Ciro Mansilla, the Argentine who conquered the Stuttgart Ballet and shines again at the Colón

The Teatro Colón Ballet is once again bringing to the stage—and this is a very happy event —John Cranko's production of Onegin , one of the most beautiful neoclassical works of the 20th century. The original premiere took place in 1965 at the Stuttgart Ballet, which Cranko directed, and since then the work has entered the repertoires of many of the world's great ballet companies.

John Cranko (1927-1973) was inspired by the plot of the verse novel Eugene Onegin by the Russian writer and poet Alexander Pushkin . The plot is as follows: young Tatiana – introspective, sensitive and a book lover – belongs to a wealthy provincial family whose house is visited by the enigmatic Onegin, a Petersburg dandy accompanying his friend the poet Lensky; Tatiana's sister, Olga, is Lensky's fiancée and unwittingly triggers a dramatic twist in the story.

Tatiana falls in love with Onegin, but is coldly rejected by him. When they meet again by chance years later, Tatiana is already married to Prince Gremin. Onegin, now in love, begs her to run away with him, but it is too late.

Ciro Mansilla , an Argentine dancer who has been with the Stuttgart Ballet since 2018, will perform the role of Onegin for the second time in his life in this premiere. Since his early training at the School of Dance, Theater and Music in Paraná, his home city, his destiny took him to Buenos Aires, then to Montevideo, and finally to Stuttgart, where he has lived for the past eight years.

She says: “In 2010, I was living in Paraná and received a scholarship for a summer course in Buenos Aires from the Art and Culture Association. A year later, I entered the Instituto del Colón, but I was already working at Leonardo Reale's Metropolitan Ballet; we did a lot of performances and tours, so I left the Colón after two years. The Metropolitan Ballet gave me a lot of stage experience thanks to the number of performances we had. Being constantly on stage allows you to deal with the kinds of unforeseen things that can arise in any performance.”

–When I turned 19, I joined the Sodre Ballet in Montevideo; it was the time when Julio Bocca was directing it. I left at the same time Julio stepped down, although I wasn't planning on leaving the company. But at that moment, Marcia Haydée [a tremendous dance artist and also Cranko's muse] suggested—somewhat imperatively—that I be chosen for the role of Onegin in the Sodre Ballet's premiere. With this, I broke two records: I'm the youngest dancer ever to perform the role and the only Argentine artist, according to the Golden Book of Onegin, to have taken on that character.

– How did you get into the Stuttgart Ballet?

We were touring Spain, and I decided to stay a few more days in Europe. I'd become a fan of Cranko and wanted to travel to Stuttgart to take three days of classes with the company, get to know the city, and then return. On the first day, the Ballet's new director greeted me: apparently, Marcia had told him about me. The next day, he attended a class to watch me work, and at the end, he presented me with a contract already prepared for me: "You have something we don't know yet, but we love it, and we want it here." That was in November 2018. I joined as a corps de ballet dancer and a month later I was promoted to soloist. I've been with the company for eight years now.

–Was dance an early vocation for you?

–Yes and no. My mother has been a teacher of tribal, Arabic, and Balkan dances since she was 15. In fact, she danced until the day before I was born, and the midwife, seeing me come out with my arm crossed over my forehead, said, "This baby comes dancing."

–Did your mother guide you towards dance?

We were a poor family, and when she didn't have anyone to leave us with, she would take us to her classes. It was fun, we moved among the students, we played. Until I got tired of it and started doing other things: martial arts, soccer, choir, basketball, artistic gymnastics. After six months, I got bored and quit.

–Until you got into ballet?

–Yes, thanks to a friend of my mother's. She had a peculiarity: in every new discipline I took up, she saw me as a winner: in soccer, the future Maradona; in basketball, Ginobili; in singing, Pavarotti. In everything, except ballet: "In a few months, she'd drop out."

–When I finished my first class, I didn't feel like I had found a place of my own, but rather that I had returned home.

–How do you feel about this Onegin, a character with so many facets, compared to almost ten years ago?

–As a dancer, I really like telling stories. In Cranko, I found the union of my two passions: dancing—and his dance is beautiful—and telling a story. The first time, I was very afraid and read Pushkin's novel over and over again, but I loved the challenge. Now I have life experience that I can apply to the role and much more technique than I had ten years ago. The work is hard at the Stuttgart Ballet: the Germans, fortunately, have neither patience nor mercy. Well, patience yes, mercy no.

–How do you create a character who goes through so many different situations? It's not the same as an actor, who expresses himself with words.

– Onegin has a dynamic movement that makes him very different from other male characters in ballet. He's wealthy, refined, elegant, and worldly, yet life weighs on him; he has everything, but nothing stimulates or excites him. He rejects Tatiana because he doesn't understand what she's like.

–The opposite. I'm not a seducer, I don't like being surrounded by people, I prefer to stay at home reading. I'm much more like Tatiana than Onegin. But I try to trace situations in my life, fragments of moments in which feelings that this character goes through appeared. And when I feel it in my body, I can interpret it.

–You speak fondly of your membership in the Stuttgart Ballet. Is it the company you want to continue to belong to?

–It's my favorite company, and I never imagined I'd end up joining it when I just went to check it out. It's like someone who's just a Barcelona fan suddenly gets hired to play there. Now I've built my life in that city, which I love, although I think I'm the only person I know who likes living in Stuttgart. It has a nightlife, great theaters, great museums, but it's a small city, without the craziness you find in Berlin, Paris, or Buenos Aires. Just the thing for me.

* Onegin will be performed from October 3rd to 14th at the Teatro Colón, Libertad 611.