High Honors for Heat and Light

By JOEL LOBENTHAL. April 8, 2008

The Kirov Ballet's ensemble took high honors in its all-Michel Fokine program over the weekend. The women were all but unsurpassable in "Chopiniana," and both women and men gave as much heat and light to "Scheherazade" as the cramped City Center stage could support. The "Chopiniana" corps was even better than it has been in the recent past — a little less synchronized and neatly regimented, more susceptible to musical rubato.

On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, the very young Daria Vasnetsova danced the ballerina lead in "Chopiniana." Over the past year I've seen her dance classical solos in Russia, where she seemed like just another one of those high-kicking tricksters the Kirov has been churning out. Here she was completely different: No movement she made ever seemed forced or generic. In both performances on Saturday and again on Sunday, another very young dancer, Yulia Bolshakova, danced the Prelude, the most mysterious and elusive of the solos. Ms. Bolshakova was too literal in showing us the aural affinities of this particular sylph, but the dancer's enthusiasm was engaging. Both Ms. Vasnetsova's and Ms. Bolshakova's bodies were lovely models of responsiveness, avoiding the triteness that can come from indiscriminate youthful facility.

Ekaterina Osmolkina is one of many talented young Kirov dancers who have been turned by overwork into something resembling utility performers. In New York, though, Ms. Osmolkina has seemed more rested and more mentally focused. She polished the imagery in her "Paquita" solo last week, and floated through her "Chopiniana" Mazurka on Saturday night. Igor Kolb lacked spiritual intensity dancing opposite Ms. Osmolkina in the role of the Poet. In addition, his plié was perfunctory rather than soft and whispering. In the afternoon performance, Danila Korsuntsev demonstrated a physicality somewhere between rangy and willowy, and he was pleasantly attentive to Ms. Vasnetsova. On Sunday afternoon, Evgeni Ivanchenko was perhaps the best of all three Poets. He had a way of letting his working leg spring upward in jumps, so that gravity was denied but space was not pummeled.

The rose as symbol and metaphor of the romantic, social, and sexual exhilaration of a young woman returning from her first ball is the impetus behind Fokine's "Le Spectre de la Rose."

The Rose was created in 1911 by Nijinsky, whose stocky body seemed to his audiences capable of metamorphosing into every kind of substance and essence, but the complexity and chiaroscuro of the role were not visible at City Center. Both Anton Korsakov, who danced it Saturday afternoon, and Leonid Sarafanov, who danced it Saturday night and Sunday matinee, were modern, overly hybridized Roses, without fragrance or erotic charge. They each looked not so much androgynous as disconcertingly prepubescent. But by Mr. Sarafanov's second performance, I no longer expected to see "Spectre" as it was conceived by Fokine; instead, Mr. Sarafanov's puckish, puppyish, and now more fluidly danced performance manifested its own appeal.

Two vastly different interpretations of the "Dying Swan" solo were on offer: Uliana Lopatkina's Swan was neither fighting nor succumbing to death so much as imperturbably distanced from it. Diana Vishneva is very new to the role and, perhaps to distinguish her performance from Ms. Lopatkina's, was more reliant on externalized melodrama.

The last time I saw the Kirov perform "Scheherazade" was at Covent Garden in 2000, when they looked magnificent in it. Even with a reduced cast, the Kirov's performance at City Center looked like a tempest in a teapot, particularly during Fokine's epic bacchanal, with the dancers visibly apprehensive about tripping or colliding with each other. On Sunday afternoon, Igor Zelensky made a surprise appearance as the Golden Slave. He was in great shape, wonderfully leonine. Valery Gergiev also alighted at City Center on Sunday to conduct the day's "Scheherazade." Maestro Gergiev gave expansive shape to the long and gripping overture, and his tempi for the dancers were reasonable.

WOMEN TUTU GOOD
By CLIVE BARNES

April 7, 2008 -- WOMEN, women every where - wonderful, lustrous Russian dancers, womanly women, gliding, leaping, exploding across the City Center stage.

The Kirov Ballet has always excelled in its female dancers, but rarely has it had an ensemble quite like this. The men? Well, some of them are more or less OK, but don't hold your breath.

St. Petersburg's Kirov dates from 1738, first visited New York in 1971 and last came here six years ago. Its choreographic bloodlines have always revealed an aristocratic image of perhaps the purest dance style anywhere.

