LUGANO, Swizerland — Italy’s most celebrated ballet star brought his touring gala Roberto Bolle and Friends to Lugano’s LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura this spring, drawing a sell-out crowd that had planned months ahead. With solos that test the limits of a body at its peak and a pas de deux of near-weightless grace, the evening confirmed Bolle as one of the rare performers whose name alone fills a house.
The word-of-mount advice among Lugano’s Bolle devotees was simple, the moment the tickets went on sale: “buy immediately.”
“I booked on the very first day of sales,” said Eva Leitgeb, an art lover who travels regularly between La Scala, the Vienna State Opera, and Lugano’s LAC. “Since Andrea Amarante took artistic leadership, the LAC has built a programme of excellence, and a Bolle night is the kind of shared celebration that people cannot miss,” she told Italy Now.
Darkness, muscles, applause
One of the evening’s most striking moments was his solo “Two.” In near darkness, flashes of arms and chest caught the light while isolated sounds reverberated through the hall like a fading gong. The tension built until the rhythm turned almost frantic, and the hall broke into applause before the piece had ended. “What a physique, what flexibility at 50,” said Katarina Evstegneev, seated nearby, who had bought her tickets on the very first day of availability.
In the pas de deux “Le Parc,” set to a Mozart piano concerto, Bolle and Sae Eun Park sketched a romantic encounter that seemed to defy gravity. They did not so much dance as glide, drawn together in an image of pure, weightless beauty. The finale, “Sphere,” saw Bolle circle a vast illuminated globe before lifting it onto his shoulders like Atlas, the gesture drawing a standing ovation.
Bolle trained at the Scuola del Teatro (theatre school) of La Scala in Milan, where he has been an étoile (principal dancer) since 2004. In 2009 the American Ballet Theatre named him Principal Dancer, an unprecedented recognition for an Italian performer, and kept him in its seasons for a decade. His touring gala pairs top international dancers with an atmosphere that bridges classical repertoire and contemporary energy, drawing tens of thousands of spectators across Italy and abroad.
The LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura, founded in 2015, hosts over 250 events a year and welcomes more than 30,000 guests in its lakeside architectural setting.
