The State Ballet of Georgia.

The State Ballet of Georgia

Brooklyn Academy of Music, NYC 

February 27-March 2, 2008

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

What do you do in order to top off a brilliant career as a prima ballerina for the Bolshoi and American Ballet Theatre? If you're Nina Ananiashvili, at the personal request of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, you hop on a plane and head back to your home city of Tbilisi in order to revive the State Ballet of Georgia (see "Georgia on her Mind," June 07). A former Soviet Republic, Georgia has a long tradition of ballet.

If the performances that the company delivered at BAM are any indication, then Ananiashvili has been largely successful in her undertaking. Not that all was smooth sailing. The dancers appeared nervous during Program A while performing Balanchine's lovely Chaconne. Their bodies tense or held at awkward angles, they didn't do it full justice, though a duet between Ananiashvili and Vasil Akhmeteli was ravishing. For Program B, Ananiashvili replaced Chaconne with Dreaming About Japan, a thunderous, fast-paced piece choreographed by the Bolshoi Ballet's Alexei Ratmansky. He creates inventive riffs and variations on traditional ballet and Japanese kabuki movement alike (lots of hand, neck, and head movements, and deep bends).

Both programs at BAM included a display of energetic dancing in Ratmansky's Bizet Variations, set to that composer's "Chromatic Variations," played live by the remarkable Eric Huebner. This was coupled with a charming rendition of Balanchine's Duo Concertant, danced by Nino Gogua and Lasha Khozashvili. Their movements were precise and welltimed, and the supposed tendency to overact noted previously by some critics was not evident.

Ananiashvili tapped San Francisco Ballet choreographer-in-residence Yuri Possokhov to set a piece to traditional Georgian music. The result, Sagalobeli, is a minor triumph. The music, performed live by the Sagalobeli Ensemble on traditional wood and wind instruments, is plaintive at turns, mellow and joyous at others. The piece begins with a sensual tug-of-war between two village men in a circle pulling on a thick rope as they twist, bend, and fall to the ground in what one presumes is a show of macho competitiveness. This opening salvo is followed by a series of rousing male-female duets (Gogua and Akhmeteli, Maya Dolidze and Khozashvili, Anna Muradeli and Lesha Korasvili), line dances and a particularly stunning element where the women bourree out in parallel in single file, facing the opposite wings, and exit to the right after turning in circles and undulating like water maidens.

Returning to one's roots is a powerful theme in dance and the arts in general. In the case of Ananiashvili and the State Ballet of Georgia, her personal odyssey back home has produced strong results in the form of a young, gifted company that will undoubtedly continue to improve with time.