Karen van Ulzen catches up with two of Sydney Dance Company's newest recruits.
THE talented and multifaceted troupe at Sydney Dance Company (SDC) gained two new faces at the start of this year – Ariella Casu and Victor Zarallo. These dancers both hail from overseas, both charming and charmed by their new circumstances. I caught up with them not long into SDC’s 2018 season, at the company headquarters in Walsh Bay. It is always a reminder, when greeting people new to this company, just how extraordinary and exotic SDC’s location is – headquartered in these cavernous historic wharves, built with massive, lanolin-soaked beams, a lattice of wood and glass, jutting into the glistening, flashing water.
Zarallo is Spanish. He grew up in Sitges, a coastal town near Barcelona. At the age of 15 he was a champion ballroom dancer. At the various competitions he attended, however, he noticed that the male Russian and Eastern European ballroom dancers all had an extra edge on other nationalities. “I asked my ballroom teacher, why are they so good? And he told me it was because they do ballet.
“As a typical boy I was always against ballet. Ballet was for girls. And now I realise ballroom dance is more feminine than ballet.” So he began studying ballet. “The more I did it, the more I liked it, and I was fortunate that I went to a school that took it very seriously.” His teacher told him he had the very rare physique required to be a male classical dancer, and encouraged him to take it up as a career. “I said to her, let’s do it!” he recounts.
Through the teacher’s contact he found a place in the John Cranko School of the Stuttgart Ballet. Without having any of the language and with a mere three months’ ballet training, he went on scholarship to Germany. At the end of his first year, however, it appeared his quick run with ballet had come to an end. He was called into the office by the school’s director and told he had not passed and would not be asked back. Devastated, as he was leaving the office he ran into an Australian, Gary Norman. Norman was in Hamburg in his role as senior classical teacher with the Royal Ballet School (RBS), which was visiting the Hamburg school for a joint performance. . .
This is an extract from Karen van Ulzen's article in the June/July issue of 'Dance Australia.' To read the rest of the story, buy the new issue at your favourite magazine retailer or purchase an online copy via the Dance Australia app or subscribe here.
Pictured top: Ariella Casu and Victor Zarallo in the SDC studio. Photo: Pedro Greig.