Because it has 75 dancers and its own orchestra, the full-evening spectaculars associated with it are not possible on a stage smaller than its usual venue, the Met.

But you can make lemonade out of lemons, and distill vodka from whatever horrors they use to make vodka, and now, having seen six performances of two different programs, we are getting a current insight into Kirov dance and dancers.

All three pieces on the first program - excerpts from "Raymonda," "Paquita" and "La Bayadère," all by the company's matchless 19th-century choreographer Marius Petipa - are touchstones of the Kirov heritage.

One advantage of such "highlights" programming is that you get to see a larger than usual slice of the company. On the first night we had Uliana Lopatkina in "Raymonda," Diana Vishneva in "Paquita" (both ballerinas at the top of their form) and the swiftly rising Alina Somova in "Bayadère."

Just as impressive were the female soloists in "Paquita," emerging in glittering procession, each endowing her solo with a perfection of style, individually colored, that was a joy to watch.

The ballerinas all exchanged roles from performance to performance, so we also had extended views of the lovely Victoria Tereshkina and other fascinating newcomers such as Olesia Novikova.

The men? Not so good. Anyone looking for such Kirov luminaries of yesteryear as Nureyev, Soloviev or Baryshnikov will have to look again. These men all seemed either past their sell-by date, or, like the much-touted but epicene Leonid Sarafanov, they don't have much to sell.

The Petipa program is pure Kirov heritage. The second program, devoted to Michel Fokine, is far more dubious. Two works, "Le Spectre de la Rose" and "Scheherazade," originally created for the Diaghilev Ballet, proved textually corrupt and lacked choreographic style.

They were quite awful, although Lopatkina and, to a lesser extent, Visneva managed to make something out of the hodgepodge of "Scheherazade," and both, again particularly a luminous Lopatkina, fascinated in the old Pavlova solo "The Dying Swan."

The opening "Chopiniana" (a k a "Les Sylphides") was beautifully given, even if the fine female soloists, smiling broadly, looked they were doing the honors at a church garden party. No moonlit romance here!

Celebrating The Kirov

The long-awaited return of The Kirov Ballet to British shores next month is one of the major cultural highlights of the year

SUPPOSE YOU WERE asked to name the ballet greats. Chances are you would immediately reel off Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Anna Pavlova. And what most unites these legendary figures? All were members of the resident company of the Mariinsky Theatre of St Petersburg, more famously known as The Kirov Ballet.

Without doubt one of the most famous and influential performing companies in the world, The Kirov, along with its sibling rival The Bolshoi in Moscow, has helped ensure that Russian ballet’s reputation for setting the standards in the ballet world for over 200 years continues apace.

Famed for its purity of style, The Kirov is particularly celebrated for its George Balanchine productions, as well as its performances of Marius Petipa’s Sleeping Beauty and two acts of Swan Lake, both of which were created especially for the company.

It wasn’t that long ago that a visit to St Petersburg would have been a real challenge for travellers and Kirov foreign tours were an all-too-rare treat, not least because dancers sometimes used them as a chance to defect; Nureyev did so dramatically in Paris in 1961. But East-West ballet relations have thawed, and not only can you now see The Kirov in situ, but you also get a chance to see some of the most skilled dancers in the world perform outside of Russia.

Next month, The Kirov will make a very special appearance in the UK, performing at The Lowry (13-17 May) in Salford, Greater Manchester, only one and a half miles from Manchester city centre. It then makes its debut at the Birmingham Hippodrome (20-24 May). The company will perform Balanchine’s Jewels, described by The Guardian as “some of the most beautiful classical fireworks ever” and Petipa’s Don Quixote, described by The Times as “still pretty hard to resist”, in addition to a gala programme.

You’ll have a spring in your step once you’ve seen The Kirov’s dancers perform – and chances are they will inspire you to visit them on home turf.

The Kirov’s Old-World Virtues and Perversities
by Robert Gottlieb | April 8, 2008

The first time the Kirov ballet was seen in America was on Sept. 11, 1961. The ballet was Swan Lake. The ballerina was Inna Zubkovskaya. The place was the old Met, on what must have been one of the hottest nights of the year, and there was no air-conditioning. As I remember it, our secretary of state and the Russian ambassador were sitting in the center box with their dinner jackets off, trying to look dignified as they melted, and the curtain was extremely late—Zubkovskaya, we later heard, was fainting from the heat backstage.

