Ballet
Through Georgia
By CLIVE BARNES As anonymous as befits their Byzantine heri- tage, the Georgians leap and glide on to the depressingly bare platform with animal alertness. The moustached men, wearing a uniform black whose yellow piping showed vestigial remains of ammunition belts, are warriors. Their bodies are stiff with pride, but their legs jerk and slide with a tiny, jabbing intricacy. Their faces wear the confident grins of assertive masculinity, they have aristocracy and sophistication. They quite un- affectedly fancy themselves. They circle round the women—who are gracious, warm and impres- sionable. They go round and round in what, cen- turies before Georgia, or even Byzantium, had started as a fertility rite. Now it's just a dance for men and women—round and round, dazzling footwork from the men, soft smiles and waving kerchiefs from the women : a choreographic idyll of the well-adjusted man. These people are staggeringly good, natural dancers. They have the right response to rhythm and many of them can play around with it in a way you only find in the best of ballet dancers, while their basic steps seem to be capable of infinite embroidery. Interestingly their dances present an uncertain balance between barbarity and elegance. One moment they will be lost in a marvellous tracery of delicate footwork, then the music changes its tempo slightly and this civilised restraint collapses as the dancers break into pagan bursts of virtuosity.
The home-bred speciality of Georgian dancers is the point-work of the men, and this is the first time it has been seen in London. They are the only male dancers to go up on full point, and did so for centuries before Taglioni. They do not use blocked shoes in the manner of classical ballerinas, but support themselves on the knuckles of their feet. I would have expected the results to be grotesque, but not a bit of it. It seems entirely natural and gives the dancers—as
Taglioni and company discovered—a completely new range with freedom in jumps and spins.
The Albert Hall programme has been cleverly arranged to show all the varieties of Georgian dance. Sword fights for the men, with steel spark- ing on steel and sword arcs hissing just above the dancers' heads, build up to a climax of stylised sword-play where no one would ever be able t..) make the same mistake twice. These are con- trasted with the smooth gliding Oriental dances of the women, with their long embroidered skirts hiding their feet, as they sweep across the stage like ships in full sail. Then there are the comedy dances, perhaps a bit self-conscious in their clown- ing naivety, yet not as unfunny as most. The com- pany is also by far the smartest-dressed folk troupe London has seen from Eastern Europe. The usual bargain-basement sateens have been replaced with costumes of sumptuous sobriety. All in all, the presentation is a credit to the company's artistic directors, Nino Ramish- vili and lliko Sukhishvili.
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