The Bolshoi Ballet gets a big thumbs-up from British audiences and critics as it winds down its London tour.
When the Bolshoi Ballet holds its final performance of "Don Quixote" in London's Royal Opera House at Covent Garden this Saturday, it will close a month-long tour by the theater's opera and ballet troupes that has proved to be historic on several fronts.
To begin with, the Bolshoi Ballet's three-week season has marked the 50th anniversary of its first visit to London in 1956, a tour whose highlights included the great ballerina Galina Ulanova as Juliet. Also, the Bolshoi Opera had its first-ever season at the Royal Opera House at the end of July. Finally, in an intriguing twist, the Bolshoi's visit coincided with an all-Shostakovich season by the theater's archnemesis, the Mariinsky Theater of St. Petersburg, which held its performances in the London Coliseum -- just down the road from Covent Garden.
Much has been written in the British press about the near-simultaneous seasons of the two Russian ballet companies. Interestingly, critical opinion has largely favored the Bolshoi this time.
Writing in Time Out, Allen Robertson described the Mariinsky Ballet's season at the London Coliseum as "a dispiritingly lugubrious dead-zone week." David Dougill, dance critic for The Sunday Times, was no less harsh in his assessment of "The Golden Age," a new ballet from the the Mariinsky: "The whole enterprise was a waste of the Mariinsky's splendid dancers -- such a pity, since, in this near-clash with the Bolshoi, it has already gone home the loser."
After the departure of the Mariinsky Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet immediately opened its season at Covent Garden. The opening ballet "The Pharaoh's Daughter," an 1862 Marius Petipa work revived six years ago by Pierre Lacotte, got off to a triumphant start with ecstatic reviews all around. Clement Crisp wrote in The Financial Times: "A spiffing opening to the season. Fifty years ago, the Bolshoi Ballet knocked us for six with their artistry. They still, heaven bless them, do."
Bolshoi prima ballerina Svetlana Zakharova, who danced on the opening night as well as on the first nights of "Swan Lake" and "Cinderella," was lavishly praised by critics. In another cast of "The Pharaoh's Daughter" that I saw, Svetlana Lunkina was ravishing in her classical purity, while Dmitry Gudanov danced nobly as Taor. Lacotte's workmanlike choreography is done in a similar style to his new "Ondine," which he created for the Mariinsky in March; there are a lot of beaten steps and quick footwork in the solos. Some mime, however, would have been welcome to enhance the drama.
The beginning of this week saw a wonderful mixed program of three well-contrasted works. Nikolai Tsiskaridze was magnificent in the leading role of Hermann in Roland Petit's "The Queen of Spades." The ballet, however, isn't one of Petit's greatest works; his choreography looks dated.
In George Balanchine's sunny masterpiece "Symphony in C," Svetlana Lunkina was splendid in the second movement, strongly partnered by Artyom Shpilevsky, who joined the Bolshoi only last month. Also impressive were Maria Alexandrova and Denis Matviyenko in the third movement. But I recall better performances of this ballet by the Mariinsky troupe on its London tour in 2001.
Completing the mixed program was the Stravinsky ballet "Go For Broke," a new piece -- it premiered in Moscow last November -- choreographed by the Bolshoi Ballet's artistic director, Alexei Ratmansky. It is a powerful, energetic, pure-dance ballet for 15 dancers with plenty of speedy and quirky movements.
More distinguished was Ratmansky's 2003 work "The Bright Stream." This comic Shostakovich ballet, which successfully evokes the populist Soviet style of yesteryear, was the most acclaimed of the productions shown in London. Ismene Brown wrote in The Daily Telegraph: "I'll bet any money that the Bolshoi Ballet's 'The Bright Stream' is the ballet of the year for British audiences."
Sergei Filin stole the limelight in Act Two with his gender-bending turn as a tutu-wearing sylph; I hadn't heard so much laughter from a Covent Garden audience in a long time. Ratmansky's musical, inventive choreography was full of joyful classical movements and bubbling character dancing. Ratmansky is definitely one the foremost classical choreographers in the world today.
Yury Grigorovich's 2001 updating of "Swan Lake" was the hot ticket of this London season, and seats for all performances were sold out long in advance, so I regrettably missed it this time. Grigorovich's choreography wasn't admired in some quarters, though. Debra Craine wrote in The Times: "With virtually no mime and lacking a clear narrative context, what's left is an abstraction of 'Swan Lake,' lovely to look at ... but dramatically confused, emotionally deprived."
The second week saw the latest Bolshoi premiere: Yury Posokhov's new version of "Cinderella," which premiered in Moscow in February. Reviews for this ballet were much less favorable. "The Bolshoi Ballet has a new production of 'Cinderella,' and it's all a bit bonkers," Sarah Frater wrote in The Evening Standard.
Possokhov's interesting innovation was to replace the fairy godmother with a storyteller-Prokofiev figure. But his various concepts didn't quite cohere, and his choreography was not particularly memorable overall. The best dance was the final pas de deux. Yekaterina Shipulina on the second night was a warmer and more nuanced Cinderella than Svetlana Zakharova on the opening night. And her prince, Dmitry Belogolovtsev, was technically more dazzling than the opening night's Sergei Filin.
This London season revealed the Bolshoi Ballet to be a troupe dancing in top form, and it showed that Alexei Ratmansky has certainly done great things for the company since he became its artistic director in 2004. The Bolshoi's dancers definitely claimed the hearts of the London public this time. A return tour is eagerly awaited.
Cosmos
President