When at last she appeared, she was dark, heavyish, deliberate—very old-fashioned-ballerina. (She was 38.) To get an idea of what so much Soviet ballet of the time was like, catch her on YouTube a few years later in the Grand Adagio from Spartacus. The role of Phrygia in that ghastly vehicle was created on her, and she manages to be both histrionic and matronly at the same time, a little like the silent film star Norma Talmadge. And that, I recall, is how she danced Odette-Odile. For me, the greatest thrill of the evening was encountering Martha Graham close up; she was wilting outside the theater after the performance, alone, waiting for her car.

So began New York’s on-again, off-again relationship with the Kirov. There were long stretches when the company stayed away; one had to go abroad to see them, as I did—to Paris—in 1982. Despite such occasional viewings, we knew the company best from its history—Petipa, Fokine, Balanchine; Pavlova, Karsavina, Nijinsky—and from its defectors: Nureyev, Makarova, Baryshnikov. But now the Iron Curtain is down, and the company pops up everywhere in different configurations, while its principals—Diana Vishneva is the current leading example—dance regularly in the West. It’s a new world.

But it’s the old world, too, and some of the traditional virtues survive. (They’re on view until April 20 at the City Center.) The corps can be impeccable—the girls with their heads held high, chests forward and feet pointed, and of course in unison. So even though there were a few wobblers, there was a sense of artistic cohesion during the great opening of the “Kingdom of the Shades” act from La Bayadère, when all those spirits in white come forward one at a time in an endless parade of arabesques (and this despite the accelerated tempo and the absence of the usual ramp).

Then there were the highly accomplished female soloists and demi-soloists in the Petipa ballets: real depth of execution through the ranks. But of the Kirov’s leading ballerinas, only Vishneva and Uliana Lopatkina are on hand. The others are back home with the other half of the company, performing in Petersburg. We never get the entire Kirov—it’s too big to tour. In fact, in recent years, both in Washington and Paris, I’ve definitely seen the B team.

THE COMPANY IS currently pushing an amazing creature named Alina Somova, whom you can think of as a radiant, atypical star, or as a vacant semi-freak: She’s very tall, very blond and very thin, and she flings herself into crazy extensions, her leg slamming up past her ear—she’s a combination of a gorgeous showgirl and Alice after she’s swallowed the “drink me” potion. When she relaxes her glazed look and a natural smile escapes her, you see she’s a nice girl with extraordinary facility who can actually dance. She wowed the audience in Paquita, but she was over-parted as the tragic, spiritual Nikiya in La Bayadère. I reported on her a couple of years ago, and she does seem slightly less bizarre though no less singular than she did then. (The company is also pushing Victoria Tereshkina, a totally different type. She’s all hard technique, confident, telling us at every moment what a star she is. She’s impressive, but I kept wanting to swat her.)

Alas, the level of the men is way below that of the women. They’re a peculiar assortment, from this year’s waiflike wunderkind, Leonid Sarafanov, to others built on the grand scale, all of them delivering the standard barrel jumps and double-air turns with sufficient dexterity, none of them very interesting.

“Interesting” is not the chief virtue of the ladies, either. They’re generally proficient, they’re occasionally impressive, but except for Vishneva, they don’t convey a profound musical impulse and they don’t convey much feeling. It’s all display, although Lopatkina has become less steely over the years, and her imperious chin has dropped by a few degrees. (An exception was Ekaterina Osmolkina, phrasing delicately in the Pavlova sections of Chopiniana.)

Lopatkina and Vishneva are listed above the other female principals, and they’re treated equally, though Lopatkina, being somewhat senior, is a little more equal than Vishneva: She was given three Dying Swans to Vishneva’s one. That was unfortunate, because Vishneva was infinitely finer. In the tradition of Ulanova—surely the greatest exemplar of this iconic role since Pavlova—her performance, exquisitely modulated, actually suggested approaching death. Lopatkina was more focused on strong and accurate dancing and her commanding look.

The Kirov’s Old-World Virtues and Perversities
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All on one page >>She was, however, the more interesting in Schéhérazade—more of a Shah’s proud favorite than a kitsch dancer. But can one still legitimately apply the word “interesting” to Schéhérazade? It was the calling card of the old Ballets Russes, seen throughout the 1930’s and 40’s in every auditorium across America, and the very definition of “Russian Ballet.” By now, though, we’ve been inoculated by countless Maria Montez and Yvonne de Carlo movies, and bare midriffs have gone the way of Cole Porter’s glimpse of stocking. Only the great Rimsky-Korsakov score, thrillingly played by the Maryinsky Orchestra under Mikhail Sinkevich, provided excitement.

