Pennsylvania Ballet: George Balanchine's The Nutcracker

Pennsylvania Ballet presents the D.C. premiere of George Balanchine's The Nutcracker™ featuring magnificent new sets and lavish costumes. The Philadelphia Inquirer says this "dressed-up Nutcracker dazzles."

* Nov 24 - 29, 2009
* Opera House
* $47.00 - $150.00

New York City Ballet

New York City Ballet performs two programs of mixed repertory with works by Balanchine, Martins, and Robbins, including Mozartiana, Les Gentilhommes, Dances at a Gathering, and more.

* Dec 9 - 13, 2009
* Opera House
* $29.00 - $99.00

American Ballet Theatre

American Ballet Theatre, "one of the most beautiful sights in dance" (New York Post), dances a program of mixed repertory and a full-length ballet to be announced at a later date.

* Jan 26 - 31, 2010
* Opera House
* $29.00 - $99.00

Mariinsky Ballet

Russia's world-renowned Mariinsky Ballet returns to perform Konstantin Sergeyev's 1952 version of the full-length staging of the beloved fairy tale ballet, The Sleeping Beauty.

* Feb 9 - 14, 2010
* Opera House
* $47.00 - $135.00

Bolshoi Ballet

Bolshoi Ballet performs former director Yuri Grigorovich's Spartacus, a "cinematically paced adventure yarn" (The New York Times) that showcases "a great company at the absolute peak of its form" (The Telegraph).

* Feb 16 - 21, 2010
* Opera House
* $47.00 - $135.00

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, "one of the most courageous projects in ballet today" (The New York Times), presents two mixed repertory programs, including Balanchine's Haieff Divertimento and Robbins's Afternoon of a Faun.

* Mar 3 - 7, 2010
* Eisenhower Theater
* $29.00 - $84.00

Ballet Across America II

The successful Ballet Across America returns, featuring Morphoses, Houston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, Ballet Arizona, Tulsa Ballet, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, The Joffrey Ballet, and North Carolina Dance Theatre.

* Jun 15 - 20, 2010
* Opera House
* $29.00 - $79.00

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Bolshoi Ballet, Mariinsky Ballet visit Kennedy Center
By Lisa Traiger
Friday, February 5, 2010



While lobby conversation at the Kennedy Center may focus on pointe work and pirouettes when a pair of Russian ballet companies come to Washington this month, their works say as much about politics as they do about artistry.

The Mariinsky Ballet (formerly the Kirov) opens its Kennedy Center run Tuesday with the classic Russian ballet "The Sleeping Beauty," and the Bolshoi Ballet, which arrives later in the month, will stage the Soviet-era work "Spartacus."

Marat Daukayev, a former Kirov dancer and deputy artistic director of the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Northeast Washington, ranks "The Sleeping Beauty" as "the classic of the classics," above even "Swan Lake." The ballet was created by Marius Petipa in 1890 to a score by Tchaikovsky.

The Mariinsky Ballet is staging a 1952 version by Konstantin Sergeyev. "The overall performance," Daukayev says, "is softer than the original Petipa," with more dancing and less mime and static tableaux. But beyond the artistic elements, the ballet can be seen as a three-act political advertisement.

"When you look at the politics of its creation," says District-based dance critic Alexandra Tomalonis, "it was deliberately so to show that Czar Alexander [III] was the equivalent of Louis XIV," who ruled the French empire in the 17th century and is known as the father of classical ballet.

"Spartacus," too, wears its politics on its sleeve. Choreographed by Yuri Grigorovich in 1968, the story of a young slave who leads a revolt against Emperor Crassus and his Roman army becomes a stand-in for the 1917 Russian Revolution. "The Soviets probably just assumed that the people would think their Russian government was the good guy, rising up against the corrupt, aristocratic rule of the monarchy," says Tomalonis, who leads the Ballets 360 lecture program at the Kennedy Center. " 'Spartacus' is the populist story of all populist stories."

