Ivan Putrov is testy. Maybe it’s the stress of rehearsing his new project with the Pet Shop Boys. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have time to eat his frighteningly healthy lunch during his short break. Or maybe it’s because I have just asked him about the Royal Ballet.
It’s a fair question. After 12 years at Covent Garden, eight of them as a principal dancer, Putrov quit the Royal Ballet last year in a move that prompted a flood of gossip and rumour. Falling out with his ballerina partners? Flareups in the rehearsal studio? Failing to keep his eye on the ball?
So what did happen to bring his career there to a premature end? “I hear so many stories about that,” Putrov says, clearly annoyed that I have brought the subject up. “One of the strongest things in the world is people’s imaginations. I can see how it is difficult for them to understand how one would leave the Royal Ballet for something else. And if you don’t understand it, you try to create some other story. I love the company, but I instigated this project with the Pet Shop Boys and I had to see it through.”
That project is The Most Incredible Thing, a full-length dance adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, with new music written by the Pet Shop Boys and choreography by Javier De Frutos. It will be unveiled at Sadler’s Wells this month; after that there are plans for national and international tours, which could mean that Putrov is committed to the production for several years to come. So, for the time being at least, his career as a classical dancer will have to take a back seat.
It may be a gamble, but it’s one with A-list collaborators. The Pet Shop Boys have had 22 Top Ten hits in the UK, and have worked with David Bowie, Liza Minnelli, the Killers and Girls Aloud. De Frutos is an Olivier Award-winning choreographer; the designer Katrina Lindsay is a Tony winner; Tal Rosner, who contributes film and animation, is a Bafta winner for his title sequence to the Channel 4 series Skins; Matthew Dunster, responsible for the scenario, is an accomplished director. The project began because of Putrov’s friendship with the Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. The 30-year-old Ukrainian dancer had met them through the artist Sam Taylor-Wood, with whom he worked on various projects. Several years ago he asked the Boys to write a piece of music for him; they came up with the story. “It is very exciting to have something written for you, very special,” Putrov says.
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Until now his life has been focused on ballet, where opportunities for original creation are rare. He began his training at the age of ten in Kiev, where both his parents were involved in dance. In 1996 he joined the Royal Ballet School after winning the Prix de Lausanne and two years later was taken into the Royal Ballet itself. There he made his name as a poet, a prince and a dreamer, outstanding in roles such as Lensky in Onegin, Albrecht in Giselle and Pierrot Lunaire in Tetley’s ballet of the same name.
Notable for his polished technique, his soaring leaps and his boyish good looks, Putrov wasn’t the sort of dancer who suggested nefarious deeds. But he is now relishing the chance to play a real scoundrel. “In the past I have pretty much always been a positive character on stage,” he says. “But I was always trying to find the villain within me to give that extra dimension to my positive characters to make them more believable. Now it’s the opposite.”
Putrov plays Karl, the evil destroyer in Andersen’s short dark tale, in which a king decides to give his daughter and half of his kingdom to the person who comes up with the most incredible thing. The winning object turns out to be a magic and extraordinary clock, but before the winner can marry the princess, Karl smashes the clock to smithereens, only to have its broken figures return to life and kill him in revenge.
“It is hard and easy at the same time to be a villain,” Putrov says. “I don’t think people are 100 per cent positive; there is negativity in all of us. People aren’t 100 per cent giving, there is always something they want to take. So I try to find as much of that as I can.”
For Putrov The Most Incredible Thing, which was written in 1870, isn’t so much a fairytale as a parable that proclaims the invincibility of art, even in the face of brutal repression. “You can’t destroy art. It will live on no matter what you do. And in some ways this show is a tribute to the people who created the most incredible things.”
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Its premiere was supposed to have happened about 18 months ago, but it was delayed by a Pet Shop Boys’ world tour. Their score, their first full-length composition for dance, will be played by a live orchestra at the Wells, but will also include some recorded material, also devised by Tennant and Lowe.
“I adore their pop music, but after hearing their soundtrack to the silent film Battleship Potemkin in 2004 I knew there could be more,” Putrov says. “I asked them if they would be interested in creating a new, full-length dance because I could see how effective they are in creating characters through their sound. They don’t just write wonderful melodies that tell stories, they also create wonderful atmospheres.
“It was Chris who suggested the Hans Christian Andersen story. I think it’s quite a strong story with archetypes that everyone can understand and that transfer easily into dance. Then I knew just the right place to take it for it to happen and that was Sadler’s Wells.”
It was Alistair Spalding, the Wells’ artistic director, who suggested bringing De Frutos on board as choreographer. When you consider that De Frutos’s last work on the Sadler’s Wells stage was lurid, violent and sexually abusive (among other graphic representations it featured a pregnant woman being punched in the stomach and then garrotted with a rosary) it seems a surprising decision for a production designed as family entertainment. “It is an interesting call, isn’t it?” Spalding says.
“But Javier does work to commission and it’s very clear what the commission will be. The Pet Shop Boys want this to take a traditional approach and tell a narrative ballet using contemporary dance language. Javier is definitely working within the brief, so no, he is not out to shock.”
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Putrov is convinced that De Frutos is the right man to tell the story. “Javier creates a lexicon for the dancer that reflects the state that a particular character is in; his dances have their own persona, they say something. I am mesmerised by watching the world that Javier has set up.
“Scandinavian fairytales are very powerful,” Putrov adds. “To take children’s imagination to a different level you almost have to take them to this terrible space first. Javier has created an atmosphere that is strong and powerful, one that means something, rather than just making happy entertainment.
“And you can take it how you like. For me dance is one of the greatest of the arts because it works on such a different level from the others. It works at the level of primitive sensations. Dance creates an atmosphere and a feeling that transmits to the audience without telling you exactly what it is and yet makes you understand it in your own way.”
So has he turned his back on classical ballet? “No I wouldn’t say that. I love the classics. And I like that you keep them alive by recreating them with each performance.”
Any regrets about leaving the Royal Ballet? “No, none at all. I’m very happy with what I got to dance there, I was blessed with a huge variety of roles, I believe in what the company represents and even though I have left I still feel very much part of it. And if there would be a possibility in the future to dance with the Royal Ballet again, I would love to dance with the company.”
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The Most Incredible Thing is at Sadler’s Wells (www.sadlerswells.com, 0844 8710090), March 17-26, previews 17, 18, 19, 21
The score for The Most Incredible Thing will be released on March 14 through Parlophone Records