'Le Corsaire' sails to the high seas

Le Corsaire has a special place in the history of Ballet Manila. The company was the first to perform the full-length Russian classic in Southeast Asia in 1998. But because prima ballerina and artistic director Lisa Macuja Elizalde was pregnant with her first child then, the piece premiered with principal dancer Osias Barroso taking on the lead role of Conrad with Pamela Asprer as his Medora. Providing corps support to the young company was the Krasnoyarsk Ballet.

Four years later, Macuja-Elizalde danced as Medora when the company restaged the piece. Barroso reprised his role as Conrad but this time, the ballet was performed by an all-Filipino cast. The company had grown and no longer needed the aid of another company to fill in the corps de ballet.

Based on the 1814 poem by Lord Byron, Le Corsaire was choreographed by the legendary Marius Petipa. It follows the adventures of a pirate who falls for a Greek woman whom he rescues twice from slave traders.

In this slideshow are photographs from the 2002 restaging of Le Corsaire which Macuja-Elizalde summed up then this way: “It’s not every day you get a pasha’s harem, a shipwreck, swashbuckling pirates and kidnapped damsels in distress, a living garden and a slave market all in one evening.”