The Kirov Ballet - Jewels - Emeralds/Rubies/Diamonds

Published Wednesday 14 May 2008 at 11:40 by Natalie Anglesey


Photo: Natasha Razina

One of the world’s great ballet companies, the Kirov, from the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, returns to Salford Quays, after an absence of five years, with a veritable feast of dance.

An iridescent production of Balanchine’s Jewels, first seen in London in 2000, received its north-west premiere. Originally conceived for his own New York City Ballet, it had already enjoyed its European premiere performed, in its entirety, by this company.

Emeralds, set to Faure’s lyrical score, is a brilliant evocation of the classical tradition of dance. The sweeping movements and exhilarating lifts, beautifully danced by Olesya Novikova and Maxim Zuzin, strongly supported by Anastasia Kolegova and Andrei Ermakov, bore a teasing hint of what was to come.

Rubies, set to Stravinsky, sees Balanchine at his very best, with an explosive transition from classical to contemporary styles. Rich with the signature moves adopted by later choreographers, like Fosse, it contains strong showbiz echoes of the direction he would eventually follow and is executed with sparkling precision by Novikova and Anton Korsakov with Ekaterina Kondaurova making a stunning impression.

Diamonds, superbly danced to Tchaikovsky by Viktoria Tereshkina and Evgeny Ivanchenko, with able support from the rest of the company, provides the glittering finale with its homage to dance and the dancers.

Jewels at the Lowry, Salford

Debra Craine. May 16, 2008



Initial signs weren’t promising. A quick scan of the cast list revealed the total absence of established stars. Indeed, thanks to injury and visa hiccups, not a single principal dancer was on hand to launch the Kirov Ballet’s UK tour. Add to that rows of empty seats in the Lowry stalls and prospects for a dispiriting evening loomed. But never underestimate the Kirov. Such is the resilience of St Petersburg’s great company that, despite the disadvantages, it managed to produce a captivating show.

The opening attraction was the three-act abstract ballet Jewels, and perhaps it was the lack of title recognition (rather than high ticket prices) that kept audiences away. If so, they have only themselves to blame, for Balanchine’s 1967 creation is a dazzling stylistic potpourri of pure dance.

Emeralds, the opening section set to Fauré, is a homage to 19th-century French ballet and the Kirov performed it with flair and elegance and just a hint of ghostly pallor, as if this were a riff on the second act of Giselle. Olesya Novikova, who led the first cast, enjoyed the delicate feel of the choreography, yet somehow managed to imbue its perfumed romance with a sweetly seductive aroma. Unfortunately her partner, Maxim Zuzin, like most of the men on display, was too tentative to be deserving of her charms.

Rubies, set to Stravinsky, is Balanchine’s nod to the dynamic attack and jazzy exuberance he brought to 20th-century classicism. Again, Novikova stole the show at every turn with her sassy jumps and playful pirouettes. Despite the speed and complexity of the dance she didn’t put a foot wrong.

By now it was obvious that this young dancer is a star in the making. She has luscious extensions that invite admiration, a strong and supple technique and an extremely beguiling and natural manner on stage. As the second Rubies female Ekaterina Kondaurova gave us a predatory Broadway showgirl determined to outdance her rivals, and if looks could kill, she certainly directed one at Novikova. It’s good to know that haughty Russian manners are not a thing of the past.

Diamonds, the final section set to Tchaikovsky, is Balanchine’s tribute to the Imperial style of his Russian youth and the one closest to the Kirov’s true nature. Perhaps recognising its debt to Swan Lake, the company couldn’t help storifying it. The bendy-bodied Viktoria Tereshkina gave us her Odette, a performance of elegant froideur and soulful lyrical absorption.

Evgeny Ivanchenko played along, her adoring Siegfried. The corps de ballet offered a shimmering array of white tutus in motion, a spectacular sight and a fitting climax to a great evening. The omens for Don Quixote, which opens tonight, are excellent.

