danceviewtimes

“Cinderella”, “The Bright Stream”, “Go for Broke”,
“Pique Dame”
Bolshoi Ballet
ROH, Covent Garden
31 July to 19 August, 2006

by John Percival
copyright ©2006 by John Percival

“50th Anniversary Season” the programme book announced, and of course the impresarios, Victor and Lilian Hochhauser, made the most of all the publicity this brought, although attentive readers may remember that they had not originally intended to bring Moscow’s Bolshoi ballet to Covent Garden this summer, and only substituted it when the Maryinsky management from St Petersburg fell out with them over a dispute about repertoire. So the Maryinsky Ballet came independently to the London Coliseum with a one-week all-Shostakovich programme which I have already reviewed on this site, and the Bolshoi arrived immediately after them for three weeks with some interesting novelties among their bills.

I have to say that I boycotted their opening week, with Pierre Lacotte’s fussy, boring treatment of “Pharaoh’s Daughter” and Yuri Grigorovich’s weird “Swan Lake”. Seen them already, and with these impresarios not over generous with press tickets, I wasn’t going to spend my own money on those works. So my first visit was to the London premiere of a new “Cinderella”, created on 2 February 2006 at the Bolshoi by Yuri Possokhov, whom we know as a Bolshoi-trained leading dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, now hanging up his tights to concentrate on choreography. We have previously seen some short ballets by him but I believe this is his first three-act creation, and I suspect his first story-ballet too.

It is markedly different from any other “Cinderella” ballet I know. For once, comparisons with Ashton’s treatment simply do not arise, nor with my faint memories of Rostislav Zakharov’s original, which the Bolshoi successfully brought to London in 1963 (and showed on film too), likewise of Konstantin Sergeyev’s Kirov treatment, in which we saw Makarova dance the title role and the part she preferred, as a stepsister. Of course it’s even more unlike Peter Darrell’s excellent Scottish Ballet production which was to different music, by Rossini.

Possokhov not only works with the Prokofiev score but makes the composer a character in the ballet — called simply the story-teller but recognisable in appearance. Effectively played by Viktor Barykin, he starts the work sitting on a globe (like a small planet) accompanied for some reason by four ravens who are brushed away by the girl whom he turns into Cinderella. Ptashka, the synopsis calls her, which was Prokofiev’s name for his wife Lina. The story-teller appears throughout the action, inter alia taking on the fairy godmother’s usual activities.
Unfortunately Possokhov’s choreography is not strong on characterisation: witness the stepmother and stepsisters, identified more by their frocks than their steps. And the action is often fussy; for instance the dances for birds, beasts and flowers largely obscure the seasons solos. However, the ballet looks good in Sandra Woodall’s 1930s costumes and Hans Dieter Schaal’s constructivist settings. These include giant cupboards which open up to provide separate scenes for Act One (kitchen, dancing master’s studio, and backgrounds of the four seasons), also a magnificently high, wide staircase for the ball scene. Possokhov uses that most adroitly and often amusingly, with characters dancing up and down it, and some of then sliding triumpantly down the banisters. (And in spite of some criticisms, that’s no more out of place than Christopher Gable cleverly leaping over the stair rail in Ashton’s staging).

The dances are often witty, even down to the five pert, short-skirted girls who play horses when the prince and his friends go on their travels. On opening night, Sergei Filin triumphed as the prince: looking young and ardent, dancing with immense panache (no sign of his recent injury), acting and partnering with loving attention. Too bad that his Cinders, Svetlana Zakharova, put on such an inappropriately grand manner; brilliant ballerina she may be, but I saw no hint of a kitchen wench. Ekaterina Shipulina did far better with that role, with Dmitri Belogolovtsev as her acceptable if less dashing prince. Among the supporting cast, Gennady Yanin’s ambiguously smart dancing master deserves special praise. Reaction to “Cinderella” from public and critics was mixed; I thought there was enough quality there to make it well worth bringing.

The other new long work in the Bolshoi’s season, “The Bright Stream”, immensely entertaining, was so warmly cheered by the London audience that perhaps the Hochausers now see they were mistaken in not bringing it previously and scheduling only two showings this time. You may know that the Bright Stream is a collective farm in the steppes, where two dancers come to perform at harvest festival. The ballerina and their hostess prove to be old friends from dancing school, and the comical disguises they initiate overcome a series of ludicrous improprieties. Choreographer Fyodor Lopokov invented the ballet in 1935 but politicians disapproved, so it disappeared, but now Alexei Ratmansky’s stylish evocation brings back to life Lopokov’s clever plot and the wonderfully colourful score which Shostakovich wrote for it.

