Patched-Together Petipa

"Le Corsaire" (Le Jardin Animé, Pas des Odalisques, Pas de Deux); "Diana and Acteon" Pas de Deux; "Don Quixote" Pas de Deux; "La Bayadère" (The Kingdom of the Shades)
Kirov Ballet
City Center
New York, NY
April 8, 2008

by Susan Reiter
copyright © 2008 Susan Reiter

Following a second program that ventured into the very early twentieth century with the works of Michel Fokine, the Kirov returned to the sharply-etched classical purity of Marius Petipa's works, necessarily presented in excerpted form for this engagement on a stage whose dimensions would not accommodate their expansive full productions. Next week will offer the more contemporary side of the company -- programs of works by George Balanchine and William Forsythe -- but on this occasion we again were able to witness the latest evolution of the company's noble heritage and longstanding traditions. Except for the expansive glories of "La Bayadère," the one work repeated from the opening program, this was an evening of abrupt transitions between bits and pieces, and while the company has had a week now to acclimate itself to the cozy confines of the City Center stage, there was still a stiffness and reserve to much of the dancing -- or, at the other extreme, a tendency towards over-emphatic punctuation.

A patched-together sampling of "Le Corsaire" opened the evening. What the program identified "Le Jardin Animé." from Act Three, and the Pas De Deux, from Act Two, actually incorporated the divine "Pas Des Odalisques" from earlier in the thid act. On this occasion, the Odalisques had escaped the Pasha's harem and found their way into the garden, and Gulnare, who usually figures in the "Jardin Animé" sequence, was nowhere to be seen.

Elevated by two gorgeous, magnificently danceable selections by Delibes (familiar from Balanchine's "La Source"), the opening section and adagio of this deliquescently feminine divertissement, with four contingents of six women each, wearing pale peach tutus and bathing-cap like headgear, tracing garlands of their own in addition to the ones they carried, were necessarily cramped on this stage. To incorporate one of the sequences, the two women at the end of one line had to blithely dance into, and then back out of, the wings. But overall, the ensemble generated a decent amount of the requisite perfume, and Diana Vishneva, as Medora in a sparkly magenta tutu, danced with greater expansiveness and more relaxed phrasing than in her overly deliberate performance in "Paquita" on opening night. But she did have a few unsteady moments, early on and then during her fouettés in the coda of the Pas De Deux, which followed the Odalisques.

Compared to the heady perfume and delicate musicality with which the Kirov's women performed this challenging series of exceptional variations in 1989, when the complete "Corsaire" was seen at the Metropolitan Opera House, the current interpreters gave an acceptable, if not overwhelming, performance. Svetlana Ivanova's demure delicacy and musical spontaneity were a pleasure in the first variation, while Yana Selina delivered the second, at a brisk tempo, crisply. Nadezhda Gonchar -- a tall, strong dancer with a wonderfully clean attack, sort of the Kirov's answer to Michele Wiles -- navigated her demanding diagonal of pirouettes a bit carefully.

The familiar Pas De Deux -- in actuality, De Trois -- was inserted following the Odalisques, before the "Jardin Animé"'s conclusion (with the Odalisques added to the final moments) brought this hodge-podge to a close. Anton Korsakov, as Ali (here identified simply as "Slave") eschewed the fierce, animalistic intensity and the extreme mannerisms that are sometimes part of the role, and soared commandingly as a rather sweet, appealing subordinate. Vishneva contributed a gleaming, expansively phrased solo, and Danila Korsuntsev cut a dashing figure as Conrad, although his limited dancing was effortful.

It was a surprise to see twelve women in delicate white tunics with orange capelets at the back, stream onto the stage when the curtain rose on the "Diana and Acteon" Pas De Deux, since the program did not even list a perfunctory mention of "corps de ballet." These extremely hard-working women already have to accept that their names are hardly ever listed for the pieces in which they dance, but here (and in "Bayadere") the program failed even to acknowledge their collective existence. They set the stage for the commanding, plush Victoria Tereshkina, a formidable huntress whose powerful technique and beautifully centered phrasing were somewhat undercut by her dramatic flourishes and hard-sell presentation. Mikhail Lobukhin is clearly the company's specialist in the soaring dare-deviltry of Acteon; he performed the role at all performances of this program. It's a role that José Manuel Carreño has owned at ABT, and compared to his beefcake sensuality and heroic attack, Lobukhin seemed like an appealing juvenile trying on the part. He looked fetching in a costume that seemed to be little more than an animal-print scarf held in place with a sleek belt, and came up with some unusual, and frankly odd-looking, twisting shapes in the air.

A strangely juiceless "Don Quixote" Pas De Deux followed, with all the proper flourishes in place but very little fire or personality. Alina Somova was as blandly meticulous as she had been as Nikiya on opening night. The lithe Leonid Sarafanov provided some technical wows, but his golly-gee boyishness wears thin, and his partnering is unsteady. Their elegant costumes -- black boler0 jacket and white tights for him, a gleaming white tutu with scalloped metallic decoration for her -- avoided the by-now clichéd red-and-black look that has become de rigueur for this showpiece, and reminded us that it marks a wedding celebration. Several lovely señoritas, again uncredited in the program, made a brief appearance in the opening entrada. The only one listed was Ekaterina Osmolkina, who danced one of the flower girl solos, delivering some of the program's most fluent, accomplished and distinctive dancing.

The bare-bones look of the "Bayadère" third act, the one work carried over from the season's first program, is less of a shock the second time around, but one wishes they could have at least fashioned a ramp for the shades' entrance. As it is, they made a sadly earthbound first appearance, rather than seeming to arrive from some mysterious suspended place. (Although, given the cluttered, distractingly unattractive backdrops used for "Corsaire" and "Don Quixote," maybe the absence of scenic elements here was a blessing.)

Uliana Lopatkina's Nikiya elevated the evening with her lustrous, eloquently phrased dancing. We are clearly seeing a newly mature and deeper performer this season, one whose dancing absorbs and reflects the music (something that is unfortunately rare on the current Kirov stage) and truly makes classical dancing shimmer. Yevgeny Ivanchenko was her appropriately tall, efficient partner -- a dutiful, rather than headstrong, impassioned Solor. Among the three solo shades, one had to admire the remarkable spring with which Olesia Novikova traversed the stage in her traveling relevés, and Ekaterina Kondaurova's commanding attack in the third solo.

Photo: Leonid Sarafanov and Olesia Novikova in "Don Quixote"