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Dance review: Kirov's vivacious 'Quixote'

Rachel Howard. October 20, 2008

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Olesia Novikova and Leonid Sarafanov.

I thought I'd died and woken up in a different era of ballet history Friday night. After opening its Cal Performances run earlier last week with a pristine but lifeless anthology of Petipa's Greatest Hits, the Kirov Ballet overwhelmed a standing-ovation crowd at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall with a "Don Quixote" that was sensationally spirited, sunny, even swarthy - in a word, blood-pumping.

The spectacle was all the more disarming at a time when performances of the 19th century story ballets - especially in America - tend to be box-office driven and dutiful. "Don Quixote" is the Russians' heritage - Petipa created it for the rival Bolshoi Ballet in 1869, and the Kirov credits its production (questionably) to the 1902 Alexander Gorsky staging - but the Kirov doesn't dance it like a museum piece. Instead, the famous Kirov tough-as-nails technique feels unloosed in a faux-Spanish celebration of gypsy madness and young love.

Atmosphere is everything, and the dancers basked in it. Konstantin Korovin's summery designs place a backdrop of ships behind the bustling first act, the townspeople draped in lace and fringe. The second act's dream scene is a pastel Impressionist fantasia with tutus straight out of Degas; the final wedding scene revels in a palace bedecked with paper lanterns. But the real energy here was in the dancing.

You expect the Kirov to deliver virtuosity, and the dancers did. Coltish Alina Somova's Kitri effortlessly ticked off feats, from a line of tight single pirouettes ending with a sailing triple, to her third-act fouettes - alternating singles and doubles, the Minkus score pumping at a fiendishly fast tempo with the Kirov Orchestra under conductor Pavel Bubelnikov. A long roster of sparkling soloists kept the sparks flying, from Tatiana Tkachenko's muscular Queen of the Dryads to Valeria Martynuk's sprightly Amur (or, as most Americans would call her, Cupid).

But in a production this vivacious, the circus tricks were icing. Andrian Fadeev, as Kitri's mischievous love Basilio, has a jaw-dropping jump - but when he launched into it, in the whiz-bang third act pas de deux, it felt almost superfluous, so charmed had I been by his breezy stage presence.

Exquisite academic precision had its place - it's hard to imagine a more beguilingly exact dream scene - but the soul of this "Don Q." was in the character dances. Ensemble outbursts that feel like filler in most productions became absorbing in their own right, attacked with gusto and style. Mikhail Berdichevsky made an especially lusty attraction in the third act, bulging eyes shining crazily as the Gypsy King.

The storytelling was hardly faultless: In the second act, there is no windmill for the Don to tilt at, and the average viewer would have no idea why the old man has fallen and women in tutus are suddenly flitting about. But then, as the average viewer soon discovers, ballet's "Don Quixote" has little to do with Cervantes; anyone scrutinizing for watertight dramaturgy is missing the point.

"Don Quixote" is classical ballet at its most free and joyous - or at least it is when the Kirov dances it.

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20 окт 2008, 15:54
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Are We Having Any Fun Yet?
Kirov Ballet and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre: Petipa and Gorsky’s Don Quixote

By ALLAN ULRICH. October 20, 2008

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Diana Vishneva of the Kirov Ballet of the Mariinsky Theatre in
Petipa and Gorsky’s Don Quixote. Photo by N. Razina.


The prescription for pepping up a lackluster Kirov Ballet tour? Trot out that venerable, crowd pleasing ersatz classic Don Quixote, get Diana Vishneva into that ruffled red dress—and stand back. Natural talent will take its course.

So it came to pass Sunday afternoon (Oct. 19) at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, where the dance complement and orchestra of the famed St. Petersburg institution wound up a troubled Cal Performances run with the last of four weekend performances of the Cervantes-inspired narrative comedy. The milling corps at the start suggested indifference at best, but moments later, Vishneva, the Kirov’s starriest ballerina of the moment, flew from the wings in dazzling jeté, back dramatically arched, and all felt right in the ballet world. Why the company didn’t launch this tour stop with this Don Quixote with this casting is the mystery of the week.

Vishneva is simply a great allegro dancer and a miraculous technician. Her Kitri, determined to wed the barber Basilio, despite parental objections, was the sort that builds legends. Kitri’s iconic fan wasn’t merely manipulated artfully; the object served almost as partner. Then, Vishneva retrieved a pair of castanets from the wings and proceeded to fuse their clicks with an almost violent series of pointe attacks and soon fell into a vivacious duet with her Basilio, Yevgeny Ivanchenko. All this transpired in the first 20 minutes of the performance. There was a lot more to come.

