Antonio Calenda
OH, AS IF . . . Dancer Natasha Diamond-Walker exploited the affection of Antonio Calenda (inset) to the tune of 5,000, he says in a suit. (
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You mean it wasn’t true love between the 26-year-old model and 73-year-old director?
The Italian codger says he was taken to the cleaners by a leggy Manhattan dancer from one of his shows after he started dating her.
In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Antonio Calenda, 73, says Martha Graham dancer Natasha Diamond-Walker, 26, seduced him into giving her “lavish gifts” and a $775,000 interest-free loan so she could buy an apartment on the Upper West Side — and then exited stage right as soon as she closed on the one-bedroom apartment.
Calenda, a renowned Italian theater director who also helmed the Hollywood flick “Days of Fury” 13 years before Diamond-Walker was born, is suing his ex for fraud and unjust enrichment.
He wants his $775,000 back — plus $1 million in punitive damages for her “wanton, willful and malicious behavior.”
Calenda’s suit says the pair met in February 2011, when she was one of the Graham dancers performing in a show he was directing in Trieste, “Looking for Picasso.”
Calenda, who has been separated from his wife for 10 years, according to his lawyer, “developed both a romantic and professional relationship” with Diamond-Walker, the suit says.
It wasn’t long before she was taking advantage of the smitten senior, according to his lawsuit.
She “manipulated [Calenda] into buying her lavish gifts during the course of their relationship,” the suit says.
In May — only three months after they started dating — she asked for “financial assistance” so she could buy an apartment she wanted near Lincoln Center, the filing says.
Calenda agreed to lend her $775,000, but “insisted that [she] enter into a written agreement to repay the money,” the suit says.
It adds that he wanted the agreement to show “the fact that, not withstanding their romantic relationship and prior gifts stemming from such relationships,” the money “was a loan, and not a gift.”
It was still a sweetheart deal — giving Fordham graduate Diamond-Walker until Dec. 31, 2018 “to repay the money without any interest.”
Diamond-Walker closed on the $770,000 apartment last September. Then she dumped Calenda, claiming she’d never pay him back because “she viewed the entire transaction as a ‘gift,’ ” the filing says.
Diamond-Walker “manipulated our client and took advantage of him to finance her purchase of a luxury Manhattan apartment,” said Calenda’s lawyer, Marc Fitapelli.
Diamond-Walker was traveling with the Martha Graham company in Colorado yesterday and could not be reached for comment.
Her lawyer did not return a call requesting comment.