Kirov Ballets, Birmingham Hippodrome, UK
By Clement Crisp
Published: May 26 2008 19:19 | Last updated: May 26 2008 19:19
A brief – two-week – regional tour by the Kirov Ballet ended last week at Birmingham’s Hippodrome. I saw two of the three programmes on view, and found the ensemble on fascinating form. Fascinating, because the exigencies of touring have lately found the company playing in New York, in Italy, and now on this visit to Britain, and showing unfamiliar artists in important roles.
It is the depth of talent in this company (as with Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet) that tells of great schooling in the preparation of dancers for the stage. And with the Kirov, it is that vital matter of style, an ideal of classic dancing that never fails, that sustains even the least considerable of choreographies. Henry James said that “it is by style we are saved”, and in an age when the academic dance is threatened by crass erosion and emulsification, by the same dull repertory played everywhere that point shoes can be worn, the Kirov example is of shining integrity, of aspiration by teachers and students towards the grandest ideals in balletic performance.
The Kirov – and oh the protestations that may follow this statement – remains the greatest dance troupe in the world because of its style, because of a long stylistic tradition, because of an unswerving belief in the nobility of academic dancing.
In two evenings last week, I saw a performance of Balanchine’s Jewels and then a “gala programme” of Les Sylphides, some bravura divertissements, and the Shades scene from La Bayadère. Jewels looked in very good shape. Conductor Pavel Bubelnikov drew true and idiomatic performances from the Kirov orchestra (Fauré’s music for Emeralds had all its half-light; Stravinsky’s Rubies glowed fiery; Tchaikovsky touched every step in Diamonds) and the dancers lived in their scores.
I was much impressed by Yana Selina as the leading woman in Emeralds, playing with a delicious femininity; Olesya Novikova, Nadezhda Gonchar and Andrian Fadeyev were the brightest flames in Rubies; in Diamonds, which is, after all, about St Petersburg, the ensemble were aristocrats.
That the Kirov can naturalise choreography outside their native traditions we know – they have reclaimed Balanchine, and Forsythe they have burnished – but on their own artistic territory they cannot be bettered. So Les Sylphides with the Kirov retains an artistic identity unknown outside Russia. Each sylph in the corps de ballet understands Fokine’s stylistic aims. Lightness of touch and of pose, some trace of Taglioni’s image, Chopin’s romanticism, dance poised on a breath of night air, shape every moment, and a century-old masterpiece floats, looks up to the moon.
I found the performance a joy, and I have fallen under the spell of Yulia Bolshakova, who danced the prelude. She is a beautiful woman ( reminiscent of the sublime Nina Vyrubova) and she phrased what seem – but are not – simple lines of dance with an aspiring grace, a sympathy, that I have not seen since Alicia Markova performed it (and Markova was taught the ballet by Fokine).
In the divertissements, the sparkiest fireworks were let off in the roguish Harlequinade duet, where Elena Sheshina incarnates an old-fashioned style and Anton Korsakov defies waggish humour to show spotless technique; Viktoria Tereshkina and Leonid Sarafanov zipped with bright assurance through the Gsovsky Grand Pas Classique; and Alina Somova and Fadeyev had the speed and the allure needed for Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky pas de deux . The Don Quixote final duet was what it always is: a frenzy of Hispanic falsities and fouettés, here done to a turn by Novikova and Mikhail Lobukhin.
About the final Shades scene I can but say that this apotheosis of classic academic dance was shown with the nobility and grandeur it demands. An impeccable corps de ballet, in full tutus; three fine soloists (Novikova, Gonchar, Daria Vosnetsova) shaping their variations with entire understanding; and Ekaterina Kondaurova’s Nikiya fascinating in the cool perfection of her line. But the scene is, vitally, about the legion of shades, and here, as always, was a justification for Kirov schooling, Kirov spirituality. There is nothing nobler in ballet.
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