The Kirov Ballet: he shoots, he scores, the corps goes wild

Ismene Brown reviews the Kirov Ballet at The Lowry, Salford

Do Russian footballers think about ballet when they're scoring goals? Russian ballerinas evidently think about football when they're dancing.

The Kirov Ballet's second performance of George Balanchine's Jewels at the Lowry, while marred by a shockingly empty house, was brilliantly enlivened by the coincidental visit to Manchester by Zenit St Petersburg for Wednesday's UEFA Cup Final against Glasgow Rangers.

Notwithstanding the 100,000-plus Scots in blue who poured into Manchester, drank it dry by 2pm, and planned all-night festivities under the moon in the glass-strewn streets, any ballet-savvy fortune-teller might have predicted not only that Rangers would lose, but exactly when the goals would come.

For at 72 minutes, when the first St Petersburg goal was scored, the St Petersburg section of Jewels had just begun.

Following the French-inspired Emeralds and the American-inspired Rubies of this three-part 1967 ballet, Diamonds - choreographed by St Petersburger Balanchine, using music from St Petersburger Tchaikovsky - asserts 19th-century St Petersburg as ballet's citadel. Here, of course, it was being danced by St Petersburg girls.

A few bars into its soft plangent waltz (beautifully played by the Kirov orchestra under Pavel Bubelnikov), a triumphant football crowd roar suddenly burst from a radio down near the orchestra pit. The corps de ballet, waltzing pensively, broke out at once in ecstatic smiles.

Not strictly professional, perhaps, but forgivable. The performers must have been wretched to see a hall so empty. Jewels, though Balanchine's masterpiece, is still not well-known outside London.

The vacant Lowry spaces made a surreal contrast with the crushing football hordes around, but what were the promoters thinking, pricing stalls at £95?

The performance itself was fascinating, in what it revealed of two of the Kirov's most talked-about young dancers, the tall auburn Ekaterina Kondaurova in Emeralds and Rubies, and Diamonds starring the hyper-bendy blonde Alina Somova, something of a hate figure for lovers of the traditional Mariinsky sense of decorum.

She is actually quite a charmer, 60 per cent vivid artist, 40 per cent over-eager circus pony. It's true she probably spells the end of the Kirov as we know it if everyone wants to dance like her - her freakishly split jumps are weirdly scooped upwards like a smiley face, and she won't do a six-o'clock line if she can make five-past-six.

But she danced Diamonds with a smiling sense of proprietory pride, winding herself happily around stately, well-mannered Evgeny Ivanchenko exactly like a girl choosing a present at Van Cleef & Arpels.

Kondaurova, who deploys her long limbs with more elegant hauteur, danced disappointingly unmusically in Emeralds, that veiled evocation of French romance in green, and even, strangely, in the bold, jazzy Stravinsky Rubies, where so much counts on inhabiting the music's pulse.

Much more rewarding in Emeralds was the junior Yana Selina, taking the first ballerina role with an easeful and musical radiance shared by the corps de ballet.

Kirov Ballet

Judith Mackrell. Friday May 16, 2008

It looked as though the Kirov's UK tour would start on a depressing note. An injury, visa problems and the vagaries of Russian administration had deprived the first-night ballet, Jewels, of its advertised stars, while high ticket prices had left half of the stalls empty. Yet when the St Petersburg company came on stage, they danced as though to a packed opera house. And the fact that Uliana Lopatkina was not heading the cast allowed us to focus on the dancers who were - especially the company's fast-rising soloist Olesya Novikova.

Six years out of school, Novikova's delicate physique and shy grin make her appear younger than her years. Her dancing, however, displays the intelligence and focus of a mature artist, allowing her to tackle two of the three ballerina roles in Balanchine's demanding triptych, which is surely a first. In Emeralds, Novikova is pure sylph, the floating lyricism of her line embroidered with airy traceries of detail, while in Rubies she transforms totally into a high-kicking nymphet. Dancing on a rising giggle, Novikova is so sharp on the beat, so wickedly sassy in her body language, that when the elegantly vamping Ekaterina Kondaurova shoots her a sudden competitive glance, it smacks of genuine scorn.