Grigorovich broke ground with his ballets for the Bolshoi. He did away with mime passages and imbued the steps with meaning. "This was a new way of storytelling in ballet, a new form for a new time," Tomalonis says. "He uses grand gestures, and it is all about the men. You can see that he gets his plastique from Soviet sculpture of the period, and the poses are incredible. It is a conscious work of art."

In Russia, ballet has always captured the nation's imagination. "Ballet was truth. Ballet was meant to inspire and to move you, to reach you," Tomalonis notes. And, yet, he adds, "in the end it's all about politics."

Traiger is a freelance writer.

Bolshoi Ballet Feb. 16-21. Also at the Kennedy Center.

Bolshoi Ballet at the Kennedy Center

Feb 16 - 21, 2010

Spartacus

Choreography: Yuri Grigorovich
Music: Aram Khachaturian
Conductor: Pavel Sorokin

Casting

February 16, Tue. 7:30 PM
Spartacus: Ivan Vasiliev
Crassus: Alexander Volchkov
Phrygia: Nina Kaptsova
Aegina: Maria Allash

February 17, Wed. 7:30 PM
Spartacus: Pavel Dmitrichenko
Crassus: Yuri Baranov
Phrygia: Anna Nikulina
Aegina: Maria Alexandrova

February 18, Thu. 7:30 PM
Spartacus: Rubin Muradyan*
Crassus: Andrey Merkuriev
Phrygia: Mariana Ryzhkina
Aegina: Ekaterina Krysanova

February 19, Fri. 7:30 PM
Spartacus: Ivan Vasiliev
Crassus: Alexander Volchkov
Phrygia: Nina Kaptsova
Aegina: Maria Allash

February 20, Sat. 1:30 PM
Spartacus: Pavel Dmitrichenko
Crassus: Yuri Baranov
Phrygia: Anna Nikulina
Aegina: Maria Alexandrova

February 20, Sat. 7:30 PM
Spartacus: Rubin Muradyan*
Crassus: Andrey Merkuriev
Phrygia: Mariana Ryzhkina
Aegina: Ekaterina Krysanova

February 21, Sun. 1:30 PM
Spartacus: Pavel Dmitrichenko
Crassus: Yuri Baranov
Phrygia: Anna Nikulina
Aegina: Maria Alexandrova

*Rubin Muradyan is a soloist with Spendiarov Opera and Ballet Theatre.
Winner of the international ballet competition "Ballet Youth of the World" held in Sochi.

Why "Sartacus" endures?

World’s most durable ballets are such because of outstanding choreography, but also because they are based on a story that speaks of universal values. And what a better story than that of Spartacus, the story that inspired great works of literature and film. What is more, this is not a fairy tale, voice of Spartacus speaks to us across the two millennium, loud and clear.

Celebrated Russian choreographer and ballet master Yuri Grigorovich would go into annals of art history for his “Spartacus”. And also because in this production he broke clean with cannons of classical ballet where male dancer’s primary task was to support and showcase a ballerina. Grigorovich ballets in general and “Spartacus” in particular explores, exploits and celebrates man’s physical prowess, it shows how human animal can fly.

.......

“Spartacus” keeps you on edge of your seat throughout its entire length. It is more of a great show (in the best meaning of this word), than a traditional ballet. It's all there - goose stepping Roman legions, seductively semi-clad courtesans, gladiatorial combats and eternal ideal of womanhood – a woman who follows her man to the edge of the Earth.

Octavia

Trivia

"Spartacus" premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, in 1968. The original cast:

Spartacus: Vladimir Vasiliev
Crassus: Andris Liepa
Phrygia: Ekaterina Maximova
Aegina: Nina Timofeeva

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Bolshoi Ballet star Ivan Vasiliev brings depth, emotion to 'Spartacus'

By Sarah Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 18, 2010



The last time I saw the Bolshoi Ballet's Ivan Vasiliev, he was a bouncy 18-year-old rookie who memorably lit the stage on fire as Basilio in a weekend matinee of "Don Quixote." Now, having just turned 21, he is the venerable Moscow institution's opening-night hero in the title role of "Spartacus," believably commanding ranks of gladiators -- and our own hearts.

