Mariinsky Ballet at Sadler’s Wells

Debra Craine



For the second programme of its London season, the Mariinsky Ballet (aka the Kirov) showcased George Balanchine, the ex-pat Russian choreographer they have recently embraced as one of their own. Their love affair with his ballets, which did so much to define dance in the 20th century, has been a popular success in St Petersburg, though purists in the West may quibble with the liberties the Russians can take with his work.

Apollo (1928) has been in their repertoire for a decade and this wasn’t the first time Igor Zelensky had danced it. The big news on Wednesday night was Valery Gergiev, maestro of the Mariinsky, conducting Apollo. But Gergiev, though he achieved a wondrous fullness of sound, took Stravinsky’s score more slowly than the dance needs and he did little to encourage this performance to soar.

Zelensky, the company’s superstar male, brought noble bearing to his dancing but not the smooth execution he used to possess, while Ekaterina Osmolkina’s Terpsichore perked up after a glum start. Only Olesya Novikova, as Polyhymnia, offered the kind of radiant glow worthy of a Muse; her sexy and vivacious solo was the highlight. It was Novikova again who stole the show in the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux (1960), partnered by the appealingly boyish (and equally gleeful) Vladimir Shklyarov. Balanchine’s duet is showy, but they took its exuberant technical challenges to wild heights of entertainment.

Gergiev returned to the podium for The Prodigal Son (1929) and achieved a lush reading of the Prokofiev score. Mikhail Lobukhin, in the title role, offered a strongly theatrical performance; he was prepared to go anywhere with the ballet, even deep down into humiliation. Sadly, his Siren, Ekaterina Kondaurova, lacked seductive credibility.

Completing the programme was a short work by Alexei Ratmansky, the Russian who has recently taken a job at American Ballet Theatre. Middle Duet (1998) is a mildly deranged confection (with truly awful music) in which a White Angel and a Dark Angel preside over a struggle between life and death. It’s played out by a limber couple (Islom Baimuradov and Kondaurova, excellent) and is funnier than it means to be. The London season now over, one can only hope it won’t be too long before the Mariinsky returns.

The Scent of Mothballs

Kirov Ballet and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre: Petipa-Sergeyev’s Raymonda, Act III; Petipa’s “Kingdom of the Shades” (La Bayadère); Petipa’s Paquita, Act III

October 15, 2008 By ALLAN ULRICH



Approximately midway through the performance Tuesday night (Oct. 14) at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, the Kirov Ballet suddenly, with a lightning flash, showed us the grandeur behind the reputation. It was about time, and then some.

When Leonid Sarafanov, the Solor in the evening’s performance of the “Shades” act from La Bayadère tore from the wings in a series of space-devouring jetés, followed by a manège that left observers gasping for air, you knew in your bones that the Kirov can still, in an era of globalized ballet, claim its unequal share of glory. More thrills were waiting offstage. Alina Somova’s willowy Nikiya was a wonder of superb verticality, stunning line and magisterial phrasing. There may have been little pathos in this fallen shade, but the artistic impulse gleamed from every airy extension, every voluptuous developpé. Her dancing was simply a revelation. Sarafanov was just beginning his career when the Kirov last visited UC-Berkeley, but he has evolved into a danseur of enormous urgency, technical clarity and uncommon empathy. And for the only time in the evening, in the Nikiya-Solor exchange, scarf and all, one really felt a current of electricity crackling through a duet (note that Diana Vishneva, the Kirov’s current assoluta, dances Nikiya Wednesday evening).

Yulia Kasenova, Tatiana Tkachenko and Daria Vasnetsova, the three solo shades, delivered their maddeningly complex variations with the technical assurance one expects from the St. Petersburg institution. If Kasenova’s attacks seemed unduly heavy in the first solo, Vasnetsova’s airy trajectory commanded superlatives. The “Shades” scene, of course, means 24 corps women wending their serpentine way onto the stage in a series of arabesques cambrées. The tempo under Kirov conductor Pavel Bubelnikov, was judicious here, yet this touring production limited the wonted magical effect by dispensing with the ramp deployed in the full production of La Bayadère. Instead, the women simply slip out from a black curtain, and the results were downright prosaic. Despite one or two wobbly arabesques, the sequence exuded the otherworldly aura that has vouchsafed the sequence a permanent niche in the international ballet repertoire.