Schéhérazade needs a Nijinsky as the Golden Slave, and it didn’t get one. Danila Korsuntsev, Vishneva’s boy toy, was a dreary washout—her husband, the Shah, was a lot sexier. Lopatkina’s Ivan Kozlov was a beefy, likable guy, goofy about Madame, and she about him—you could tell by the way they pawed each other and kept grinning. But pantherine grace? Sinuous sexuality? Frenzy? Terrifying death? (Nijinsky, apparently, used to spin on his neck in his death throes!)

The all-Fokine evening was ill-advised, except for Chopiniana. The Kirov reminded us of how inventive and fluent this often moribund classic really is: how charming the groupings, how ingeniously constructed. On the other hand, Le Spectre de la Rose may be beyond redemption. Again, where is its Nijinsky? Sarafanov, so slender, so slight, so boyish, blurs the line between the androgynous and the epicene. He’s being touted as a technical prodigy, but in Spectre, he’s a rose without a thorn.

As for the all-Petipa evening, why follow one extended divertissement (from Raymonda) with another (from Paquita)? One is Hungarian-inflected, the other Spanish-inflected, but doesn’t that amount to the famous “distinction without a difference”? Best in show was Vishneva’s Paquita—no surprise.

We expect superb training and execution from the big Russian companies, and on the whole we get them. We don’t expect taste. And we certainly don’t expect common sense. Why no bios of any of the dancers in the playbill? (This must be a first.) Why the longest intermissions in living memory? Why tell us in a program note that although in 1900 the corps of “Shades” consisted of 48 dancers, because of touring restrictions they’ve been reduced to 32—and then produce 24? The Iron Curtain may be a thing of the past, but Mother Russia is as mysterious as ever.

Scenes from the city
The Kirov at City Center, plus Jerome Robbins, Stephen Petronio, and Cloud Gate
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL



NEW YORK — On a midweek visit to the global city, just about any time of year, you can sample a stupefying range of dance performances, not to mention dance films, dance history, and dance-related installation art. I missed more things in two and a half days last week than I managed to take in, so whatever I might infer about dance in the New York vortex could have come out a different way if I’d reversed my priorities.

One thing that’s obvious everywhere, however, is the obsession with highly charged and technically refined physicality. The audience, theoretically addicted to nostalgic revivals of 19th-century story ballets, would just as soon see them in sleek, virtuosic reductions focused exclusively on dancing. This was the assumption of the Kirov Ballet’s first program in a three-week run at New York City Center.

The Russians have never played a medium-size theater in New York with the full company — the Metropolitan Opera House is their usual venue — and they had to downsize for City Center. There were painted backdrops instead of sets, and a slight uneasiness as the dancers replotted their working space.

But the three all-dance excerpts from the Petipa repertory of the Imperial Mariinsky period were part of a larger strategy to showcase a 150-year stylistic history. Subsequent programs (through 20 April) were to include more Petipa excerpts; a set of early 20th-century one-acts by the reformer Michel Fokine, who decamped with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, an independent enterprise based in France that never played the Soviet Union; three ballets by George Balanchine, who wasn’t able to bring New York City Ballet to his native country until the Cold War eased up in the 1960s; and an evening of dances by the German-based expatriate American William Forsythe. Talking about this momentous visit on the basis of a single performance can be little more than a series of impressions.

The third act of Raymonda is a wedding celebration, the happy ending to a plot whose complications allow balleticized folk dances to be woven into a classical framework. Aleksandr Glazunov’s mazurkas and csárdás are supposed to create a dramatic contrast with the classical pas de deux and coda, but the dancers didn’t look grounded, even when they were stamping and whirling. An alternative to the prevailing mood of decorum was Nadezhda Gonchar, in the Variation, who did just about the only allegro dancing of the evening.

Ballerina Olesia Novikova and her partner Andrian Fadeev exaggerated the head tosses and off-center shapes Petipa injected into the classical style, but neither dancer looked converted. In the famous cembalon variation, when she yields to the excitement of her dance with a vigorous handclap, Novikova’s palms barely waved at each other.