Vishneva belies all the clichés about Russian dancers by possessing an acute sense of fusing steps and music (remember her brilliant performance in Balanchine’s Rubies here a few years ago). She is also a giddy comedian, if lacking in the witty, malicious edge Natalia Makarova brought to Kitri a generation ago. Only in the vision scene in Act 2 might one express slight disappointment. Here, Kitri must embody Dulcinea, Quixote’s ideal of woman, and on Sunday, Vishneva, fluid as ever, did not quite transform herself into the lyrical paragon of femininity the assignment demands. Still, when comes her like again?

The Kirov has been dancing Gorsky’s version of Petipa’s original 1869 original since the turn of the 20th century and it is of some textual interest. The production features more of this edition than most stagings, and I can’t say how much material was added through habit during the Soviet period. In the third act, the build-up to Kitri’s wedding, we now get a variation for the toreador Espada, dispatched Sunday by Karen Ioanessian, who boasts phenomenal elevation; and a fandango duet, where Ioanessian was joined by the sultry Lira Khuslamova. The divertissement also features an Asian dance (Yulia Slivkina with bare midriff). No one, apparently, asked what an Asian dancer was doing in Barcelona in the 17th century.

At least, this production retains Don Quixote (the formidable character dancer Vladimir Ponomarev) and his squire Sancho Panza (Stanislav Burov) in every scene and makes some attempt to incorporate him into the narrative. But the staging (as opposed to the choreography) is sometimes barely perfunctory. It takes a lowered curtain to segue to the vision scene, where Tatiana Tckachenko’s balances and Elena Yushkova’s androgynous charm were much to be admired. And after it’s over, the old guy just limps away, which is no way to end an act.

The Kirov places little emphasis on mime and that predisposition was no help to Ivanchenko. He presents a fine figure, tall, well proportioned, smooth in transitions and a considerate partner. But Ivanchenko seems to place little trust in the music, and he is singularly devoid of the rascally charm that must be part of Basilio. Never have I seen the barber’s mock suicide evoke so little laughter. Whatever does this exuberant Kitri see in this stringy fellow?

As for the physical production, the program does not cite a set designer, which led one to expect the worst, though the décor, though rumpled, is acceptable enough. Konstantin Korovin’s costumes need revision. No local fop would dare wear what Sunday’s Gamache, Soslan Kulaev, was forced to endure. Again, conducting duties fell to Pavel Bubelnikov who did what he could with the Minkus score.

Given the fame of the Kirov, Sunday’s matinee revealed lots of empty seats (bad), but a surprising number of young, quiet children (good) sprinkled around the audience. Maybe the next time, the company could be coaxed into importing some dances of its own time. They might even draw a crowd.


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21 окт 2008, 02:38
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The Kirov: How's the old girl looking?

by Paul Parish

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The Kirov Ballet brought two all-Petipa programs to Zellerbach Hall this past week. The first was a gala in which many things went wrong, and the second the three-act story ballet Don Quixote, which was the best thing of its kind I've ever seen.

The Kirov is the great ballet company of St Petersburg, Russia, the direct descendant of the Tsar's Imperial Ballet, which was, before the Russian Revolution, the greatest ballet company in the world: best-funded, best-directed, best-produced, best-costumed, best everything, and huge on a scale no American company can even imagine, with hundreds of extras, horses, dogs, birds, the largest stage in Europe, stage-machinery that could produce great stage-magic: blizzards and fog, but also gigantic fountains, shipwrecks at sea � in short, with George-Lucas-scale effects. It was from this company that came Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Pavlova, Karsavina, Nijinsky, Nijinska, Balanchine, and Danilova. The founder of San Francisco Ballet, Adolph Bolm, came from there, as did Schollar and Vilzak, who were major teachers later in the SFB School.

The Soviets found a propaganda use for ballet, and in that era, the company, renamed after the "martyred" Soviet hero Kirov, rose to new heights of technical purity. It was from this company that the second generation of famous Russian dancers defected during the Cold War: Nureyev, Makarova, and Baryshnikov, who were not only great dancers, they were front-page political news, the poster-kids of capitalism.

So a visit from the Kirov is a very big deal, like a visit from the Queen, and the question, as always, is, how's the old girl looking?

The Kirov is performing, as of this writing, in London, Berkeley, and St. Petersburg simultaneously. Two hundred of them (dancers, musicians, techies) are in Berkeley, though some of the stars we were promised are in fact in London, and Cal Performances director Robert Cole had to threaten to cancel altogether to guarantee that headliner Diana Vishneva would not get pulled for the London show.

This left them short of stars for the gala, and it suffered, badly, from miscasting. Irma Nioradze looked ghastly in the wedding scene from Raymonda. Perhaps out of gallantry, the rest of the dancers, even her splendid partner, pulled back so she wouldn't look weak, which just meant that everybody looked strained. Vishneva looked underpowered in La Bayadere, and the corps looked cramped on Zellerbach's shallow stage. Finally, the grand Pas from Paquita misfired. It requires six ballerina-level dancers or else it looks like tawdry finery. Only Valeria Martynyuk performed her solo with the wit, sparkle, accuracy, and ease that make these dances seem like miracles.

