THE ROLE: GAMZATTI

Great ballet roles live through the artists who dance them. In each issue, a dancer from a leading company shares a personal perspective on one of the most iconic characters in the ballet repertoire.

I reach Susanna Salvi’s dressing room at the Rome Opera House during the interval of a performance of La Bayadère. A principal dancer of the company, she has just danced Gamzatti, the Raja’s daughter, in the first two acts, which in Benjamin Pech’s version are fused into a single uninterrupted one. She asks for a couple of minutes to remove her heavy red-and-black tutu, glinting with burgundy reflections, and slip into a tracksuit. Then, still fully made-up, she sits down in front of her mirror.