Alas, the remainder of this opening bill in the Cal Performances run, a potpourri that, reportedly, pleased many balletomanes during the Kirov’s New York City Center run last year, heaped ballet cliché upon cliché in its survey of 19th century pseudo-classics. Where was the Kirov of 2008, the company which now confers its pedigree on the neo-classical masterworks of George Balanchine and William Forsythe?

Not apparently for Berkeley dance fans, whose sophistication was belied by this parade of circus acts. I, too, relish the prospect of seeing a superb performance of the final act of Raymonda. But, almost nothing here, starting with Simon Virsaladze’s aging set and costumes, suggested why the work should retain its place in the repertoire.

The problem may have started in the pit. Under Bubelnikov, the orchestra played with blowsy efficiency, rarely providing the steady rhythmic underpinning for the national dances highlighted in this sequence. The results were the dancers’ surprisingly soggy responses to the music. Where was the heel-clicking snap in the mazurka (with soloists Elena Bazhenova and Konstantin Zverev)? Where was the insinuating verve of the czardas (Yulia Slivkina, Boris Zhurilov)? The four princes, however, proved convincing in their unison turning variation, not withstanding noticeable placement problems.

More seriously, the uniformity of address one has come to expect from the Kirov seemed seriously blemished. The evening’s Raymonda (Irma Nioradze) strutted like a pouter pigeon. The Jean de Brienne (Yevgeny Ivanchenko) was all extremities without much expression in the torso, and the feeling of dead weight above the waist seemed endemic to the male corps, in which sunken chests abounded. They get out the steps but they do not embody them. Nioradze brings authority and a measure of hauteur to her assignment, but the rigid, grande dame rigidity of the neck has nothing to do with this character. The partnering never courted disaster, but it never reflected the blushing romanticism of the Glazunov score, either.

The Grand Pas de Deux from Paquita (all that remains of the 1881 piece) is a hard sell under any circumstances. A “can you top this?” sequence to mediocre Minkus music delivers virtuosity, but not necessarily charm, a quality little in evidence Thursday, as six ballerinas scooted out with their variations, threw up their arms with a flourish and vanished. In reality, these empty displays wear you down. Yet, Victoria Tereshkina’s promise seemed fulfilled in her airy attacks and masterful beats. Partner Andrian Fadeev struggled valiantly to keep us, but this is a women’s ballet.

Heart-stopping human drama among the gods
By Clement Crisp

Published: October 16 2008



Apollo, protector of classic dignity in art, is surely the presiding deity for the Mariinsky Ballet. Balanchine’s Apollo, made for Diaghilev in 1928, is honoured as the work in which the choreographer, understanding the clarities of Stravinsky’s score, saw his way to a balletic manner as formally pure as the music. Thus Apollo, in most western performance, seems a rite reasserting certain stylistic assumptions, notably those of Balanchine’s New York City Ballet.

What a revelation, then, in the current Mariinsky Ballet season, with its orchestra under Valery Gergiev, to see it reconsidered, in a reading expansive, richly sonorous. Suddenly Apollo became a drama, urgently re-enacted and heart stopping. It acquired, within the spaciousness of Gergiev’s account, room to speak largely, to disclose its narrative secrets – and it is a narrative of real significance as the young god discovers his identity as leader of the Muses. I have never before been so astonished by its power as myth, nor so fascinated by the dancers’ impersonations of these divinities. Played as humans rather than symbols, the roles regained a vitality that I believe they had in Diaghilev’s staging (something I owe to a demonstration by Serge Lifar, for whom the ballet was made in 1928).