Novikova looks fresh enough to dance straight on into Diamonds, but that role is given to Viktoria Tereshkina, an astoundingly strong dancer, fierce in scale and attack and with an effortless accuracy of line. In the opening pas de deux these qualities actually look miscast as Tereshkina fails to find the lyric pulse and resonating mystery of Balanchine's choreography. In the allegro section, however, she comes into her own, her flying arabesque and jump setting the bar for the rest of the ensemble - who, even on a less than starry night, conjure up the collective classical grandeur that is the Kirov's calling card.

The Kirov Ballet: Gala Programme @ The Lowry
Robert Beale. 16/ 5/2008

I’VE said this before, but it’s worth saying again: the Kirov are the guardians of ballet tradition. They set the physical standards to which others aspire.

And they were out to prove it in the gala programme at The Lowry. It was a reminder of classics which began with them at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, and of the virtuosic brilliance of their training and solo skills.

Chopiniana – the original one-act ballet from which western versions, under the title Les Sylphides, are taken – was in its 1931 incarnation, itself a link with Agrippina Vaganova, the teacher and choreographer after whom the Mariinsky’s dance academy is named.

Plotless, it recalls the roots of the classical tradition, with elegance and modest grace. It was followed by a divertissement of four show-stopping pas de deux, and finally came Act III of La Bayadere – a Kirov calling card, of course, with its near-legendary opening sequence of a seemingly endless procession of ballerinas en arabesque who gradually fill the stage (we saw the full ballet when they were last here in 2003).

Last-named

The female corps de ballet - all 30 of them in the last-named – are a glory of this company, and their awareness of spacing and line were as one would expect, though never mechanical in their uniformity. In Chopiniana the famed Kirov precision eluded them to some extent.

In such a company of solo stars it would be invidious to single out only a few for praise, but I must confess some of my personal favourites. I loved the artful precision displayed by Yana Selina, and the partnering of Anastasia Kolegova and Evgeny Ivanchenko, in Chopiniana.

I was wowed by the strength and elevation of Anton Korsakov (in two of the divertissements), dazzled by the speed of Elena Sheshina, charmed by the smile of Tatiana Tkachenko and the lyricism of her partnership with Mikhail Lobukhin, amazed by the spectacular extensions of Viktoria Tereshkina (and the superb partnering of Leonid Sarafonov), and delighted by Alina Somova, both in her dancing of Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas De Deux and the finale.

I could go on: the near-unbelievable tours and pirouettes were a constant source of wonder.

If you want to see ballet technique on display at its most exciting, you could not ask for anything more. The Lowry audience obviously thought the same.

JEWELS (The Kirov Ballet)
Tuesday 20th & Wednesday 21st May 2008 - 7.30pm
Birmingham Hippodrome


Ekaterina Kondaurova

Jewels, The Lowry, Salford

During a brief UK visit, the Kirov dazzles with Balanchine's three ballets in one

By Lynne Walker. Sunday, 18 May 2008

As Zenit St Petersburg showed off its nifty footwork in Manchester, Russian steps of another kind were on display in neighbouring Salford. For the second time in five years, the Lowry scored by attracting the Kirov Ballet (the ballet of St Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre), this time on the first leg of a two-week tour that sees the company's first appearance in Birmingham. A fortnight in England was all that this great ensemble could spare in its 225th season, squeezed between Italy, Spain and Austria, and missing out a summer visit to Covent Garden for the first time in eight years.

But though the Kirov's previous visit to the Lowry attracted capacity houses, both performances of Balanchine's glittering triptych Jewels were little more than half full. It may have been the hiked-up ticket prices rather than the prospect of 20th-century choreography that put people off. After all, in 2000 the Kirov had to add an extra matinée when it presented its newly acquired casket of gems for the first time in London. In Salford, tickets were scarcer for the gala programme that included Chopiniana, the heart-stopping Shades act from La Bayadère and a new version of Saint-Saëns's The Swan.