Right to choose

In Petipa's classical solos, the end of one step is the beginning of the next. But not all of his dances require such clarity � it is a special effect reserved for high points in the action of a grand ballet � and Petipa's are as grand as grand opera, grand as Aida. It was fascinating to see the famous grand pas from Don Quixote in the context of a boisterous romantic comedy, about a woman's right to choose whom she'll marry.

On Saturday night, Leonid Sarafanov was a first-class hero as the barber whom our girl really loves. Not only did he turn four consecutive double tours, and toss off the most intricate and beautiful rapid-fire pirouettes, he was also absolutely hilarious, a light-comic dreamboat. As our girl Kitri, Viktoria Tereshkina gets an A-. She did all her tricks, and did them great, and her light shone brightly all night, but she's kinda like Rise Stevens used to be as Carmen: a little too earnest.

The great thing was the contrapuntal storytelling, and the continuity at every level, including the background. Only Disney cares this much for getting the background right. The Kirov could make us watch a quarrel downstage between the great mime Vladimir Ponomarev (who played the Don) and the fop (Soslan Kulaev) while center-stage, Sancho Panza was getting tossed in a blanket to a lively polka. The scene was composed like the quartet from Rigoletto, so that all the lines are clear, and the complex parts fit together like parts of a car engine.

On Friday night, the decorative ballerina Alina Somova played Kitri, and had charming moments. But she's too light, a cross between Alicia Silverstone and Ginger Rogers, and lacks the earthiness that makes us want Kitri to win. Diana Vishneva, the biggest star of the run, was to dance Kitri on Sunday, after our deadline.

Thanks to Cal Performances for bringing them. With the Russian stock market crashing faster than ours, it may be a long time before ballet on this grand a scale will be seen here again.


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24 окт 2008, 00:10
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The Stars of the White Nights 2009

"The Stars of the White Nights 2009" International Ballet and Opera Festival. The Stars of the White Nights Festival is one of the most popular and important events in terms of contemporary music and theatre.

Artistic Director – Maestro Valery Gergiev

10 May 2009 - 27 July 2009


The Stars of the White Nights Festival was initiated in 1993 by Valery Gergiev, Artistic Director of the Mariinsky Theatre. The maestro says that he envisaged the first Festival as a "musical gift" to the city from the Mariinsky Theatre and the soloists who agreed to perform. From the first, the Festival turned to the best of world music, including works that are rarely performed or have been undeservedly forgotten.

The Stars of the White Nights Festival has gained in strength, popularity and international acclaim. Over fifteen years, the ten-day Festival has expanded to cover two or three months in summer. Renowned conductors and soloists consider it a special honour to perform at the Stars of the White Nights. Every year the Festival programme includes the Theatre's best opera and ballet productions, grandiose symphony works, chamber music and new theatre premieres. In recent years the Festival playbill has included programmes of works by supreme classical composers – Beethoven and Prokofiev's symphonies and opera and ballet and symphony music by Tchaikovsky. One major event in recent years was the staging of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, in addition to the Shostakovich Symphonies and Mahler Symphonies series.

This festival is a must for ballet, opera and classical music lovers. The annual White Nights Festival derives its name from the short summer season when the sun never sets, and the beauty of these White Nights contributes to the festival’s special atmosphere and its world-class programme of concerts, as audiences exit the historic theatre at midnight into daylight to stroll home through the theatrical setting of St Petersburg.

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    05 ноя 2008, 21:59
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    Impressing the Czar
    Sadler's Wells, London

    by Judith Mackrell

    The Focus on Forsythe season, curated by Sadler's Wells, is offering some
    fascinatingly different views of the choreographer. Forsythe the postmodern ballet master has just been showcased by the Mariinsky;

    Forsythe the installation artist is shortly to be seen in a series of gallery events, while Forsythe the showman is on stage this week in his violently theatrical, four-act production, Impressing the Czar. This is danced by the Royal Ballet of Flanders, who navigate an exceptionally clear path through its crazy paved complexities.

    The second act of Czar is the stand-alone ballet In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated. When it was performed by the Mariinsky last month, it had acquired some very odd accents; the Russians' hypersupple limbs warping and curving the choreography's lines. By contrast, the Flemish company seem far more attuned to its style, especially Aki Saito, whose tiny body sheers the choreography to near impossible angles and speeds. More revealing still is seeing In the Middle in its proper context.

    The four acts of Czar add up to a surreal meditation on the rise and fall of western culture. The stage starts out as a giant warehouse of art, dance and fashion in which works from the great masters are paraded, and the dancers, dressed in clothes from different epochs, race through a history of styles. In this context, the logic of In the Middle takes on a new resonance - its choreography showing the classical language of ballet razored into a febrile, very-late-20th-century intensity.

