BOLSHOI WOMEN SHOW CLASSICISM.

BOLSHOI WOMEN SHOW CLASSICISM

LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2000

BOLSHOI BALLET NEW YORK STATE THEATRE NEW YORK, NEW YORK JULY 18-23, 2000

REVIEWED BY CLIVE BARNES

It has been ten years since Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet was last in New York. Following a United States tour where the company performed Romeo and Juliet and Don Quixote, for this seven-performance engagement it offered only its new production of Giselle and an interesting mixed-bill program that included Balanchine's Symphony in C.

This is a very different troupe from the one New York last entertained, for much has happened both in Russia and at the Bolshoi. But in some ways, certainly in their power and sheer intensity of feeling, the more Bolshoi dancers change, the more they remain the same.

Now it is under the direction of Vladimir Vasiliev, who has handed the artistic direction of the ballet company itself to Alexei Fadeyechev, a former principal dancer and the son of Galina Ulanova's famous partner Nikolai Fadeyechev. The Bolshoi first appeared here in Leonid Lavrovsky's unusually realistic staging of Giselle, with--who else?--Ulanova and the elder Fadeyechev. This time it was the U.S. premiere of Vasiliev's 1997 production, although Ulanova, who died soon after, is credited as production adviser. The staging, is largely based on Marius Petipa's 1884 staging which was derived in considerable part from the 1841 Paris original, but Vasiliev has added many dramatic and choreographic touches of his own, some more revolutionary than others.

Sergei Barkhin's toy-town fondant scenery, with odd, extraneous curtain tassels hanging from the ceiling, makes the stage look cramped, while the costumes by the celebrated fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy might be termed musical-comedy medieval. It looks oddly provincial, while Vasiliev's new choreography seems awkward. Worse still, the drama and clarity of the old Lavrovsky version suggesting a Tolstoy-like cycle of love, betrayal and redemption now seem lost. The role of the gamekeeper Hilarion (once largely a mime role and, though not in Lavrovsky, originally a villain) has been further upgraded into a major dancing part, becoming a suitable rival to Albrecht for Giselle's love.

Dramatically, this detracts from the straight-up drama of the original scenario, and choreographically, the expansion of the old so-called Peasant pas de deux into a more elaborate but distracting ensemble for eight dancers, although beautifully performed, also seems a miscalculation. Then there is the weird idea of having the entire corps lightly but sappily wave their hands in time to the music when anyone dances a solo. Finally, there are the new bits of dancing for Hilarion and Albrecht, which, particularly Albrecht's final frantic solo, seem totally misplaced.

Luckily, the performance ranked a good deal higher than the production. Nina Ananiashvili's Giselle is familiar from her appearances with American Ballet Theatre. Here, especially on the first night, I felt she was a shade too coy, too much the belle of the village, too much of a Swanilda, although her calmly and brilliantly articulated dancing in the second act proved fantastic. Her firstnight Albrecht was Sergei Filin (one of the Bolshoi's young male dancers) who danced and acted to the manor born. At a later performance the exquisite Ananiashvili was partnered by Andrei Uvarov, a strong dancer with a technique that needs a little more polish, but certainly has the masculine vigor we have always associated with the Bolshoi.

One major attraction offered by the engagement was the U.S. debut of Svetlana Lunkina. This 20-year-old is probably the most talked about young Bolshoi ballerina since Ekaterina Maximova forty years ago. I saw Lunkina in London last year dancing Kitri in Don Quixote and was enchanted, but she did not appear on this tour this spring, Vasiliev was seemingly holding her back for New York. Lunkina's debut should have come on the second night of the season, dancing the first movement of Balanchine's Symphony in C, but she was injured and her role was brilliantly taken by another Bolshoi newcomer, Anastasia Goriecheva. The next night, Lunkina, although still injured, finally took her place in the Symphony in C lineup and, as hoped, she was marvelous, but she withdrew from the following night's Symphony in C, leaving to the last minute a doubt as to whether she could appear as Giselle on Saturday afternoon.

She danced, and you could see why Vasiliev had staged this Giselle especially for her, giving her the premiere when she was just 18. Coached by Vasiliev's wife, Maximova, Lunkina is already a virtually perfect Giselle, a Romantic lithograph come to life, dancing and acting with total yet understated command and conviction. Not so understated was her over-flowery, over-obtrusive and over-the-top partner Nikolai Tsiskaridze, whose strong dancing hardly compensated for his flashy presence.

Making an impressive New York debut on the first night, young Maria Alexandrova proved fine as an implacable Queen of the Wilis, and later performances showed two more Queens of Wilis, Natalia Malandina with Lunkina, and notably, the very promising Maria Allash with Ananiashvili. This new-look Bolshoi certainly has no lack of talented ballerinas, something also revealed by the mixed-bill program, which included the company's U.S. debut of an excerpt from La Bayadere, bits and pieces from Don Quixote, Yuri Grigorovich's Spartacus, and chanciest of all, the U.S. debut of its new production of Symphony in C mounted by John Taras.

The program opened with the Appian Way scene from Spartacus, where the slave leader is mustering support for his revolt, and it's the very epitome of the old heroic Bolshoi. It was vigorously danced by the male ensemble, even if Dmitri Belogolovtsev as Spartacus was no Vladimir Vasiliev or Mikhail Lavrovsky, the role's originators. For that matter, he was no Kirk Douglas! The Kingdom of the Shades scene from La Bayadere is the kind of classic ballet artistically more associated with the Kirov or Britain's Royal Ballet than the Bolshoi. But this new Bolshoi company--as shaped by Vasiliev and Fadeyechev--takes to it like swan to lake, with beautifully calibrated dancing from the corps de ballet and a forceful yet musical performance in the ballerina role of Nikya by Galina Stepanenko.

Only Tsiskaridze as Solor very slightly disappointed, although Uvarov came off better when he made his local debut as Solor the following night. Interestingly, the male dancing of the present troupe is not quite as strong as that of the women. Thus in the Don Quixote snippet, Ananiashvili quite outdanced first Uvarov and later Filin, despite their strong partnering skills.

To bring Symphony in C to the New York State Theater requires a certain chutzpah, but the Bolshoi dancers, after a momentary hint of stiffness in the opening moments, whirled through the ballet with remarkable assurance. Beautifully supported by Filin, at the first performance the dewy-eyed Goriacheva was fine, as were all three other ballerinas: Alexandrova, Stepanenko and in the adagio, masterfully partnered by Uvarov, the creamily majestic Ananiashvili, who twelve years ago had danced the same role on the same stage with New York City Ballet.

What a surprising and exciting company this new Bolshoi has become. In the face of the still-heroic kind of performing it offers, this or that objection to this or that production still, as it did ten or even forty years ago, fades, at least momentarily, in the cool heat of the dance.