That Jewels is a plotless ballet may have been another minus point for the uninitiated, and that's a pity. Its three linked ballets are priceless reflections of the bracelets, pendants and tiaras in which Balanchine found inspiration for these bravura solos, exquisitely scaled duets and trios and finely chiselled unison patterns. Unlike the recent Royal Ballet premiere of Jewels, for which Jean-Marc Puissant created new designs, the Kirov remains faithful to Peter Harvey's 1967 single cabochon gemstone, suspended above the stage and lit in appropriate colours for each jewel, first green, then red, then white. Barbara Karinska's original dazzling costumes, made for the New York City Ballet premiere, have been recreated.

George Balanchine, though Russian by birth, is not part of the Kirov's tradition, which may be why the third and last section, "Diamonds", his nostalgic homage to the old world of St Petersburg, proves by far the most satisfying. A tribute to classical Russian style, it glistens with imperial opulence, and Alina Somova and Evgeny Ivanchenko take your breath away in the grand pas de deux. The corps shows off the fluidity of the work's classical inspiration while making the interwoven complexities of the final fugal polonaise appear deceptively simple. Any weakness in the scope of the choreography stems from the music: four movements from Tchaikovsky's Third "Polish" Symphony, one of his lesser regarded orchestral works, though, unencumbered by any balletic baggage, clearly attractive to Balanchine.

As a cheer-inducing finale, "Diamonds" could hardly be bettered. Nor could it present a greater contrast to "Emeralds". In this quietly subtle opener, to the strains of a selection of music by Fauré, the dancers seem to float, the delicate formations of the corps as enchanting as the dialogue between the principals' solos and the music.

It is quite a crescendo of energy from the pastoral green of "Emeralds" to the heat of the central "Rubies". Here, to Stravinsky's spiky Capriccio for piano and orchestra, the scarlet glass ornamentation swinging from the costumes adds its own percussive element. Olesya Novikova and Anton Korsakov lead the capers in Balanchine's jaunty nod to Broadway, with Ekaterina Kondaurova on buoyant form. The ray-like spokes of the dancers' limbs create endless radial patterns and seldom can synchronised walking have been so compelling to watch. Yet, with its exposed entries and fractured syncopations, "Rubies" is the section that sits least confidently on these dancers. Even so, anyone within reach of Birmingham's Hippodrome this week, should catch a glimpse of this fascinating collection.

Jewels may have been inspired by the displays of the Fifth Avenue jeweller Van Cleef and Arpels, but even without the glorious Uliana Lopatkina, who was advertised for these performances but did not appear, in the Kirov's hands it is far more than window dressing.

Kirov Ballet sparkles
May 19 2008 by Phil Key, Liverpool Daily Post

KIROV is to ballet what Rolls- Royce is to automobiles and Michelin is to restaurants – the standard by which much is measured – yet all that fame is as nothing if excellence is not maintained and developed.

There is no such worry with The Kirov which, on a short tour of the UK, has brought its classical excellence to ballets drawn from across a century of dance.

Don Quixote had its Mariinsky Theatre premiere in 1902, while George Ballanchine’s Jewels was premiered at the Kirov in 1999 and in this latest production are both as fresh as paint and danced with Kirov’s unerring certainty.

Jewels is a superb example of how Kirov not only excels in the traditional classics. Three very different pieces, Emeralds, Rubies and Diamonds are fine individually – together, they have an irresistible sparkle with both dance and costumes perfectly matched.

Emeralds is a subtle piece of striking strength and fluency, with Olesya Novikova and Maxim Zuzin demonstrating an understanding rarely excelled. Rubies has a far more modern feel, almost flighty, with Ms Novokova and Ekatarina Kondaurova vying for attention with a feisty, near vampish quality, yet at all times retaining a compelling charm and elegance. Diamonds does what diamonds do, it sparkles and fills the stage with a dance of striking brightness and light with 10 soloists showing just why the Kirov is famed for its strength in classic dance and dancers of individual brilliance.