    The third and fourth acts turn wilder and more comic, as the artworks are auctioned off and the stage is overtaken by a chorus of stampeding schoolgirls, their jubilant war dance trampling on the sensibilities of the past. Their massed formations are both brilliantly and horribly entertaining. Forsythe is the dark, political Busby Berkeley of our times.


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    09 ноя 2008, 22:35
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    Kirov Ballet's The Nutcracker

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    PHOTO CREDIT: The Nutcracker © The Kirov Ballet and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre

    The 2008-2009 season
    of Dance at the Music Center continues with a special, limited engagement of the Kirov Ballet and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre's The Nutcracker, under the Artistic Direction of Valery Gergiev and Yury Fateev, Interim Director of the Ballet, to celebrate the holiday season for six performances only, December 17-20, 2008 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

    The 200-year-old Kirov Ballet, under the Artistic Direction of Valery Gergiev since 1988, is one of the world's most renowned ballet companies. It performs the beloved, family holiday classic The Nutcracker, accompanied by a live orchestra, in a production filled with wonderment and child-like delight. The choreography, from 1934, is by Vasily Vainonen.

    Over the four-day engagement, Evgenia Obraztsova, Irina Golub, and Ekaterina Osmolkina will dance the principal role of Masha. Vladimir Shkylarov, Alexander Sergeev, and Igor Kolb will dance the role of the Nutcracker Prince.

    The history of The Nutcracker is a fascinating one. At the suggestion of the Board of Imperial Theatres, Marius Petipa wrote a scene plan for The Nutcracker in 1891; it was subsequently passed on to Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The subject was based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's famous tale "Nuβknacker und Mausekőnig," adapted for children and turned into a "ballet-féerie." The stage drama, however, proved to be limited for the symphonic conductor's imagination, and Tchaikovsky composed a symphonic ballet about childhood, life and fate, a striking picture of human emotions and of fantastic color.

    The ballet was to be staged in 1892 by Lev Ivanov, the second ballet-master of the Mariinsky Theatre. His dance of the snowflakes was especially successful. The ballet was subsequently revived and remade, though it never matched the "fairytale and symphonic, orchestral and colourful nature of the score" (Boris Asafiev). Vasily Vainonen's production of 1934, however, upheld Petipa's traditions and pleased audiences with its warm and touching children's scenes, the beautiful dances of the snowflakes and the wonderful divertissement in the final act. The ballet is now staged using Vainonen's version and Simon Virsaladze's set designs from 1954.

    Tickets for Kirov Ballet and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre are priced from $30 - $120 and are available at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Box Office, 135 North Grand Avenue. Tickets are also available through Ticketmaster Phone Charge at (213) 365-3500 or (714) 740-7878, at all Ticketmaster Outlets and online at www.ticketmaster.com. For groups of 15 or more, call Connie Nelson at (310) 446-4398.

    December 18, 2008, 2pm performance only - Come early!
    From 12 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. kids of all ages can decorate their own cookie on the Music Center Plaza. Cost is $10 each and includes cookie, hot chocolate or apple cider. First come, first served. Tickets can be purchased at the box office the day of the event only.

    For more information about this, and all Dance at the Music Center engagements, visit www.musiccenter.org.

    About Kirov Ballet of the Mariinsky Theatre

    St. Petersburg ballet is the collective result of the work of many years and many people within the Mariinsky Theatre. St. Petersburg ballet is almost as old as the city itself, and these centuries are made up of different epochs. In the 19th century, St. Petersburg ballet mainly spoke French. The century was split between the French choreographers Charles-Luois Didelot, Jules Perrot, Arthur Saint-Leon and Marius Petipa. Their Mecca was Paris, their tastes were cultivated by the Academy of Dance and the Grand Opera. St. Petersburg was the place where the harsh rules of an alien order receded, the rigid French school of dance being softened by the rhythmical Russian tendency towards sloth and the open vowels of the Russian language. These choreographers settled at the theatre for lengthy period, almost as if they were at home. "This is paradise!" exclaimed the young Petipa when he first came out of the Russian theatre director's office.

    "Ballet Petersburg," the "St. Petersburg of ballet" was born - the same intangible, but indisputable phenomenon of cultural geography as the "St. Petersburg of Dostoevsky." And just as the "St. Petersburg of Dostoevsky" took shape in the form of Crime and Punishment or White Nights, so the "St. Petersburg of ballet" was represented by "The Sleeping Beauty," "Raymonda" and "La Bayadere."