There was more dance texture in the Grand Pas from Paquita, with its specialty variations. The first one featured a six-o’clock extension, essentially a split standing up, which Petipa can hardly have imagined but which dancers with sprung hip joints can achieve now. The dancer, Alina Somova, I think, did one right away, then repeated it several times, to the audience’s bravos. I missed seeing Diana Vishneva when the variation she was listed for was omitted on Wednesday night. Principal Victoria Tereshkina, partnered by Yevgeny Ivanchenko, impressed me with a big, confident persona to match her technique.

Uliana Lopatkina was the top-ranking ballerina of the evening, in the Kingdom of the Shades from La Bayadère. I found her rather cold, but she had severe balance problems during the scarf duet, and her partner, the handsome young Danila Korsuntsev, didn’t help her out. This excerpt from La Bayadère is all about the corps de ballet anyway, and the Kirov’s 24-woman ensemble of Shades looked spookily perfect in the exacting, endless procession of arabesque-pose-arabesque with which they enter. Then they maintained an unearthly precision in the progressions and balances that followed.

Kirov's Spirited Nymphs, Swans Shimmer in Classic Ballet Briefs

Review by Tobi Tobias

April 10 (Bloomberg) -- Ethereal spirits of the wood, dream visions of love, luscious adulterers and a tragically expiring swan -- the Kirov Ballet can offer them all in a one-man show.

The company's second program -- in an engagement that runs through April 20 at New York's City Center -- offered four key ballets from the early 20th century by Michel Fokine. The choreographer was a neo-Romantic reformer who countered the diamantine brilliance of the 19th-century master Marius Petipa with a pearly glow.

``Chopiniana'' (aka ``Les Sylphides'') depicts a musing poet's encounter with a flock of gauzy apparitions in a moonlit glade. It is the loveliest of the Kirov's presentations so far. The female corps de ballet and three soloists seemed to be buoyed into the air on their own breath or wafted side to side by an errant breeze. Their feet touched the ground as softly as cats' paws. The prevalent mood was not spooky, as in most renderings, but one of gentle delight.

In the ballet's only male role, Anton Korsakov offered beautifully measured dancing yet couldn't project the inspiration the poet is presumably feeling. Ekaterina Osmolkina, in the variation of surging cross-stage leaps and in the pas de deux, was perfection.

Commanding Technique

``Le Spectre de la Rose'' showcases a male virtuoso who embodies the spirit of a rose in full bloom, awakening a virginal young woman to love's sensual pleasures. The role was made for Vaslav Nijinsky; the only dancer I've ever seen get the upper hand of its bravura feats (and petal-garnished costume) was the Kirov-trained Mikhail Baryshnikov. Though the young Leonid Sarafanov commands the technique for the assignment, not one of the three dancers I saw captured the tendril quality of the wreathing arms and the figure's creaturely nature.

Fokine created ``The Dying Swan'' for Anna Pavlova, who made the brief solo her signature piece. Today, depending on the performer, the avian death throes can look hackneyed or convey something basic and poignant about the human condition.

Alternating in the role, both Uliana Lopatkina and Diana Vishneva did creditable jobs. All fragility and jagged angles that expressed pain, Lopatkina was essentially pictorial. Working from the inside out, Vishneva was the more convincing. After witnessing her visceral interpretation, it should be hard for the viewer to remain indifferent to the corpse of even of the most insignificant sparrow lying on the pavement.

Favorite Wife

Vishneva and Lopatkina alternated again as the Shah's favorite wife in ``Scheherazade,'' an over-the-top extravaganza that mates sex with danger in an exotic locale. Lopatkina attempted a Stanislavskian job, at first canoodling with the Shah like a sex kitten, yet intermittently revealing her discontent with her master. Vishneva threw herself into the melodramatic proceedings body and soul, especially in the long duet with her underclass lover, the Golden Slave, which seems to be all coital undulating. Though the prolonged orgy inevitably grows tedious, the fabulous Leon Bakst-derived costumes always gave the enthusiastic audience something terrific to ogle.

Following the Fokine showings, the Kirov returned to its display of the Petipa tradition -- unfortunately offering three flashy pas de deux in succession. The tactic may wow the crowd, but it undermines the art. Still, Victoria Tereshkina made all tawdriness vanish with her clear, bold, unaffected dancing; Balanchine would have loved her. Another consolation was the presence of Ekaterina Kondaurova, whose dancing, like her appearance -- very tall, very slender, her aristocratic face capped with gleaming, copper-colored hair -- is the epitome of elegance and sophistication.