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I bring up Vasiliev's age because I could hardly believe that the virile, seething Spartacus who unleashed a cauldron of emotion Tuesday at the Kennedy Center was the same young whiz who thrilled the crowd on pyrotechnics alone in 2007. It's rare to see such a young dancer labor over the dramatic dimensions of a role when simply getting the physical demands under control is a hefty task. But Vasiliev demonstrated, movingly, that he has ambitions beyond being the troupe's go-to dynamo.

Vasiliev is also slated to dance Thursday night and Sunday afternoon. But this ballet does not rest entirely on the efforts of its star. Four leading dancers bear nearly equal importance to the plot. In addition to Spartacus, the Thracian captive who whips up a revolt, there is his Roman nemesis and captor Crassus (on Tuesday, the noble-looking but wonderfully decadent Alexander Volchkov); Crassus's black-hearted concubine Aegina (cruel charmer Maria Allash), and Spartacus's teary wife Phrygia, also enslaved (Nina Kaptsova, lovely but not as earthbound as the others -- she seemed to have joined them from a colony of water nymphs). As impressive as they were individually, Vasiliev and Kaptsova were not a physically well-matched pair, however; he is a smallish dancer, she is long-stemmed, and he lifted her with more than a trace of effort.



No matter the casting -- ballet lovers, Russophiles and fans of the bright, unsubtle pageantry in Aram Khachaturian's music would do well to catch any performance before the run closes on Sunday. It's been 35 years since the Bolshoi last brought "Spartacus" to the Opera House, an absurdly long time to go without its miniskirted Roman soldiers forming cheerleader pyramids with their spears and shields. Those who remember it say that back then there was a lot more scenery-chewing. I wouldn't know, but the current production strikes an effective balance between juicy melodrama -- not too schmaltzy, not too dry -- and gold-standard ballet finesse to curl your toes.

It's the quintessential Bolshoi ballet, what one company representative described to me as their " 'Swan Lake' of the 20th century." Former Bolshoi director Yuri Grigorovich created it in 1968, one of the earliest of his many ballets and remarkable, at the time, for its spare, rugged decor, grandiosity of feeling and fluid pacing. Those attributes still set it apart. The elements of Hollywood camp -- heavy eye makeup for all, bangles for the Romans -- are just fun: You half-expect Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to stroll on.

The ancient world meets the Sputnik age here -- bare stone walls, stylized costumes that suggest togas and armor. It's a fitting frame for the linear neoclassical ballet style that Grigorovich deploys so well. At times the women, especially, seem to have jumped off a Grecian urn -- or stepped out of a Balanchine ballet. Yet while much of the ballet technique is modernized and streamlined, something you rarely see in a full-length story ballet, the dancers still deliver that bighearted Bolshoi expressiveness. The result is a work with a fresh, sharp edge as well as a dramatic and emotional punch.

The decor also allows for plenty of open space for clashing testosterone. The ballet launches with a crisscrossing melee of high-kicking sword-bearers -- Roman Rockettes, if you will. With Grigorovich's clever traffic management, you can believe the interweaving lines of male dancers represent legions of warriors. He's just as adept at crafting sweeping solos, and each leading dancer has ample opportunity to establish character and state of mind. Groups, too, have their own style. The Romans dance differently from the gladiators; they are blockier, more formal, while the enslaved killers move in a gutsier, freer way.

Grigorovich left the Bolshoi in 1995 but returned to oversee his ballets two years ago, after the death of his wife, the former ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova. Now 83, crowned with thick white hair, he was in the audience Tuesday and joined the dancers onstage for a flood of applause. Ballet manners are always lovely to see, and in a show of the best of them, during his own standing ovation Vasiliev stepped back to clap for the rest of the cast, and then saluted conductor Pavel Sorokin and the orchestra. Their vivid account of the Khachaturian score helped power the ballet through a mightily entertaining three hours. "Spartacus," you hold me captive.