    In the 20th century, ballet spoke only in Russian. The century began with Michel Fokine's modernist revolution, and the 1920s saw the explosive burst of Fyodor Lopukhov's avant-garde. Later, high-level politics helped to suppress this influence: the country was fenced off from the world by the Iron Curtain. This was a death knell for many arts. But Leningrad ballet was able to maintain its high artistic standards, having become the focus of spiritual life for people of the time and even a unique kind of cultural Fronde. Petipa's ballets, the "gold reserves" of Russian choreography, remained as a source of nourishment for the greatest Soviet choreographers of pre-war Leningrad - Leonid Lavrovsky, Vasily Vainonen and Vakhtang Chabukiani. The grandiose dramatic ballets of pre-war Leningrad - "Romeo and Juliet," "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai," "Laurencia" and "Flame of Paris" - would not have been possible without 19th century ballet. Promoted by Soviet choreographers, only "psychological realism" was new. It had the effect of a magic spell for whole acuity and acting talents of Galina Ulanova, Tatiana Vecheslova, Alla Shelest, Konstantin Sergeyev, and the multitude of second and third rank dancers.

    The whole company of the then Kirov Theatre was striking, from the ballerinas down to the last line of the corps de ballet. At the same time, first-class virtuoso dancers such as Natalia Dudinskaya, Feya Balabina, Vakhtang Chabukiani and Nikolay Zubkovsky permitted Leningrad ballet to preserve the glory of the most important RussIan Temple of classical dance.

    The "new wave" of ballet evolved from a dispute, but to a still greater degree from the dialogue with the dramatic ballets of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The leading figures of the "new wave" were the young choreographers Yuri Grigorovich and Igor Belsky and the dancers Alla

    Osipenko, Irina Kolpakova, Gabriela Komleva, Yuri Solovyev, Rudolph Nureyev, Natalia Marakova, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

    The "fathers" were referred to as "dramatic ballet" and the rebellious "children" as "symphonic ballet," but the combined tradition of succession preserved its power over both.

    At the end of the 20th century, it learned to speak in English. Leningrad ballet once more started calling itself St. Petersburg ballet, but this time it went forth into the world. It started to perform works by 20th century Western choreographers such as Jerome Robbins, Kenneth MacMillan, Roland Petit, Anthony Tudor and John Neumeier which had previously been inaccessible, neglected during the years of forced Soviet isolation. But the main development is connected with the Russian-American choreographer George Balanchine: today, the repertoire of the Mariinsky Theatre contains almost as many ballets by Balanchine as by Petipa.


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    02 дек 2008, 22:58
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    Russian dancer highlights ballet in Brighton

    The Brighton Center for the Performing Arts will host a performance of "The Nutcracker" ballet this weekend, featuring a guest dancer from Russia.

    "The Nutcracker" is presented by the Academy of Russian Classical Ballet and Livingston County's Russian Artists International. The dancers will be joined on stage by several international guest artists, including Anton Korsakov, first soloist of the Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia.

    Korsakov, who first performed the role of the Nutcracker Prince two years ago in Brighton, has been a member of the Kirov Ballet since 1998. He has won international ballet competitions in Russia and Finland, and tours extensively.

    Joining Korsakov will be dancers from Livingston, Oakland, Wayne, Macomb and Washtenaw counties. The Academy of Russian Classical Ballet was founded by Genoa Township residents Sergey and Jessica Rayevskiy, both of whom are graduates of the Kirov Academy of Ballet and former professional dancers.


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    _______________________________________


    Anton Korsakov
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    03 дек 2008, 20:12
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    Balanchine’s best
    The Mariinsky Theater ballet troupe excels in the work of George Balanchine.

    by Kevin Ng. Special to The St. Petersburg Times

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      Yekaterina Osmolkina and Vladimir Shklyarov of the Mariinsky Theater dancing in George Balanchine’s
      ‘Symphony in C.’


    George Balanchine’s ballets are an integral part of the Mariinsky Ballet’s repertory. Yury Fateyev, the new director of the Mariinsky Ballet, is also the chief Balanchine repetiteur (instructor) for the company. Last week there were two different Balanchine programs on view with interesting debuts in several roles, before the Mariinsky Ballet left for a short tour to Baku in Azerbaijan. The highlight was Balanchine’s sunny 1947 masterpiece “Symphony in C” which closed both programs. “Symphony in C” was revived towards the end of the White Nights Festival last summer after being absent from the Mariinsky’s repertory for nearly five years.

    The first performance was more noteworthy with Mariinsky star Uliana Lopatkina’s presence as the ballerina of the adagio second movement, partnered by Danila Korsuntsev. However, as seems to be typical of Lopatkina’s performances nowadays, she gave a cold and self-conscious star performance, devoid of any expressiveness and spontaneity. What a contrast with the second cast three nights later: Anastasia Kolegova’s dancing was far more musical, alive and flowing.

    The ballet was magnificently danced by the whole troupe. On the whole, both casts were rewarding, with Viktoria Tereshkina making her debut as the ballerina of the allegro first movement. She was sharp and precise, and was more satisfactory than Alina Somova, who has just been promoted to principal dancer. Andrian Fadeyev, Tereshkina’s partner, was technically dazzling.