At the Kirov, Can Too Many Cooks Spoil the Ballet?
By ALASTAIR MACAULAY



During most of the third program in the Kirov Ballet’s season at City Center — a quadruple bill of excerpts from late-19th-century ballets by Marius Petipa — an alarming question kept flashing into my mind: “Maybe I don’t like ballet after all?” Here were virtuoso episodes from “Le Corsaire” and “Don Quixote”; here was the “Diana and Acteon” pas de deux; here came salvo after salvo of audience applause. And almost all of it left me cold.

Fortunately, friends admitted at intermission that they felt the same way. More fortunately yet, the evening ended with the Shades scene from “La Bayadère,” which — despite my enduring reservations about the Kirov’s current way of performing it — at least provided the much-needed proof that ballet can be an art of substantial dance architecture and eloquence. Elsewhere, however, this feeling of indifference was disquieting.

There is more than one problem here. For one thing, whose choreography are we really watching? For another, to whose music are we actually listening? Above all, is there any kind of coherence to be found here? In the program alone, the introductory essay, the central list of credits and the detailed series of notes on individual ballets all have divergent accounts of who made what.

The “Corsaire” episode, listed as Petipa’s choreography and Adolphe Adam’s music, is actually a nutty conflation. You no sooner start to watch — and listen to — its women-only garland-waving “Jardin Animé” scene than one confusion arises. This music (the “Naila” waltz) isn’t by Adam but by Leo Delibes. (Many New Yorkers will recognize it from Balanchine’s ballet “La Source.”) The program notes establish that by the time of Petipa’s final 1899 staging, the complete “Corsaire” had music by 11 composers; in these excerpts we hear work by at least four.

And what we’re watching has been considerably overhauled by successive post-Petipa hands. This staging doesn’t make it clear that the setting is a harem or that the three women who dance a virtuoso pas de trois are odalisques. In the middle comes a grand pas de trois from another part of the ballet: the ballerina Medora dances with her Byronic partner, Conrad, and his slave, Ali. Then Medora and the harem girls resume their horticultural scene as if the male intruders had been irrelevant anyway.

Similar problems surround both the “Diana and Acteon” and “Don Quixote” excerpts. Nomenclature: This should be “Diana and Endymion.” Accreditation: Its music is at least partly by Riccardo Drigo, whereas the center-program billing lists it as by Cesare Pugni. But not even the program notes explain why the “Don Quixote” excerpt is performed with the same backdrop of an imperial-theater curtain that also accompanies the Kirov’s “Paquita” grand pas, or why one soloist contributes a solo variation that more usually turns up in that divertissement (as it did last week).

This litany of textual collage and corruption only begins to explain my problems with the first three excerpts. In “Corsaire” the introductory “Naila” waltz looks woefully underchoreographed. Yet even so, the Kirov has moments when dance and music suddenly split apart. When a bell rings at the end of a musical phrase, no corresponding dance image occurs; a second or so later, however, six women lift their feet into a retiré position that has no corresponding musical cue.

I don’t actually care if what we’re shown isn’t authentic Petipa; I just want to see dancing that feels like dancing — musical, spontaneous, connected. But the Kirov has spent decades honing these chunks into material that makes ballet feel like a graduation exercise or professional competition.

The emphasis becomes so point-scoring and prize-oriented that there’s far less difference than there should be between the first three ballerinas. The sheer beauty of Diana Vishneva (sometimes glowing in Tuesday’s “Corsaire” but still capable of ending a dance well after the music has stopped); the dramatic-theatrical gifts of Victoria Tereshkina (seen in “Diana and Acteon” on Tuesday); and the stunt-laden, toneless effects of Alina Somova (Tuesday’s Kitri in “Don Quixote”): these should be worlds apart, but all seem to have acquired the same glaze. Some kind of prize for lurid sex appeal should go to Mikhail Lobukhin for the bare-limbed flash he brought to “Diana and Acteon”: it scarcely matters here that he seems devoid of classical finesse.

Meanwhile, some technique prize should go to Leonid Sarafanov. In his “Don Quixote” solo he knocked off a single sequence of alternating double air turns and double pirouettes. Why is it that such rare feats, which I have cherished with a few other artists, still don’t quite feel fully dimensional with him? I like his boyishness and his buoyancy, but not his dancing’s lack of weight or contrast.

