It was not just a Philippine premiere. When Ballet Manila staged its first-ever Le Corsaire in 1998, it did so on a grand scale. It was the first time the pirate caper was actually being mounted in its entirety in Asia.

How was a two-year-old group like Ballet Manila that only had fifteen regular company artists – led by principal dancers Lisa Macuja Elizalde and Osias Barroso – and a handful of scholars able to do it?

By entering into a collaboration with the 30-strong Krasnoyarsk Ballet that came to town to work on two shows with them – Le Corsaire and Swan Lake. A full-length ballet in three acts with a prologue and epilogue, Le Corsaire was also made possible with a supplemental congressional grant given through the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.

Tatiana Udalenkova – Merited Artist of Russia and Macuja Elizalde’s mentor at the Leningrad Choreographic School from 1982 to 1984 – came to the Philippines with her husband, People’s Artist of Russia Sergey Vikulov, to restage Le Corsaire. With their formidable combined experience in dancing, teaching and coaching, the couple made sure the Ballet Manila-Krasnoyarsk partnership adhered to the exacting standards of the classic choreographed by Marius Petipa.

In seven shows at the Meralco Theater, local audiences were treated to a rare feat – Filipino and Russian dancers making up the cast, at times with the Filipinos in the lead roles and the Russians as their support. Audiences were fascinated by the romantic adventure involving the pirate Conrad and the maiden Medora, replete with a slave market, a pasha’s harem, a shipwreck, damsels in distress and dueling swashbucklers.

Macuja Elizalde was unable to participate in the groundbreaking peformance as she was pregnant with her firstborn. Her debut as Medora would happen in 2000.