    In the allegro third movement, rising star Vladimir Shklyarov, partnering a radiant Yekaterina Osmolkina, was splendid, with his soaring jumps and sauts de basque enhanced by his charming personality. In the later performance the lead roles were danced by Yelena Yevseyeva and Filipp Stepin, making their debuts in the roles. In the last movement, Yevgenia Obraztsova was totally ravishing and delightful as the ballerina. Her cavalier, Alexei Timofeyev, an up-and-coming talent, was full of liveliness. The exhilarating finale, with the large corps de ballet filling up the stage, was a wonderful showcase for the whole company.

    “Serenade,” an early Balanchine masterpiece from 1935 that opened the later performance, was also superbly danced. The Mariinsky female corps de ballet danced with far more vibrancy than the Royal Ballet had done in London the week before; their upper bodies were far more uniform and harmonious. Yekaterina Osmolkina was most expressive as the waltz ballerina. Irina Golub was pure joy as the Russian ballerina, one of her best roles. And Yekaterina Kondaurova, or “Big Red” as the New York public fondly call her, was imposing as the dark angel.

    Kondaurova also impressed as the leading lady in Balanchine’s haunting “La Valse.” Solslan Kulayev couldn’t have looked more deadly as the Fate figure. Ivan Kozlov made a respectable debut as the lover. Sergei Umanets, who has recently joined the Mariinsky Theater from St. Petersburg’s Vaganova Academy, stood out among the three supporting couples. This ballet has still retained its power since its Mariinsky premiere in 2004, when it was staged to celebrate the centenary of this greatest of 20th century choreographers.


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    13 дек 2008, 19:40
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    Kennedy Center: The Grand Tradition

    By Joseph Carman. 12 Dec 2008

    The storied Mariinsky Ballet returns to the Kennedy Center with a vivacious Don Quixote Jan 13-18.

    No country is more associated with the art form of ballet than Russia. And no Russian company can claim more of a heritage of ballet in its purest form than the Mariinsky Ballet. The New York Times calls the company “the bedrock of classical ballet purity and sophistication.”

    January 13–18 in the Opera House, the Kennedy Center presents the Mariinsky Ballet (formerly known as the Kirov Ballet) in its dazzling production of the beloved full-length story ballet Don Quixote. The San Francisco Chronicle praised it as “sensationally spirited…classical ballet at its most free and joyous!”
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      Alina Somova in Don Quixote. photo by Natasha Razina

    With Don Quixote, the Mariinsky Ballet again showcases the genius of Marius Petipa’s choreography. In January 2008 in the Opera House, they danced Petipa’s La Bayadère, which the Washington Post called a blend of “classical perfection with the more mystical and sentimental elements of the work.”

    The Cervantes novel Don Quixote combines the farcical with the philosophical and concentrates on the protagonist and his chivalric follies. It was groundbreaking in introducing common peasant characters into Spanish literature. The ballet focuses on the romance between two earthy characters, Bazil and Kitri, from two chapters of the novel.

    Although the ballet premiered in Moscow in 1869, it has a longtime association with the Mariinsky. The true joy of Don Quixote lies in the wealth of Petipa’s dynamic choreography to the rousing music of Ludwig Minkus. Virtuosity and high-spirited style contrast with the purely classical sections of the ballet. The work contains riffs on traditional Spanish dances like the seguidilla and the more elegant cape-waving of the toreadors. In the second act, Don Quixote’s pursuit of the ephemeral Dulcinea lays the groundwork for a pristinely classical scene that highlights the impeccable work of the Mariinsky’s female ensemble and soloists. And the final act’s wedding pas de deux featuring Kitri and Bazil is often excerpted from the ballet for its bravura technical fireworks.

    Today’s Mariinsky dancers, including current 21st-century ballerinas Diana Vishneva and Viktoria Tereshkina, follow in the footsteps of some of the greatest ballet stars of the 20th century. The Mariinsky Ballet’s glorious history boasts such luminaries as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Natalia Makarova, Rudolph Nureyev, George Balanchine, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Anna Pavlova. But the roots of the Mariinsky Ballet date back to the early 18th century.

    The Imperial Theatre School, a training ground for court dancers, was established by the Empress Anna Ivanovna in 1738 and directed by the French teacher Jean-Baptiste Landé. The school set the blueprint for the Vaganova Academy, which now serves as the Mariinsky’s official institution for grooming dancers. The Imperial Theatre School also spawned the Imperial Russian Ballet, a name that was used until the abolishment of Imperial rule.

    In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Imperial Russian Ballet became internationally known as a showcase for ballet stars of the Romantic period, such as Marie Taglioni, Enrico Cecchetti, Jules Perrot, Fanny Cerrito, and Carlotta Grisi. In 1860, the company found a new home in the Mariinsky Theatre. But it was the mid-19th-century advent of Marius Petipa, the ballet master and choreographer with an unprecedented ability to utilize classical ballet vocabulary in vastly original ways, who sealed the style of the Imperial Russian Ballet.

