijani Festival in Nairobi.
The ballet company owes its success to hard work and an indomitable spirit that carries on despite the obstacles that can befall a company on the road. Peter tells me they’ve had their fair share of mishaps.
“I don't know how it does but the show goes on,” says Peter. “Even if it’s at 2am and we’re waiting for the bus to come to bring us back home again.
“The process is never smooth, whatever you do it works out differently than you’d expected, especially when someone steals your bus and leaves you stranded on the motorway, or the case a couple of years ago, when someone stole our truck in St Albans and went for a joy ride.
“We had to borrow a bus and the English National Ballet lent us 200 outfits, because they know how terrible it can be to be really stuck.”
Peter and Gill have lived in Northolt for the past ten years and both are former dancers. Over the course of his career, Peter has visited exotic locations in America, Australia and Rio and he has fond memories of performing in the round at an open-air arena in Dusseldorf before a crowd of 3,000 and in a big park with the Madrid State Opera.
He founded his own company in 1980, naming it after his beloved home city. Gill joined a year later and over the years, while raising their two sons, they have also nurtured talented dancers including graduates from the Royal Ballet School, British, Australian and Italian soloists, and guest stars from Vienna and Japan. Also with the company is VFB’s leading English ballerina, Melanie Cox, who has just recorded The Dying Swan scene for a new British film.
For the anniversary performance, audiences at The Watersmeet can look forward to the glamour of a royal palace and lakeside as the company perform ballet’s most popular story, Swan Lake.
Featuring Tchaikovsky’s exquisite score, the ballet captures the full range of human emotions as Prince Siegfried is tricked by the sorcerer Baron Rothbart into betraying his beautiful swan-princess Odette.
Swan Lake is at Campus West Theatre, Welwyn Garden City on Sunday, March 14 at 2pm and 5pm. Details: 01707 357117 and at The Watersmeet Theatre, High Street, Rickmansworth on Saturday, March 20 with performances at 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Details: 01923 711063
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