In the famous entry of the Shades in “La Bayadère,” the corps women enter in a long succession of arabesques, showing several different conceptions of what the front arm should be doing. But who can forget how, formerly, each one aimed her arm ahead into space like a search beam? Still, when these 24 women end that opening dance and stand there, each with one leg stretched behind her and resting on point, it’s still one of the great images of ballet: all those calves and feet seem to have been specially shaped and trained to this one end.

And on Tuesday Uliana Lopatkina’s coolly admirable Nikiya took us away far from the madding competition world of the earlier excerpts. With the gesture of blowing a whispered message into her partner’s ear (an image that Fokine borrowed in his “Chopiniana,” also being danced this season) she took us right back into the severe and spiritual drama that this scene is about.

Kirov Is Shaky On Its Feet
By JOEL LOBENTHAL

The Kirov Ballet looked like a great company under duress in its performance at City Center on Tuesday night. In the opening grab bag of excerpts from "Le Corsaire," odalisques Svetlana Ivanova, Yana Selina, and Nadezhda Gonchar collided in their finale after keeping things on an admirable keel throughout their difficult individual solos.

During the closing "Kingdom of the Shades" from "La Bayadere," Elena Androsova, who has danced superbly in the front line of the corps de ballet throughout the season, wobbled in the same place she did last Wednesday. Uliana Lopatkina, who danced with consummate control during her first two "Shades" adagios, saw her foot almost give way during the third adagio, which she negotiates with cavalier and scarf. But these were basically minor mishaps; what was more disturbing was the way the program — studded with bravura in the Soviet "highlights" manner — showed how undue and frequently premature exposure is taking its toll on the artistic potential of the company's dancers.

For much of the "Corsaire" divertissement, Diana Vishneva was elegantly and serenely on top of herself and her material and her stage. She convinced us that she was a grand ballerina in her opening adagio with the women of the corps de ballet and in her pas de trois with Anton Korsakov and Danila Korsuntsev. In her variation, she was scintillating without simpering. But her generally impeccable deportment and delivery were undermined by several fleeting but egregious miscalculations: her aggressively hiked leg in a second position turn in her variation and her rocky coda fouettes, which were a reminder of her prediliction for tricks. The frequently overscheduled Mr. Korsakov is not in ideal form right now; nevertheless, he hit most of his marks, sometimes only by what seemed like sheer willpower. Mr. Korsuntsev wasn't really up to doing his variation on this occasion.

After the intermission came "Diana and Acteon," a cheerful interpolation made in 1935 by Agrippina Vaganova into the ancient ballet "Esmerelda." Victoria Tereshkina was Diana and Mikhail Lobukhin was Acteon. Ms. Tereshkina has a dazzling classical silhouette and a fierce energy that she can throttle back into a calibrated control that one is willing to accept in place of true lyric expression. But she is erratic, as well as highly overburdened. Since her arrival in New York last week, she has seemed so concerned with wowing us that she sometimes seems to be forgetting to dance. When the technique doesn't work, as it didn't always do on Tuesday, she becomes an empty vessel despite her state-of-the-art flexibility and articulation, all here deployed in good taste.

Mr. Lobukhin, who joined the Kirov in 2002, initially seemed like an amiable performer with technical strengths. Since then he has been saddled with more roles, tours, premieres, and performances than any dancer's body could easily withstand. Over the past couple of years he has not only become physically turgid, but also has begun to coat his performances with star affectation in lieu of genuine star quality or artistic distinction. One certainly doesn't expect the man dancing a Soviet showpiece to be exquisite, but Mr. Lobukhin's heaving and straining were excessive. Even pagan abandon was lessened because his back was too stiff and overworked to give shape to the bacchanalian-intended leaps. Next came the "Don Quixote" pas de deux, which Leonid Sarafanov performed with humility and charm. Here, his boyishness didn't register as ingenuousness. He executed some steps with prodigious virtuosity as well as truly balletic ease and grace. But there were also signs of fatigue or artistic immaturity or distraction: phrases that skidded to a close, or took him to a place on the stage that he hadn't intended to visit. Both he and his ballerina, Alina Somova, were good about observing the parameters of Russian balletic style in the Spanish groove. But she jabbed at the musical climaxes too harshly in the adagio, and strafing the stage with her own rapid-fire multiple fouettes meant kicking up her leg to the side in a jerky, ungainly manner. The company presented both pas de deux the right way, with scenery — "Don Quixote" used the "Paquita" backdrop and "Diana and Acteon" a peach cyclorama — as well as accompanying corps interjections and auxiliary soloist (Ekaterina Osmolkina in "Don Quixote") that are customary on the Majinsky stage.