    In 1877, Petipa choreographed the signature work La Bayadère to the music of Ludwig Minkus. The ballet forged new territory in exploring the virtuoso technique of dancers and expanded the role of the corps de ballet as an essential and independent entity in ballet. In 1890, Petipa premiered his The Sleeping Beauty, set to the monumental commissioned score by Tchaikovsky. This ushered in a golden age of Russian ballet, including a revival of Swan Lake in 1895 in St. Petersburg that provided the template for future versions of the ballet.

    Following the Revolution in 1917, the theater’s name was changed to the State Mariinsky Theatre, and many dancers left the company. During the 1930s, a Soviet style of ballet emerged with large-scale productions, such as Flames of Paris and The Fountain of Bakhchisarai. After the assassination of the Bolshevik revolutionary Sergei Kirov in 1934, the company was renamed the Kirov Ballet. One of the company’s most significant artistic achievements of that period was Leonid Lavrovsky’s choreographed version of Romeo and Juliet, which debuted in 1940 to a powerful score by Sergei Prokofiev and starred the legendary Galina Ulanova.

    During the 1950s and 1960s Konstantin Sergeyev served as the company’s artistic director and upheld the company’s strict classical standards. Taras Bulba, Spartacus, and The Stone Flower were choreographed during his tenure. When the company toured the West after 1961, it created a sensation with its remarkable artistry and inimitable stars.

    In the last three decades, the Mariinsky Ballet has further expanded its repertoire, adding the ballets of many other choreographers to its roster: Antony Tudor, John Neumeier, Jerome Robbins, Roland Petit, Maurice Béjart, and Alexei Ratmansky. In 1989, the company staged its first works by Balanchine, bringing full circle the Russian tradition that he had brought to and expanded on in America. At present, the internationally renowned conductor Valery Gergiev serves as Artistic Director of the Mariinsky Theatre with Yuri Fateyev acting as Deputy Director of the Mariinsky Ballet.

    Through its long history of historic ballets, venerable stars, and pioneering choreographers, the Mariinsky Ballet has proven its place as a cornerstone of classical ballet. Called “the Tiffany of ballet companies” (The Washington Post), the Mariinsky Ballet’s production of Don Quixote is a fine example of the company upholding that grand tradition.

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    13 дек 2008, 21:11
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    Nutcracker leaves room for interpretation

    By Susan Josephs. December 14, 2008

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    AUTHENTIC: The Kirov comes to the Music Center with a “Nutcracker” mostly true to the 1892 staging.

    In the costume room at Los Angeles Ballet's Westside headquarters, co-artistic director Thordal Christensen is trying to explain what makes his company's "Nutcracker" different from every other "Nutcracker." Opening a huge Tupperware-like container, he extracts a mask of a snarling mouse. "All our mouse heads have different expressions, and some have really evil eyes," he says with pride.

    According to Christensen, "going all out on the costumes" is a mark of the "The Nutcracker" as performed by L.A. Ballet. Yet the company is but one of innumerable North American ballet troupes that consider the Tchaikovsky classic both their bread and butter and a seasonal ritual akin to a Christmas ham or turkey. Meaning: Although that piece of meat had better be on the table every year, its preparation remains open to interpretation and, as a result, traditions develop and strong opinions form.

    "You don't mess with the music or the story," Christensen says of Tchaikovsky's score and the original "Nutcracker" plot, based on the 19th century E.T.A. Hoffmann tale of a little girl at Christmastime whose gift of a nutcracker doll turns into a prince and transports her to an enchanted realm. "But every year, I think about ways to tweak it, how to give our production its own life."

    The same can be said for all the artistic directors seeking to carve out a unique "Nutcracker" niche as they contend with an abundance of concurrent community, school and professional productions. Every one of those shows promises a magical and heartwarming experience. This year, moreover, company leaders must also factor in a production at the Music Center by the Kirov Ballet, which has succumbed to the American practice and is opening its version here for a six-performance run beginning Wednesday. (In Russia, "The Nutcracker" is performed year-round.)

    The Kirov, widely considered one of the world's best ballet companies, will offer a distinctly Russian interpretation, one that adheres to a 1934 version created for the company by choreographer Vasily Vainonen. "This ballet has never been revised, and so it's a great opportunity for American audiences to see it," says Sergei Danilian, the Kirov's spokesman and producer of its North American tours.

    Unlike the other, definitely more avant-garde "Nutcracker" in the Kirov's repertory, which was directed by the artist Mihail Chemiakin and premiered in 2001 to mixed reviews, Vainonen's version strays little from the original 1892 "Nutcracker," created by Marius Petipa for the Russian Imperial Ballet. "It is also homey and warm, and character is very important," Danilian says.

    But in the Kirov production, tradition also dictates that Clara is called Masha and that, unlike in the majority of U.S. productions, she be portrayed by an adult ballerina. At the Music Center, three Kirov principals will alternate in the role.

