Raising Cane for Little Tramp

When veteran choreographer Roland Petit told dancer Luigi Bonino that he was going to make a work for him about Charlie Chaplin, Bonino got nervous.

“I said, ‘This is impossible. It’s too difficult do something like that. Chaplin was a genius. It’s not possible to do an imitation.’ ”

Bonino was speaking by phone recently from Marseilles, France, where Le Ballet National de Marseille was rehearsing for its exclusive West Coast engagement of the Chaplin ballet today through Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

Created in 1990 and premiered the following year, the ballet originally was called “Charlot Danse Avec Nous” (Charlie Dances With Us). It was renamed “Chaplin Dances” for the 1995 U.S. premiere in Washington.

Petit met Chaplin in Hollywood in 1942, where they began their long friendship. Chaplin even wrote Petit a letter, which is quoted in the company’s press materials, about a new ballet Petit created in 1960: “I hope to have the pleasure of seeing your new ballet. Anything you do is always exciting and fresh. Sincerely, Charles Chaplin.”

But Chaplin, who died in 1977 at the age of 88, did not live to see the ballet his life and work inspired.

“The ballet is not a story about his life,” Bonino said. “We have 22 scenes, little scenes, some of which remind you of some of his movies,” among them “The Kid,” “The Gold Rush,” “City Lights” and “Modern Times.

At the first stages of creating it, Petit wasn’t sure what to do with Bonino.

“He told me, ‘You stand there, and we’ll see afterward what you are going to do,’ ” Bonino recalled. “Days passed, and he didn’t say anything more to me. It was very hard for me. At one point, I said, ‘I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m too afraid.’ I didn’t know what to do.

“One day, he gave me the cane and the hat, and I started to play around, to do stupid things.

“He said, ‘This is wonderful. You should do that.’ I did not create the role, but many things are mine because I didn’t see any of his films.”

Well, not recently anyway.

“I saw them many, many years ago when I was a child, like everybody did. But the moment when [Petit] said he wanted to do a ballet on Chaplin, I decided I didn’t want to see anything by him because I was too afraid of being influenced and feeling that I had to do things exactly like him.

“So I think the title should be ‘Luigi Bonino Does Charlie Chaplin.’

“It’s my way,” he said. “I don’t try to do an imitation of him. I try to let my feelings come out of my body and also [out of] the cane and the shoes and the mustache.”

The work begins with Bonino dressed as a dancer who transforms himself into the Little Tramp.

“I see a picture of Charlie Chaplin and of course I adore him and become him. I start to dress like him. I do the makeup on stage. . . . But sometimes I don’t have [his] costume. Sometimes I dress in black training clothes, a black jogging outfit.”

Other stars from dance and theater history surface in the work, including Ballets Russes dancer Nijinsky, modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan, 18th century mime Debureau and 20th century mime Marcel Marceau.

The music includes Chaplin’s own, as well as pieces by J.S. Bach and contemporary Italian composer Fiorenzo Carpi. The ballet calls for eight dancers and requires minimal decor.

Petit--who, after 26 years, is about to leave the Marseille troupe because of political changes in the city that supports it--has not changed the Chaplin ballet since the premiere.

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“Not at all,” said Bonino, who has been with the company for 23 years. “One day he came and said, ‘Maybe this piece is too long. Maybe we have to change it.’ We said, ‘No. Why do you have to change it?’ He said, ‘OK, we’ll leave it as it is.’ ”

Bonino was born in Italy but not into an artistic family.

“Not at all,” he said. “I’m the only crazy one. I have two brothers and one sister. I’m the older one. I was not really encouraged. When I was very young, 2 or 3, I was dancing all the time. Whenever I heard music, I danced and jumped. So one day, my mother decided, ‘Why don’t we try a school?’ So we tried, and I became a dancer.

“I didn’t decide to become a dancer really,” he said. “When I went to school, I was 9 years old, and I went to this private school. At the time, it was very difficult to find a boy in a dance school. My teacher had a little company, and she did many ballets for children for television. So she took me immediately. After two or three months, I started to do little nothings. But I was on stage, on television. So I became a dancer like that.

“Soon I was dancing all the time. I never regretted it. It happened just that way, without my saying, ‘I really want to be a dancer.’ Well, of course I like it. It’s my life. It’s too difficult if you don’t like it.”

He danced with the Royal Swedish Ballet from 1973 to ’75 but decided that “it was too cold in Stockholm. I like the sea, the sky. It was too difficult for me, too hard for me. I couldn’t stay.”

At the time, Petit was looking for new dancers for Ballet National de Marseille. Bonino auditioned and was hired.

Bonino finds it difficult to explain how he gets into a role such as Chaplin.

“I always say I’m a dancer, but I would like to be an actor,” he said. “I don’t like to do just steps. Even when I dance abstract ballets, I must think up something in my head. I have to make up a little story. It’s not easy, but it’s much easier for me to make up something I can feel for all my steps.”

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Petit’s “Chaplin Dances” gives him many such opportunities to make up stories.

“Sometimes [the work] is happy; sometimes it’s funny; sometimes it’s sad, or I am alone. . . . Every scene is different. . . . In every scene the feelings are different. . . . That’s what I like.”

* Le National Ballet of Marseille dances Roland Petit’s “Chaplin Dances” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Performances at 8 p.m. today through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday $10-$49. Ends Sunday. (714) 556-2787.