In "La Bayadere," Ms. Androsova, Ms. Selina, Ms. Ivanova, Xenia Dubrovina and other pitch pipes of the ensemble sounded a "Kingdom of the Shades" scene that really did resonate like a profound, mystical oration. In the third solo "Shade" variation, Ekaterina Kondaurova put the arduous pieces together in a way that let them breathe as a living, logically constructed entity. Ms. Lopatkina's Nikiya reminded us of how she has improved with age, investing her movement with a luxurious cushion beyond what nature has endowed her. Her musical timing is remarkable: If her leg reaches its apex a moment too soon, her arms are there immediately to seamlessly fill out the phrase. Evgeni Ivanchenko was an excellent partner for her.

Kirov's Spirited Nymphs, Swans Shimmer in Classic Ballet Briefs

April 10 (Bloomberg) -- Ethereal spirits of the wood, dream visions of love, luscious adulterers and a tragically expiring swan -- the Kirov Ballet can offer them all in a one-man show.

The company's second program -- in an engagement that runs through April 20 at New York's City Center -- offered four key ballets from the early 20th century by Michel Fokine. The choreographer was a neo-Romantic reformer who countered the diamantine brilliance of the 19th-century master Marius Petipa with a pearly glow.



``Chopiniana'' (aka ``Les Sylphides'') depicts a musing poet's encounter with a flock of gauzy apparitions in a moonlit glade. It is the loveliest of the Kirov's presentations so far. The female corps de ballet and three soloists seemed to be buoyed into the air on their own breath or wafted side to side by an errant breeze. Their feet touched the ground as softly as cats' paws. The prevalent mood was not spooky, as in most renderings, but one of gentle delight.

In the ballet's only male role, Anton Korsakov offered beautifully measured dancing yet couldn't project the inspiration the poet is presumably feeling. Ekaterina Osmolkina, in the variation of surging cross-stage leaps and in the pas de deux, was perfection.

Commanding Technique

``Le Spectre de la Rose'' showcases a male virtuoso who embodies the spirit of a rose in full bloom, awakening a virginal young woman to love's sensual pleasures. The role was made for Vaslav Nijinsky; the only dancer I've ever seen get the upper hand of its bravura feats (and petal-garnished costume) was the Kirov-trained Mikhail Baryshnikov. Though the young Leonid Sarafanov commands the technique for the assignment, not one of the three dancers I saw captured the tendril quality of the wreathing arms and the figure's creaturely nature.

Fokine created ``The Dying Swan'' for Anna Pavlova, who made the brief solo her signature piece. Today, depending on the performer, the avian death throes can look hackneyed or convey something basic and poignant about the human condition.

Alternating in the role, both Uliana Lopatkina and Diana Vishneva did creditable jobs. All fragility and jagged angles that expressed pain, Lopatkina was essentially pictorial. Working from the inside out, Vishneva was the more convincing. After witnessing her visceral interpretation, it should be hard for the viewer to remain indifferent to the corpse of even of the most insignificant sparrow lying on the pavement.

Favorite Wife



Vishneva and Lopatkina alternated again as the Shah's favorite wife in ``Scheherazade,'' an over-the-top extravaganza that mates sex with danger in an exotic locale. Lopatkina attempted a Stanislavskian job, at first canoodling with the Shah like a sex kitten, yet intermittently revealing her discontent with her master. Vishneva threw herself into the melodramatic proceedings body and soul, especially in the long duet with her underclass lover, the Golden Slave, which seems to be all coital undulating. Though the prolonged orgy inevitably grows tedious, the fabulous Leon Bakst-derived costumes always gave the enthusiastic audience something terrific to ogle.

Following the Fokine showings, the Kirov returned to its display of the Petipa tradition -- unfortunately offering three flashy pas de deux in succession. The tactic may wow the crowd, but it undermines the art. Still, Victoria Tereshkina made all tawdriness vanish with her clear, bold, unaffected dancing; Balanchine would have loved her. Another consolation was the presence of Ekaterina Kondaurova, whose dancing, like her appearance -- very tall, very slender, her aristocratic face capped with gleaming, copper-colored hair -- is the epitome of elegance and sophistication.

HOME ALONE 9, Macaulay, A. writes: