Sparkling Streams

“The Bright Stream”
American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House
New York, NY
June 11, 2011

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2011 by Leigh Witchel

Alexei Ratmansky has a gift for finding the best in dancers, even in roles they didn’t create. Two casts of “The Bright Stream” could not be more different and both were successful.

In the opening night cast, Gillian Murphy’s ballerina was a sister to Paloma Herrera’s Zina. Natalia Osipova’s ballerina is not so humble; she’s the star of the Caucasus. As Osipova plays her, the ballerina has a kind heart, but – like Osipova – she’s still a bête de scène. Her instinctive hunger for the limelight makes her a little bit dangerous even at her most benign. It shows in her dancing. Murphy and Herrera danced their duets so similarly it seemed the only difference between them was their hair color. Osipova could not bring herself into synchrony with Xiomara Reyes even if she tried.

Ivan Vasiliev did his virile Soviet quarterhorse act and thrilled the audience – including Mikhail Baryshnikov – with manège after manège of post-Misha technique – triple craziness and jumps without names. But no one in this cast was to be outdone.  Osipova came flying out in a lunatic circuit of split leaps seemingly powered by jet fuel. 

Daniil Simkin got his in a perfectly timed comic send-up of the Sylph in Bugs Bunny drag. Where David Hallberg was funny because he was so tall, Simkin is small and light enough that he has to find a way to make his ballerina an obvious guy. He does it by using his weight; all of his accents clunked right down to the floor.  But he’s a show-off too – there was one prodigious triple pirouette on pointe. By the end of all the hyperactive trickery it was obvious that Reyes would have to up her game also, so she wound up and whacked  out a series of fierce double fouettes.

The older unfaithful dacha dwellers, Clinton Luckett and Susan Jones, also boasted marvelous timing. Jones is short and round, Luckett is tall and weedy, so they ran with the opportunity for physical comedy. With the room the ballet gives for personal touches and star turns, any cast the company fields can be worth seeing.

copyright © 2011 by Leigh Witchel

Top: Photo by Gene Schiavone, Natalia Osipova and Daniil Simkin in “The Bright Stream.”
Bottom: Photo by Rosalie O’Connor, Xiomara Reyes in “The Bright Stream.”