    "Masha should definitely be a principal dancer. Vainonen created that role with a high level of technical artistry meant for ballerinas, not children," Danilian says.

    Favoring youth

    Having a grown woman play Clara doesn't sit right with Yvonne Mounsey -- and not just because she runs the pre-professional Westside Ballet Company and has staged some three dozen "Nutcrackers" in which Clara has never been old enough to vote. "The ballet is so charming when Clara is a child, why would you mess with that?" she says.

    Mounsey, a former New York City Ballet dancer who appeared as the center Spanish Girl in the premiere of George Balanchine's now iconic 1954 "Nutcracker," has loosely based her productions on the San Francisco Ballet's 1944 version and resists "doing anything that would upset the basic classicism of the ballet. But we do play with the details," she says.

    That's resulted in several Westside Ballet "Nutcracker" traditions. After the nutcracker-turned-prince has slain the Mouse King, for example, Mounsey has a lone mouse remain onstage crying, "wiping her eyes with her tail. Then she sees the king's sword and walks off with it as a spotlight shines on her. It makes me cry every time."

    Another signature touch, Mounsey recalls, stems from a year when she had a number of dancers "who weren't quite ready to be flowers" in "The Waltz of the Flowers," so she choreographed a short unison phrase for them to perform after the Arabian dance. "We called it the 'Candy Cane Dance,' and it gave more people a chance to perform," she says. "We use the overture in the music for this, so I apologize to Tchaikovsky. But it's still his music."

    Although in only its third season, L.A. Ballet has already developed similar "unique little touches" in its "Nutcracker," says co-artistic director Colleen Neary. In Act 2, for example, the usual "Land of the Sweets" is the "Palace of the Dolls," where all of Clara's dolls come to life to dance for her.

    More important "is the way we tell the story and how we try to create different levels of contact between characters," says Christensen.

    Production values can also play a significant role in distinguishing one company's take on the ballet from the next. Los Angeles Ballet, for example, has a set meant to evoke Los Angeles in 1912, while the Kirov's designs, though by no means mid-century modern, recall the year of their creation, 1954. Then there are companies such as the Long Beach Ballet and Inland Pacific Ballet that aim for a generalized lavishness.

    For David Wilcox, a "Nutcracker" isn't a "Nutcracker" without a real white Arabian stallion, magic tricks created by famous magicians, a Christmas tree that grows to 97 feet and some good old-fashioned pyrotechnics. "I'm all about making huge theatrical productions and something that also appeals to people who don't like ballet," says the artistic director of the Long Beach Ballet and director of more than two dozen "Nutcrackers."

    A fan of Disney and Cirque du Soleil presentations, Wilcox says he will use any means available to illuminate the work. "The ballet is perfect the way it is," he observes. "But the only thing that will keep ballet alive is if we technologically do whatever it takes to compete with movies and TV."

    Company tradition

    As the artistic director of the Inland Pacific Ballet, Victoria Koenig agrees that "our job is to find ways to enhance the excitement, especially for people not conversant with choreography." Having staged the "Nutcracker" for 14 years, she also has a definite roster of company traditions, including a revolving fireplace that magically becomes a castle, a cannon in the battle scene that shoots what appears to be a puff of smoke, and a throne and an elaborately wreathed Christmas tree decorating the lobby of the Bridges Auditorium in Claremont.

    Most recently, Koenig has been flying in a professional mime from Paris to play Clara's godfather, Drosselmeyer, who presents her with the nutcracker doll. The mime is "eccentric but not creepy, and he adds a marvelous quality to our show," she says. "It's our new tradition."

    Koenig also directs the "Nutty Nutcracker," an Inland Pacific Ballet tradition since 2004 that will be performed twice this year, offering a dose of comic relief for the "Nutcracker"-ed out. "Our dancers get to cut loose and be zany," she says, "which creates a spontaneous performance quality that they carry into our traditional 'Nutcracker.' "

    Meanwhile, for companies that don't have an accompanying spoof in their repertory, it seems that the never-ending quest to freshen up a traditional production is in itself a tradition. This year, for example, the Long Beach Ballet production will have not one but two harps in its orchestra and, onstage, guest dancer Haiyan Wu, a principal with Miami City Ballet. "I'm always trying to make it the best production I can so I never get bored," says Wilcox.

    Mounsey, who operates on a more modest budget, remembers the year that one of her associates thought of "a little glitter falling slowly at the end of the show, as the curtain closes. It's the little things like that which make the production better."

    At age 89, Mounsey, a self-described "complete bunhead," also has a "Nutcracker" tradition all her own. As she begins putting together every new production, she says, "I tell myself, 'This is the last one.' But then we start rehearsing, and I just love every minute of it. So then I tell myself, 'You know you love this, so stop telling yourself you're not going to do it next year.' This happens every year."


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