As a trio, Jewels is an impressive collection of dances which all sparkle, yet arguably Rubies stays in the mind longest. It showed that, not only is the Kirov company a trusted curator and exponent of classical ballets, but that its choreographers can embrace more modern dances and invest them with a sureness and elegance.

The Kirov is a byword for great dance and while some great classical companies may have found themselves slaves of tradition, albeit willingly, the St Petersburg company has an eye – and sure feet – on the ballet’s development.

MALCOLM HANDLEY

Kirov Ballet @ The Lowry
Robert Beale. 19/ 5/2008



THE Kirov saved the best until last. Don Quixote, the Petipa/Minkus ballet from 1869 (here in Gorsky’s early 20th century version) was a riot of colour and a feelgood spectacle of superb dancing.

Taking Cervantes merely as a starting point, it presents a cheerful sequence of ensemble and solo dances, wrapped around a yarn that manages to take in aspects of La Fille Mal Gardée and Carmen before it’s done.

Petipa and Minkus made the most of the Spanish setting and gave it one lively rhythm after another, with gypsies and wood nymphs to add to the fun.

The Kirov performance embodied, better than anything else they have done in Salford, the qualities which make them the greatest ballet company in the world. There was energy and discipline, a stage for the most part filled with movement, a sense of enjoyment, and soloists whose technique was almost beyond superlatives.

From the moment of her entrance, with its signature grands jetés, Viktoria Tereshkina was clearly going to amaze as the heroine, Kitri, in her combination of fluidity and perfection of line.

Ample scope

The partnership she demonstrated with Leonid Sarafanov (Basil) in the gala programme was shown to its very best in their work together here, and he had ample scope for his awesome leaps and spins as well.

And – in the first act at least – Tereshkina (pictured) took care to characterize and revealed as much comic talent as he did.

Tatiana Tkachenko brought her allure to the street dancer’s solo, as did Polina Rassadina (with an unbelievably bendy back) as Mercedes later. Yana Selina and Nadezhda Gonchar, the flower sellers, and Alina Somova (queen of the dryads) and Valeria Martinyuk (Cupid) each contributed with distinction.

There is a Kirov style which somehow combines both bravura and gracefulness, spot-on timing being very much the key to its extraordinary effectiveness.

Pavel Bubelnikov, conducting an orchestra which at last sounded like the quality band it should be, was a master of the subtleties which make it all work.

Did you go to the show? Why not tell us what you thought by entering our Reviewer of the Month competition.

Don Quixote
Published Monday 19 May 2008 at 10:15 by Natalie Anglesey



In spite of behind the scenes problems with visas and injuries, which has meant certain changes of cast during the Kirov’s stay at the Lowry, the enthusiastic response to the various programmes proves the popularity of this internationally-renowned company.

Don Quixote is the first full-length ballet the company presents on this brief tour. The orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, conducted by Pavel Bubelnikov, was in fine form, attacking the passionate music of Ludwig Minkus with gusto. Based on Gorsky’s 1900 production, the colourful, quayside, opening scene is bustling with bull-fighters and gypsies providing a series of delightful divertissements.

Although the story of Don Quixote tends to be rather lost in this ballet, such is the quiet dignity and elegance of Vladimir Ponomarev’s soulful performance, combined with the rumbustious comedy capers of Stanislav Burov’s Sancho Panza, that their tale is salvaged from the passionate love story. The tilting at windmills scene, which often misfires, is cleverly executed.

Among the principals, Tatiana Tkachenko is a vividly dramatic street dancer. By contrast, Alina Somova makes an ethereal Queen of the Dryads while Valeria Martinyuk is a cute Cupid dancing in an autumnal, fantasy garden.

But, once again, the evening is stolen by an exquisite performance from Viktoria Tereshkina as the feisty Kitri and Leonid Sarafanov as her boyish lover Basil. This is a superb partnership which sees a combination of skill, strength and artistry in a series of lifts which brought gasps from the appreciative audience.