So the audience vastly enjoyed both Filin and Ruslan Skvortsov as the classical dancer disguised in skirts and toe-shoes, making a tough Sylphide to taunt naughty bearded dacha-dweller Alexei Loparevich, and both Maria Alexandrova and Shipulina as the twinkling ballerina hidden under her partner’s suit to fool the stupid dacha wife (Irina Zibrova). Meanwhile naïve schoolgirl Galya (Anastasia Stashkevich) proves bright enough to thwart the dancers’ deliciously lecherous accordionist — another brilliant cameo from Gennady Yanin — and lovely Svetlana Lunkina or in the other cast Anastasia Yatsenko as the collective’s “morale officer” wins back her straying husband (Yuri Klevtsov). These and other fascinating solo parts are set within richly animated group dances for the locals, including a mock battle between rival workers from the Caucasus and Kuban; Ratmansky has the nowadays rare gift for choreographing ensembles. The ballet is vastly helped by Boris Messerer’s designs, a masterly recreation of Soviet art, by the Bolshoi orchestra’s liveliness in the highly danceable music, and by the apparent enjoyment of the whole cast in this restitution of a long-lost delight.

There was another Ratmansky ballet in the company’s one mixed bill: “Go for Broke”. Premiered in November 2005, this is a very animated set of dances for seven women and eight men to Stravinsky’s “Card Game”. The Maryinsky cast is highly able and dances brilliantly, but the choreography, although inventive and varied, has one serious fault which it shares with Peter Martins’s staging of the same score for New York City Ballet, namely that the music was written to match three deals in a poker game, and the plotless inventions of Martins and Ratmansky leave a lack. (I am not arguing for Balanchine’s disappointing original ballet to this score, but both Janine Charrat and John Cranko made far more rewarding treatments.)

That began the programme, and a handsome account of the Bizet/Balanchine “Symphony in C” ended it, but in between came “Pique Dame”, the Queen of Spades. Dreadful. This is a new version of a ballet which Roland Petit made years ago for Mikhail Baryshnikov; he seems to have forgotten that he originally meant it for some Hungarian stars but visas were not available. Petit says the ballet, to music from Tchaikovsky’s opera, was a great success then; that’s not my recollection, nor that of friends who saw it (and heard the first-night booing). Anyway, he’s been rash enough to do it afresh, this time to Tchaikovsky’s “Symphonie Pathétique” with some transposition but no cuts. It’s even worse than before. I feel sorry for Nikolai Tsiskaridze in the lead: lots of steps but no real content. Luckily his fans cheered anyway. Ilze Liepa played the Countess, waving her hands like mad but similarly with nothing worth doing, as was even more true of poor Lunkina as “the young girl” — see, she lost her name as well as her character. Nothing would make me sit through this monstrosity of Petit’s a second time, so between the Ratmansky and Balanchine ballets that second night I took advantage of the considerable length of “Pique Dame”, and the inordinate length of the intermissions, to slip put of the opera house and enjoy a pizza next door. Much more worth while.

I should have liked to see the season’s other presentation, Alexei Fadeyechev’s able production of “Don Quixote”, especially with 20-year-old corps de ballet girl Natalia Osipova in the lead, and also to have seen her contemporary Ekaterina Krysanova as another Cinderella, but that shall have to wait for another time. Good that Ratmansky is giving these early chances. Let me draw attention, however, to the fine musical standards of the Bolshoi Orchestra conducted by Sergei Vedernikov, Pavel Sorokin and Pavel Klinichev — that’s something that seems to have been maintained for half a century, despite the inevitable, periodic ups and downs of repertoire and dancing.

Photos (from top):
The Bolshoi Ballet in Balanchine's "Symphiny in C." Photo by Damir Yusupov.
Svetlana Zakharova, Sergei Filin in Yuri Possokhov's "Cinderella." Photo: Nadia Bausova.
Sergei Filin and Maria Alexandrova in Alexei Ratmansky's "The Bright Stream."
Two moments from Ratmansky's "Go for Broke." Photos by Damir Yusupov.
Front page: Svetlana Zakharova in "Cinderella." Photo: Nadia Bausova.

Volume 4, No. 31
August 21, 2006
copyright ©2006 John Percival
www.danceviewtimes.com