London-born child prodigy to conduct Kremlin ballet
MOSCOW (AFP) — He is a gangly 15-year-old who likes computers and music. But Alex Prior is no ordinary teenager -- he is a budding composer who will be conducting his own ballet in the Kremlin on Sunday.
Prior, a London-born student at the prestigious musical conservatory in Saint Petersburg, began writing music and playing the piano when he was nine and already has dozens of compositions under his belt.
As dancers rehearsed in a ballet academy in central Moscow ahead of the performance, Prior seemed at ease, conferring with the choreographers and coaching three four-year-old girls in blue dresses through their dance moves.
"We don't talk about black composers or white composers, so why should we talk about young composers?", Prior, wearing a collarless blue shirt and black jeans, told AFP after the rehearsal.
Prior has a Russian mother and a British father. He holds both British and Russian citizenship and cites Russia's Rimsky-Korsakov and Britain's Vaughan Williams as among his inspirations.
He said his dream is to be able to commute between a village in northern Russia that would help inspire him to write music and his family's home in the countryside near Maidenhead in Britain.
Prior said he hoped that cultural links between Britain and Russia would overcome the current diplomatic row between the two countries, prompted by Russia's refusal to hand over an ex-KGB bodyguard wanted for murder in London.
"I think it's good that we can show that culture is above all politics," said Prior. His mother said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would be attending Sunday's ballet, although this could not be immediately confirmed.
Yelena Prior, an art historian who loves opera and ballet, remembers how her son's love for music first started.
She took him to see a performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House in London when he was just three years old.
"He didn't sleep, he stared at the stage and he enjoyed it. He didn't even move. Then, when we got back home, he danced, trying to repeat what he saw," said Yelena Prior, who acts as her son's manager.
He started out as a public performer singing Russian folk songs and Italian crooner's tunes when he was 10. He sang at the Royal Albert Hall in London and Carnegie Hall in New York and was offered major contracts.
But his mother said she was too worried about the gruelling pace of the singing tours he would have had to do. She said he is happiest where he is now, composing and living in Russia.
"He's his own man. Everybody develops at his own pace. He just happened to develop earlier.... Actually, being different makes him an interesting person," she said.