Igor Zelensky proposes the lustrous physique, the presence, the sophistication and beauties of Lifar’s plastique, which the ballet first displayed, and he is superlatively good. Amplitude of dynamics, eloquence of gesture, the innocent grandeur the role demands – all are his. His Muses (Ekaterina Osmolkina as Terpsichore, Nadezhda Gonchar as Calliope, Olesya Novikova as Polyhymnia) are radiantly in command of their choreography, understanding the implicit nobility and the sometimes lightness of their dances, finding the drama that permeates their movement (young divinities seeking to please a young god) as do few of the ice-maiden interpreters elsewhere. In all my years watching Apollo, I have never been so grateful for a performance.

The rest of the evening brought Balanchine’s Prodigal Son (Prokofiev ablaze with Gergiev’s temperament) in a fine account by Mikhail Lobukin, with Ekaterina Kondaurova showing yet again, as the Siren, that she is a wonderful and expressive artist. Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky pas de deux was deliciously done by Novikova and the impeccable Vladimir Shklyarov (a blue-blood of the dance), and Kondaurova was, unsurprisingly, amazing in clarity in the Middle Duet by Alexey Ratmansky. It was, in every way, Apollo’s evening: the Mariinsky knows its especial deity well.

Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet Prog 2, Sadler's Wells: Review

Sarah Crompton on the Mariinsky Ballet at Sadler's Wells



The Mariinsky Ballet have spent a blissful week at Sadler’s Wells.

In the Forysthe programme which began their stay, they gleamed. In the Balanchine bill which is concluding it, they positively glisten.

The tone is set by Apollo, performed in an uncomfortable bowdlerised version which lops off the birth of the god and ends, uncomfortably, half way up an imaginary Mount Parnassus.

But even in this truncated form, it was a glory. Igor Zelensky is a wonderful Apollo, noble, imperious and playful, every gesture finely moulded, every leap perfectly shaped and lightly grounded.

His muses – Ekaterina Osmolkina, Nadezhda Gonchar, Olesya Novikova – reacted with mischievous pleasure to his advances, and with awe to his ascent to full god status.

They all danced with supreme musicality and joy but Osmolkina in particular found an intelligent purposefulness in each moment.

The Prodigal Son, which concluded the evening, was even more sensational.

This 1929 ballet drama, with its expressionistic Rouault setting and stylised choreography, can seem like a museum piece. But every speck of dust was blown away by performances that did it the credit of believing every second.

Mikhail Lobukhin plays the wayward hero as a pugnacious youth, pummelling the air in his frustration to be free of his father’s oppressive love, soaring, bent-legged, into the sky in his determination.

Lost among thieves, he falls prey to Ekaterina Kondaurova, terrific as the sinuous, evil and enticing Siren.

When she leaves him naked and alone, the contrast between his early optimism and agonised crawl home is unbearable; the final scene when his father lifts his lost boy into his arms almost overwhelmingly emotional.

It was astounding.

But both Apollo and Prodigal Son had a hero who was not on stage but in the orchestra pit where company artistic director Valery Gergiev coaxed the lushest and most resonant sounds from the Mariinsky Orchestra in both the Stravinsky and Prokofiev scores.

Ballet orchestras rarely sound as good as this. The orchestra made a difference too to Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky pas de deux, responsive to the virtuosic performances from rising young stars Olesya Novikova and Vladimir Shklyarov, who turned this light party piece into a sweet, summery delight.

The only false note was struck by Alexei Ratmansky’s Middle Duet, to a propulsive score by Yury Khanon.

The central duet – for super-supple Kondaurova and expressive Islom Baimuradov – was eminently watchable.

The framing device, whereby two angels watch the action and ultimately intervene, was one of the oddest, most unsatisfactory things I have ever seen.

But I won’t remember them when I look back on this evening; it will be the Prodigal Son that remains in the mind and the heart for a very long time to come.

The Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet: Programme 2
Sadler's Wells, London

Judith Mackrell October 17 2008

Balanchine and Ratmansky are both choreographers who looked to the west for artistic freedom - yet watching the Mariinsky perform their ballets we're aware, most of all, of their Russianness. On Wednesday night, for instance, Balanchine's Apollo acquired a most unfamiliar flavour of imperial grandeur. This was partly due to Valery Gergiev, who had flown in to conduct and whose slowish, solidly delineated sound had the effect of conjuring St Petersburg palaces rather than airy Parnassus.

