Through the Eyes of a Dancer: Selected Writings

Kirov Classics Hit and Miss

| 211 Kirov Classics Hit and Miss Review, Village Voice, July 23, 2002 Although it was the Bolshoi’s fierce abandon that made me fall in love with Russian ballet , the Kirov captured my imagination with its ethereal port de bras. Perhaps because of my high expectations, I came down hard on the company in this review. On the other hand, ballet critics respect Marius Petipa so much that I kind of enjoyed pointing out the boring aspects of this supposedly authentic Bayadère. Note: This was at the height of Svetlana Zakharova’s international career, but just at the beginning of Diana Vishneva ’s. The first two productions of The Kirov (Mariinsky) Ballet at the Lincoln Center Festival elicited opposite responses. They are both more than a century old, have lavish sets and costumes, and feature spectacularly limpid dancing from the female lead. But Swan Lake hit the spot, while La Bayadère, claiming to replicate the 1900 version, misfired. On Thursday night, Svetlana Zakharova played the dual role of Odette/ Odile in Swan Lake, leaving both the audience and her prince, Danila Korsuntsev , breathless. For all the times he placed his hand on his heart as one stricken with love, he was actually convincing, partly because she was so dazzling. Arms flailing delicately behind her, legs shimmering in the bourr ées, her Odette personified a fugitive bird with human qualities (or is it vice versa?). Every arabesque, every split leap seemed a cry for freedom from a creature trapped in an evil spell. In the central adagio with Prince Siegfried, her leg lifted into passé and unfolded to the back like a time-lapse sequence of a flower blooming. An enthralled quiet blanketed the audience. Odette’s poignance was balanced by the manic Jester, danced with gusto by Dmitri Zavalishin, who presided over the first and third acts. Without his revelry those acts would have been merely grandiose. But he added wit, nonstop mischief, and astounding gyroscopic turns. In this Soviet version of Swan Lake, staged by Konstantin Sergeyev (after Petipa) in the sixties, a small flock of eight black swans infiltrates the corps of twenty-four white swans in the fourth act—a nice touch. And the Soviets insured a happy ending: the Prince, in a battle with the vulture-like sorcerer Rothbart (Andrei Ivanov), rips off a wing, leaving him to writhe on the floor. The moment Rothbart collapses, Odette rises up to be united with her true love. The Tchaikovsky music, conducted by Boris Gruzin and played by the Kirov Ballet Orchestra, seemed heaven-sent throughout. 212 | Through the Eyes of a Dancer La Bayadère was strong on pageantry and weak on choreography. The heart of the performance on Tuesday was Diana Vishneva’s Nikiya, a temple dancer, or bayadère. Her expansive rib cage and pinched lower back gave her a vulnerability and almost unbearable sensitivity to her surroundings. With her high-strung expressivity, she embodied the idea that a loved one can continue to haunt after death. The Indian warrior Solor, played by Adrian Fadeyev, pursues Nikiya in the first act, but turns away when Nikiya is dying of the asp’s bite. His dancing is marked by an elegant lengthening of the back and arms, but there is a sense of restriction in his legs. He does well in a ridiculous trio in which he juggles his partnering of Nikiya’s shade (ghost) and Gamzatti (her rival) in the middle of an irrelevant celebration. During this almost four-hour ballet, women wore veils of every color attached to the ankle, hip, or back of the head. Men carried long peacock feathers or parrots.The backdrops were magnificent, from a valley bounded by storybook boulders to a Taj Mahal–type palace with lovely foliage, all in muted colors with ornate designs. The lushness of the environment contrasted with the repression of Solor’s being forced to marry someone he doesn’t love. An occasional gesture reveals the power of movement to tell a story. When the jealous High Brahmin informs the Rajah (father of Gamzatti) of the love between Solor and Nikiya, his whole body tilts as though his head is too heavy with the knowledge. Later, when Gamzatti orders the death of Nikiya, she slowly presses her palm down with a lethal force, leaving no doubt as to her effectiveness. But static staging and endless rows of people dancing standard ballet vocabulary , often returning for more when we thought they had finished...