The Ballet Manila Archives is the repository of documents, print, photographic, audio and video materials and memorabilia relating to the history of Ballet Manila and the life and career of its founder, prima ballerina Lisa Macuja-Elizalde. This site is powered by Ms. Elizalde and Project Art, Inc.
Ballet Manila has showcased a rich palette of hues in its productions over the years. Now, the company’s true colors are revealed! Gathering photographs from the Ballet Manila Archives, we present the vibrant and the somber, the heavenly to the earthy, in a series of virtual exhibitions – one shade at a time.
They may have been captured and are about to be sold off by the slave trader Lankadem, but the Algerian Princess (Melanie Motus) is the picture of courage, suitably garbed as she is in blazing red, as she tries to protect her group from those out to harm them in Le Corsaire (2002). Photo by Ocs Alvarez
Her character in Augustus “Bam” Damian III’s The Last Poem (2010) may be dying, but Lisa Macuja-Elizalde is as brave and bold as the color she wears – as she summons the willpower to hang on while her partner (Romeo Peralta) prepares to read her one final poem. Photo by Ocs Alvarez
Clad in red and cloaked in black, there’s a sinister air to Tybalt (John Ralp Balagot) in this scene from the Romeo and Juliet Suite (2018), a restaging of Sergey Vikulov’s version of Shakespeare’s masterpiece of love and tragedy. Photo by Giselle P. Kasilag
Nikiya (Mylene Aggabao), as the titular “bayadere” or temple dancer in La Bayadere (2004), has to perform at the betrothal of her beloved Solor to Gamzatti while she herself is being eyed by the High Brahmin. There’s no better color to mirror this tale of passion, love and sacrifice set in India than red like this alluring outfit Nikiya slips into and the dresses that the girls in the Parrot Dance behind her are wearing. Photo by Ocs Alvarez
In 2018, it was Japanese ballerina Sayaka Ishibashi’s turn to internalize strength and grace as the plucky Algerian Princess clad in crimson in Ballet Manila’s restaging of the pirate adventure, Le Corsaire. Photo by Giselle P. Kasilag
Confident and daring in a red coat as Prince Desiré in The Swan, The Fairy and the Princess (2016), Mikhail Martynyuk charges to the rescue of Princess Aurora in the all-Tchaikovsky production’s excerpt of The Sleeping Beauty. Photo by Kurt Alvarez
Nothing says steamy and sexy better than the red slip of a dress worn by Jasmine Pia Dames (dancing opposite Gerardo Francisco Jr.) in Martin Lawrance’s Aria, a modern choreography powered by soaring melodies from operas. Photo by Giselle P. Kasilag