But Zelensky, in the title role, also seemed like a boy czar, radiating an air of entitlement and remoteness. This was hard on his three Muses, for while they danced perfectly well on their own - particularly Olesya Novikova - it looked as though they hadn't been granted sufficient rehearsal time with Zelenksy. When he partnered them, the dancing looked hesitant, the images blurred.

Much more successfully Russian was the Mariinsky's take on Prodigal Son. Some western companies struggle with the period expressionism of this work: the Siren's bizarre insect manoeuvres, the grotesqueries of her scuttling henchmen. Yet this was the idiom of experimental theatre that Balanchine had known in 1920s Petrograd, and it has left its trace in the Mariinsky bloodline. This was a fine performance, and Kondaurova in particular owned the predatory moves of the Siren like no other ballerina. Ratmansky's Middle Duet is another very Russian piece, featuring a couple whose agitated dance conversation is overseen by a black and white angel. But this early work is not one of Ratmansky's best, and the honours of the programme go to Novikova and Vladimir Shklyarov in Balanchine's Tchaikovsky pas de deux. This showy little duet has become a gala standard, but these two dance with a natural, blithe recklessness that makes the choreography look freshly minted. They are names to watch.

The Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet: Programme 2
Sadler's Wells, London

Judith Mackrell October 17 2008


Apollo performed by the Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Balanchine and Ratmansky are both choreographers who looked to the west for artistic freedom - yet watching the Mariinsky perform their ballets we're aware, most of all, of their Russianness. On Wednesday night, for instance, Balanchine's Apollo acquired a most unfamiliar flavour of imperial grandeur. This was partly due to Valery Gergiev, who had flown in to conduct and whose slowish, solidly delineated sound had the effect of conjuring St Petersburg palaces rather than airy Parnassus.

But Zelensky, in the title role, also seemed like a boy czar, radiating an air of entitlement and remoteness. This was hard on his three Muses, for while they danced perfectly well on their own - particularly Olesya Novikova - it looked as though they hadn't been granted sufficient rehearsal time with Zelenksy. When he partnered them, the dancing looked hesitant, the images blurred.

Much more successfully Russian was the Mariinsky's take on Prodigal Son. Some western companies struggle with the period expressionism of this work: the Siren's bizarre insect manoeuvres, the grotesqueries of her scuttling henchmen. Yet this was the idiom of experimental theatre that Balanchine had known in 1920s Petrograd, and it has left its trace in the Mariinsky bloodline. This was a fine performance, and Kondaurova in particular owned the predatory moves of the Siren like no other ballerina. Ratmansky's Middle Duet is another very Russian piece, featuring a couple whose agitated dance conversation is overseen by a black and white angel. But this early work is not one of Ratmansky's best, and the honours of the programme go to Novikova and Vladimir Shklyarov in Balanchine's Tchaikovsky pas de deux. This showy little duet has become a gala standard, but these two dance with a natural, blithe recklessness that makes the choreography look freshly minted. They are names to watch.

Heart-stopping human drama among the gods

By Clement Crisp October 16 2008


Ekaterina Osmolkina and Igor Zelensky

Apollo, protector of classic dignity in art, is surely the presiding deity for the Mariinsky Ballet. Balanchine’s Apollo, made for Diaghilev in 1928, is honoured as the work in which the choreographer, understanding the clarities of Stravinsky’s score, saw his way to a balletic manner as formally pure as the music. Thus Apollo, in most western performance, seems a rite reasserting certain stylistic assumptions, notably those of Balanchine’s New York City Ballet

What a revelation, then, in the current Mariinsky Ballet season, with its orchestra under Valery Gergiev, to see it reconsidered, in a reading expansive, richly sonorous. Suddenly Apollo became a drama, urgently re-enacted and heart stopping. It acquired, within the spaciousness of Gergiev’s account, room to speak largely, to disclose its narrative secrets – and it is a narrative of real significance as the young god discovers his identity as leader of the Muses. I have never before been so astonished by its power as myth, nor so fascinated by the dancers’ impersonations of these divinities. Played as humans rather than symbols, the roles regained a vitality that I believe they had in Diaghilev’s staging (something I owe to a demonstration by Serge Lifar, for whom the ballet was made in 1928).

