The Positano Premia la Danza goes to Roger Cuadrado

15/9/2020

Ballet

The prestigious Positano Premia la Danza was founded in 1969. Two decades later, it was dedicated to Léonide Massine, who died in 1979. A number of celebrated artists have received the coveted prize, including Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Gianni Versace, Maurice Béjart, Vladimir Vasiliev, Ekaterina Maximova, Natalia Makarova, Carla Fracci, Luciana Savignano, Elisabetta Terabust, Alessandra Ferri, Eleonora Abbagnato, Manuel Legris, Roberto Bolle, Alicia Alonso, Uliana Lopatkina, Ivan Vasiliev, Natalia Osipova, Yuri Grigorovich, Mats Ek, Ana Laguna and Lutz Förster.

Among this year’s award-winners was Roger Cuadrado, a demi-soloist of the Czech National Ballet, who captivated the Positano jury with his performance in the Mask Duet. The choreography was featured within the Velvet Gala in Prague last November, as well as the We’ll Dance Through show broadcast in the spring on Czech Television. Mask Duet is a work of Douglas Lee, whose creativity will certainly be admired by the audience of Phoenix, a new Czech National Ballet production to premiere soon.

The 48th edition of the Positano Premia la Danza festival was held from 5 to 7 September 2020, yet due to the coronavirus pandemic was reduced to the dancers’ virtual presentations and two live performances that were streamed on social networks. The jury, made up of Alfio Agostini (director of Ballet 2000 magazine), Valeria Crippa (Corriere della Sera), Brigitte Lefevre (director of the Festival de Cannes), Nina Loory and Laura Valente (the Benois de la dance del Bolshoi MOSCA / Massine ITALIA prize), and Roger Salas (El País), bestowed the main PRIX BENOIS-MASSINE on Anthony Dowell (Danseur noble par excellence), undoubtedly the greatest English classical danseur of his generation, who after terminating his active career worked for 15 years, until 2001, as the artistic director of the Royal Ballet in London. Another prize went to the globally renowned Cuban prima ballerina Viengsay Valdés, currently holding the post of artistic director of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. The jury also awarded Alyona Kovalyova, Marcelino Sambé, Oleg Ivenko, Valentine Colasante, Alejandro Virelles, Giacomo Castellana, Nicoletta Manni, Timofei Andriashenko, Martina Arduino, Artemiy Belyakov, Julie Guibert, and other dancers.