"Le Corsaire", "La Bayadere", "Don Quixote"
Bolshoi Ballet
London Coliseum
London, England
July 30 to August 15, 2007
by John Percival
copyright ©2007 by John Percival
Here's a surprise: a London season of the Bolshoi Ballet presented by the Hochhauser management without a single "Swan Lake" -- unprecedented and most welcome. The three-week season contained three premieres. At the time of writing we still await new productions by Christopher Wheeldon and Twyla Tharp, but the run opened triumphantly with the new version of "Le Corsaire" premiered only a few weeks earlier. (Why, I wonder, does this get known under a French title when the original inspiration was an English poem by Lord Byron?) You've probably heard that artistic director Alexei Ratmansky, aided by ballet master Yuri Burlaka, relied upon the archives at Harvard University to restore more than we usually see of Petipa's authentic old choreography and has filled that in with pastiche which I found attractively convincing. He also restored the intended running order, which helps make a more logical story than usual - although some of our critics said they couldn't follow it. Even after cutting out long mime scenes, the show runs to almost three and a half hours, but doesn't feel too long to me.
I like especially the lovely big treatment of the Jardin Anime sequence: absolutely filling the stage with marvelous classical dancing. Also very fine is the Grand Pas des Eventails in Act 3, where I believe Petipa solos are set in a framework by Ratmansky that matches perfectly. The shipwreck rightly goes back to its original position at the end of the ballet, and is done bigger and more vividly than I have seen before (although with some defects on the London opening night). The character of Ali does not appear, and is not missed, so the big dance for Medora and Conrad reverts to its first pas de deux form.
The company is in great condition; congratulations must go to its artistic directors in the last ten years, Alexei Fadeyechev, Boris Akimov (who remains as a coach) and Ratmansky. Three ballerinas take turns as the heroine Medora, so far I've seen two and found Svetlana Zakharova a little brash on opening night, but she is highly proficient and most of the audience clearly adored her. I enjoyed the lovely Maria Alexandrova better. Yekaterina Shipulina, deliciously charming, and the notably lively Anstasia Yatsenko were both good as her rival Gulnare, who in this version is given a happy ending, progressing from slave to new wife of the Pasha.
Denis Matvienko and Nikolai Tsiskaridze both take the title role with tremendous panache; this pirate chief in the present treatment has to be rescued from death by the womenfolk, but does rightly seem a natural leader. Among the many other solo roles, young Ivan Vasiliev's London debut in the Pas des Esclaves introduced a performer of impressive jumps and turns, even if his short build may prove limiting. And it was good to see dazzling young Natalia Osipova dancing so joyfully although given only a brief solo as an Odalisque.
Distressing, after such a good production, that the next show was Yuri Grigorovich's dreary version of "La Bayadere". However, the gorgeous Svetlana Lunkina as Nikiya, Osipova as Gamzatti and Matvienko as Solor do more to make the staging acceptable than it deserves, and the Kingdom of Shades scene (with its impressive double ramp) is admirably danced by all.
We have admired Alexei Fadeyechev's fine staging of "Don Quixote" in former years, and you could hardly hope for a more exhilarating performance than the 21-year-old Osipova and 18-year-old Vasiliev provide in the leads. Both of them leap, spin and whiz around the stage with incredible flair and are obviously enjoying their roles tremendously. No, these are not, as some seem to think, the definitive accounts of all time (does nobody else remember Maximova, Plisetskaya, Aldous, Guillem, Vladimir Vasiliev — no relation, Nureyev, LeRiche etc., but it's good to think that two newcomers are already so good and could get even better in presenting rounded characters. Ekaterina Shipulina is absolutely radiant as Queen of the Dryads, and the only weak link I found throughout was a somewhat unfunny comic rival suitor Gamache.