Igor Zelensky proposes the lustrous physique, the presence, the sophistication and beauties of Lifar’s plastique, which the ballet first displayed, and he is superlatively good. Amplitude of dynamics, eloquence of gesture, the innocent grandeur the role demands – all are his. His Muses (Ekaterina Osmolkina as Terpsichore, Nadezhda Gonchar as Calliope, Olesya Novikova as Polyhymnia) are radiantly in command of their choreography, understanding the implicit nobility and the sometimes lightness of their dances, finding the drama that permeates their movement (young divinities seeking to please a young god) as do few of the ice-maiden interpreters elsewhere. In all my years watching Apollo, I have never been so grateful for a performance.

The rest of the evening brought Balanchine’s Prodigal Son (Prokofiev ablaze with Gergiev’s temperament) in a fine account by Mikhail Lobukin, with Ekaterina Kondaurova showing yet again, as the Siren, that she is a wonderful and expressive artist. Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky pas de deux was deliciously done by Novikova and the impeccable Vladimir Shklyarov (a blue-blood of the dance), and Kondaurova was, unsurprisingly, amazing in clarity in the Middle Duet by Alexey Ratmansky. It was, in every way, Apollo’s evening: the Mariinsky knows its especial deity well.

The Mariinsky Ballet

The Mariinsky company’s young stars struggled to match their forebears in a Forsythe quadruple bill at Sadler’s Wells

David Dougill



The Mariinsky Ballet of St Petersburg (its former name, the Kirov, now appears in brackets) is one of the world’s greatest ballet companies. And, though its last big-scale London visit was an uncharacteristic misconceived flop, it was no surprise that last week’s brief season at Sadler’s Wells — a debut in this theatre — was a sellout. This was the Mariinsky leaving the 19th-century classics behind to show its modernising streak, with programmes focusing on two of the most influential 20th-century choreographers, George Balanchine and William Forsythe.

An all-Forsythe programme, such as opened at the Wells, can be a strenuous experience, for good or ill. At Covent Garden in 2005, the company’s attack and brilliance, in a style that was then completely new to them, came as a revelation. If it makes less of an impact now, that is mainly because this visiting troupe is made up largely of young soloists and corps, and we miss the glamour and super-finesse of exceptional stars. Technical skills may be taken for granted with any Mariinsky dancer, but there was a niggling feeling, in a four-piece bill, that the casts were unevenly in command of Forsythe’s demanding material.

In Steptext, Forsythe plays his familiar tricks in the breaking-down of theatrical and balletic conventions: the music by Bach delivered in fragments; lights up and down on stage and in house; blackouts in mid-movement and resumptions that leave you wondering what was happening in the dark; curious confrontational gesturing; a pas de deux from which the ballerina stalks off in disdain. Yet from the opening sequence, in which the men seem to be athletes of antiquity shaping up for the discus Olympics, the dance is compelling. Ekaterina Kondaurova is formidable, ultra-streamlined in a scarlet body stocking, legs spearing, constantly reinventing her line in space. Igor Kolb, Mikhail Lobukhin and Alexander Sergeyev are her staunch cavaliers, when not involved in other mysterious convolutions between themselves. They give committed performances, but not of Kondaurova’s class.

I find myself resistant to the appeal of Approximate Sonata (though Thom Willems’s music here is unusually gentle): a man pulling funny faces and coaching his partner through her moves in Russian, with a series of duets that cumulatively outrun their interest. As antidote comes The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, a jolly classical romp, to Schubert, with men in bathing costumes and women in tutus like plates. This the cast danced fizzingly — and it is so unlike anything else we know of Forsythe.

