Ballet
Panay problems
Robin Young,
The fuss over the Panovs was not just political. There are Jewish electricians and plumbers, of whose names you may have never heard, waiting for exit visas too. But Russian dancers coming to the West have always been something special. Nureyev, Makarova and Barishnikhov were all among the country's very best, and the Panovs came out with similar reputations. Their critical reception in the West since their release rather suggests that some reviewers would like to throw them back, as not being up to standard.
Audiences, as opposed to critics, may have been over-sympathetic and too easy to please, but maybe their expectations were simply more realistic. Their assessment, anyway, seems to be fairer. When there is so marked a difference of opinion between critics and people who actually pay for their seats, those who are thinking of buying tickets are well advised to follow the latter. In this case, though, it is probably too late, because the box office for the Festival Ballet's 25th Birthday Season has been going very well.
Galina Panay made her British debut (apart from gala performances) in Nureyev's new Sleeping Beauty. Everyone seems to have said already that she is not really best suited as an Aurora. Giselle and Kitri are favourite suggestions of what she should have been doing. I do not demur, but would only add that she seems to me an ideal Swanilda.
My colleague Edward Thorpe wrote elsewhere of Mrs Panov's "milkmaid charm". It happens to be the very phrase I had noted during the performance, and I do not intend to abandon it, even though Thorpe used it disparagingly. I do not think it is right to be too down on milkmaids. A folksy quality is not ,altogether amiss in fairytale princesses who do, after all, come from folk-stories and not elitist literature.
One did, it is true, sense (nay, see) the inadequacy of preparation that had gone into a demanding role in a new production on an unfimiliar stage. Nureyev did not go out of his way to help, but his attitude suggested that he thought Mrs Panov was capable enough to sort out her own problems. That too was right. She had to abandon her pose in the Rose Adagio, bringing her foot down to steady herself. But at least she did it with speed and grace. She ended a run of rapid spins with a stumble, but others could never have gone that fast in the first place. Audiences rightly prefer boldness to timidity, and, faulty as it was, this Aurora, played coquettishly and largely from the shoulders, made more impression than that by Eva Evdokimova.
-V alery Panov's debut, in his own pas de deux Harlequinade seems to have provoked even more furious resentment among professional observers, though the audience were wild for it. Harlequinade is a moderately outrageous showpiece which Panov fills with stunt jumps and winsome roguishness. His Harlequin is a sentimental and extrovert jester who leans up against a pillar and affects a disinclination to continue several times, before prancing off and doing something fantastic in midair again.
With her husband, Galina Panay danced just as swiftly and a lot more surely, The music, mostly Drigo, borrowed Swanilda's last act variation from CappeHa for her, and I still think she will make a stunning Swanilda.
For the rest, Festival gave Swan Lake, in which Maina Gielgud was a lot more distinguished than the production (the lakeside willows look like wigs in a coiffeurs' window display), or Beryl Grey's additional choreography which includes such infelicities as stopping everything so that five boys can take turns to spin in the air. Sylphides got a dutiful showing but it is a mistake to have a grand piano on silage in mid-glade even if solo accompaniment to the dancing sounds nice. Paul Clarke and Patricia Ruanne get better and better in the ragtime Prodigal Son which is another show that audiences love 'and I unfailingly enjoy.
Previous page
