Don Quixote

The company Yacobson Ballet asked Johan Kobborg to create a new version of the Don Quixote ballet. With a new eye, he brings it up to date while respecting the traditional version’s essence. The stage set production and costumes drawn and made by Jérôme Kaplan are exceptionally delicate and enhance this masterpiece.

The ballet relates Kitri and Basilio’s thwarted loves, who use stratagems to get reunited despite Kitri father’s resistance. Don Quixote is finally the one who brings the happy ending. Our idealistic and reckless stargazer meets in dream Cupid, his dear Dulcinea and the Dryades Queen in a fantastic scene. Our hero realizes that he has to speak in favour of the two lovers and this way allows their union.

Don Quixote is part of the romantic tradition thanks to lots of pantomime scenes and character dances. It highlights soloists and corps de ballet in various group sections and pas de deux. Hispanic costumes and hectic dances like zingara, jota and morena create a bright and joyful piece.

“Surprising though it may be for the self-proclaimed knight of La Mancha to have inspired Kobborg’s return to ballet, his new production of Don Quichotte for the Yacobson Ballet of St Petersburg continues the ongoing testimony to the strength of his creative vision. Kobborg has deconstructed the work; mixing up the narrative’s building blocks before reassembling them in a masterpiece of balance that remains recognisably traditional but is also refreshingly new.”

Graham Watts, Dance Tabs