In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated is the “biggie”, the piece everyone who knows anything about modern ballet has heard of, and many have seen, since it is a prize possession in many repertories. But that invokes comparisons; and, as the cast mass and thrust and dislocate to the crashes and breathy hisses of Willems, we may recall better performances elsewhere. Kondaurova again, and Irina Golub, had the measure of the style, but elsewhere there was diffuseness, a shortage of punch and power.

At Covent Garden, the Royal Ballet has embarked on its latest revival of Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, a signature work for this company since 1974 and by now a modern classic, performed around the world: not surprisingly, the Mariinsky has it too. This week, English National Ballet dances it for the first time, on tour before London, so it will reach a wider British audience in the theatre than ever.

Royal Ballet injuries have caused some rearrangement of casts, but last weekend’s opening matinée fielded an exceptional team. After many viewings of this production, the padded-out ensembles become wearisome — all frizzy-haired whores flicking their skirts at randy old fops — but the brilliance and daring of MacMillan’s pas de deux for Manon and her lover, Des Grieux, are still a marvel, and what plum roles he created for outstanding dance-actors.

Leanne Benjamin and Johan Kobborg are among the finest in these parts: technically in complete command, so that every nuance, peak and twist of emotion is clear and eloquent, without impediment. Together, they take one’s breath away. All the other leading roles were perfectly judged: Viacheslav Samodurov, darkly scheming and drunkenly witty as Lescaut, with Lauren Cuthbertson as his mistress; Christopher Saunders oozing wealth and arrogance as the licentious Monsieur GM; Gary Avis sardonically lustful as the Gaoler.

Last Monday’s cast was less cohesive, though Thiago Soares was an impressive Lescaut. Mara Galeazzi and Edward Watson have scored many dance triumphs, but don’t scale the heights as actors. Her Manon is conscientiously presented, but never (for me) reveals all. Watson made his debut as Des Grieux, and it felt — for much of the performance — as if he was taking such care with the steps, he hadn’t yet got to grips with the impulsion behind them. He lacked a credible conviction. Next time, he may be better. As my companion remarked: “Once more, with feeling.” Together, though, in the desperate last pas de deux — the characters exhausted to death (Manon literally), yet the dancers still of necessity at the peak of stamina — they pulled out all the stops and won their ovation.

Russia conquers America

Luke Jennings October 19 2008

If you're wondering about the viability of ballet as a living art form, go and see the Mariinsky Ballet dance the work of William Forsythe. This programme launches Focus on Forsythe, the Sadler's Wells retrospective of the choreographer's work which continues with performances of Impressing the Czar by the Royal Ballet of Flanders in November and culminates in April with three weeks of staged works and installations.

Forsythe's work pushes classical dance to new boundaries and meshes perfectly with the Mariinsky Ballet's need to redefine itself in a post-Soviet world. Despite decades of poor leadership - artistic director Oleg Vinogradov was arrested for corruption in 1995, and conditions under Valery Gergiev, general director since 1996, have been notoriously thankless - the famous Mariinsky schooling somehow remains intact. Forsythe is a New Yorker and a high priest of the European avant garde but the roots of his work lead back, via Balanchine, to St Petersburg. There's a continuum, and watching the Mariinsky dancers perform his ballets, you see uncanny flashes of family likeness.

In Steptext (1985), an acid-sharp distillation of the performance experience, three male dancers propel Ekaterina Kondaurova through fractured passages of Bach. The men patrol the stage like enforcers, communicating moves and angles to each other through a kind of manual tic-tac before engaging Kondaurova in a series of brutally intense duets. With their weird torsions and beyond-vertical arabesques, these seem almost sacrificial, but they represent extremes for which the ballerina clearly hungers.

