BALLET
Ups and downs
CLEMENT CRISP
I imagine that everyone has by now heard that the Bolshoi got off to a bad start at the opening of their Covent Garden season; just how bad is only known to those of us who sat numbed with disbelief and dis- appointment as Swan Lake lurched along. The production's raddled inadequacies are credited in the programme to Gorsky—no hero of mine—but I am more inclined to believe the wit who said that this was a mis- print for Trotsky; add to these Nina Timo- feyeva's lumpy Odette/Odile which looks like a caricature of the worst sort of Mus- covite extravagance, brutal in phrasing. danced with a thumping bravura that destroyed all the ballet's poetry, and Fadeyechev as Siegfried, now seeming a ghost of the fine dancer we remember from previous visits. The whole company looked ill at ease, as if eager to dissociate them- selves from the work in hand—and who shall blame them?
That the production can, in fact, still con- vince—just—was proved on the second night when Natalia Bessmertnova and Mik- hail Lavrovsky assumed the leads. Bess- mertnova was the marvel of the Bolshoi's last visit; soaring like a dragonfly, she is now an unquestioned ballerina of marvel- lously individual style. The style is the thing: cool, fragile, unemphatic, she has a delicate strength that is unfalteringly secure, and she makes beautiful sense of the undistinguished choreography she has to dance. Her characterisation seems somewhat remote—she is the Princesse Lointaine of Siegfried's dreams—but the total effect is gorgeously moving, and she can even per- suade me that her excessively broken line at the wrists is beautiful, too.
This is the kind of utterly personal classic- ism that casts a new light on the ballet— and on dancing itself : she is a jewel. Her Siegfried, Lavrovsky, is equally good, a pro- digious dancer whose acting insists upon a few revelatory poses, with nothing over- stressed, that provide an entirely compelling summation of the young man's character.
The Bolshoi's other young goddess, Eka- tarina Maximova, illuminated the second ballet of the season, that well-known death- trap, The Nutcracker. Yuri Grigoro- vich, the Bolshoi's new young director, has rechoreographed the work in yet another attempt to make sense of this venerable farrago. I assume that he has tried to show us the ballet from the child's viewpoint; the
adults are grotesques (in this he is helped by loathsome costuming) and only Masha- the re-christened Clara of the original— becomes real, her dream adventures offering a reasonably sustained dramatic action with- out any of the Freudian capers of the NureYev version. The sets look like cum's Christmas display, the choreography is ser- viceable, though the second act grand pas de deux is unforgivably sabotaged by involving cohorts of dancers at its most impassioned moment, but the dancing is terrific.
Maximova is adorably good: lyrical, spring-like in youth and grace, sweetly sure, she gives a glowing heart to the ballet, and her Nutcracker Prince is that demi-god Vasiliev—ardent, heroic, dancing with a technical fire that makes every step an ex- citement. There is a splendid Drosselmeyer from Levashov, a brilliant sextet of men in the valse des fleurs, and the whole company look wonderful—even the two dancers who, unbelievably, had to dance a pas de deux with a toy lamb on wheels.
Previous page