We meet Kondaurova again at the evening's end, prowling the stage like a bored lioness as Thom Willems' score for In The Middle, Somewhat Elevated crashes about her. Kondaurova shares the female lead with Irina Golub, a silky young principal who brings a considerable erotic charge to her pas de deux with Mikhail Lobukhin, despite the latter's psychopathic-looking hair-do - what is it, exactly, with Russians and peroxide? Middle is a tough ballet but the Mariinsky dancers rip through it with nonchalance. The women in particular, their tights worn so low over their dragonfly-green leotards as to barely skim their pubic bones, are unrecognisable as their more classical selves. One of the most distinctive is corps-de-ballet dancer Anastasia Petushkova. Long-legged and soft-backed in the classic Mariinsky mould, Petushkova mooches through the shadows with a secretive half-smile before calmly unfolding the most audacious extensions and turns.

These pieces bracket Approximate Sonata, a subdued eight-hander of which only Anton Pimonov and the rangy Petrushkova get the full measure, and Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, a slice of high-velocity classicism set to Schubert. This is what the Mariinsky dancers do better than anyone, and taking the piece at breakneck speed, they carve it to ribbons.

The Mariinsky Ballet, Sadler's Wells, London

Russian purebreds in a modern twist

Reviewed by Jenny Gilbert. 19 October 2008

The company formerly known as the Kirov may not have fielded all of its hottest dancers on this latest visit, but even its lowest-ranking thoroughbreds make pit ponies of other companies' stars. Long, lean and articulated in parts of the body others don't seem to possess, these St Petersburg-trained uber-athletes have long ruled the world in terms of bred-in-the-bone technique, even while their repertory was stuck in the past.

Now, making their first appearance at Sadler's Wells, and under a new director, Yuri Fateyev, they have chucked out the chintz in attempt to prove their contemporary credentials. Gone are the 19th-century blockbusters in favour of works by William Forsythe, a choreographer who, in the late 1980s, blew classical dance right out of the water.

Yet – was it inevitable? – not even the most radical of the pieces on Tuesday's opening bill could summon more than a shadow of the impact they once had. The subverting of performance convention which once seemed so shocking – starting a piece before the houselights are down, doctoring the recorded music so you think the speakers are on the blink – now seems merely meddlesome.

Forsythe's choreography, however, looks transformed, as the Russians fling themselves into its skewed angles, wrenching turns and over-toppling balances with what appears to be no heed for life or limb. Steptext, the opening work, a fist-fight for three men and a woman, comes off best, maybe because it's the closest Forsythe gets to a boy-meets-girl scenario, a thing the Mariinsky understands. Weirdly, too, with its angry, bunched-fist semaphore – for which read: (from the men) "Do you tango?"(and from the woman) "In your dreams, buster!" – it also makes a nod to the 19th-century heyday of ballet mime. Here, though, all the old gendered behaviour is knocked for six. As male tries to pay court to female, she roughly pushes him away. Entrances and exits are graceless and perfunctory. Bad temper is the order of the day.

Yet for all the Russians' relish of this table-turning they somehow misunderstand the mood. I missed the insolent casualness with which Sylvie Guillem used to shrug off the men's attentions when the Royal did this piece. Ekaterina Kondaurova, a 6ft redhead with sinews like pins of steel, smouldered magnificently, but seemed to care too much.

Approximate Sonata is more about dance itself, starting with a male dancer locked into stroke-victim distortions, who gradually frees up under the tutelage of a female partner. Then follow more duets, lit by a chill grey light, which progress with a sense of wonder as if testing the limbs' possibilities for the very first time. For once, I felt the want of company principals. Technique was never in question; authority was in short supply.

The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude is just as described: a giddy whirl of fiddly little steps, classical pastiche, in fact, at triple speed. Here at last the Mariinsky girls were in their natural element. They even had tutus, of sorts, allbeit resembling tap washers, and Olesya Novikova spun and flicked her toes so fast she threatened to frisbee off into the wings.

In the middle somewhat elevated concluded the bill, another work that was a hit for Guillem and the Royal Ballet when first made, and again Kondaurova led the attack. Again, too, the Russians' old-school training revealed the true lineage of Forsythe's steps. Beneath the glowering undulations, beyond the spine-juddering score, here were ballet's past and present, root and branch in one.