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Steps Alone Don't...

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre
Filene  Center
Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts
Vienna, Virginia
August 21, 2007

by George Jackson
copyright 2007 by George Jackson

Ballet isn’t just steps, no matter who said so. Classical dancing is also bodies, grooming and even hairdos. Personality and manners count. Accused of being elitist, of being rooted in obsolete class distinctions and wrapped in the cobwebs of history, ballet has survived. The reason is its remarkable capacity to evolve and yet conserve core values. It has adapted technically and stylistically to a changing world while remaining true to the principles of movement symmetry, clarity, balance and all the other essential traits. These standards, even when not expressed overtly, are embedded in ballet like a genetic code that registers whenever a viewer’s eye probes.

Mixed bag from Moscow

“Elsinore”, “Class Concert”, “In the Upper Room”, “The Bright Stream”
Moscow Bolshoi Ballet
London Coliseum
London, England
13 – 18 August, 2007

by John Percival
copyright ©2007 by John Percival

A triple bill with revivals of works by Asaf Messerer and Twyla Tharp framing a Christopher Wheeldon premiere — that sounded like an interesting programme amid the evening-long productions that made up (as reported last week) the rest of the Bolshoi Ballet's London season. Sadly, I found two of the works profoundly depressing. In Moscow, Wheeldon called his new ballet “ Misericordes” which gave a better idea of what to expect than the title “Elsinore” under which it reached us. Presumably the lone figure of Dmitri Gudanov prowling around, mostly at the back of the stage, is meant to suggest Hamlet (although wearing pale grey, not Shakespeare's “customary suits of solemn black”), but what he and the four supporting couples had to do with the play I really cannot see. Nor, come to that, did the choreography seem to me related to Arvo Part's Symphony No 3 except that both finished about the same time — having started quite separately. Some very able dancers were involved, twisting their arms and stretching their legs, but rumour has it that they couldn't follow what Wheeldon was driving at, and I can't blame them. The score is reportedly based on Part's studies of medieval music, but the ballet hardly suggests that period. I fear that Wheeldon will need to rise well above this if his own new company is to succeed.

McIntyre Projected

Trey McIntyre Project
Filene Center
Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts
Vienna, Virginia
August 7, 2007

by George Jackson
copyright ©2007 by George Jackson

Eleven dancers are in McIntyre’s summer Project but even one of them alone on stage projects amply throughout Wolf Trap’s big pavilion and beyond to people sitting on the sloping lawns. Some of the reasons for this are McIntyre’s doing. He chooses his dancers for their distinctive features and not merely for technique. He also has his lighting designers help with crescendos and diminuendos when the choreography itself doesn’t quite suffice. That the pavilion — despite the spread of its seating areas and the dimensions of its stage — does not belittle the human figure is due to its architects. What a pity that dance isn’t presented as often now as when Mrs. Shouse opened the park in 1971!

The Bolshoi in London

"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.

Ashton in Paris

“La Fille mal gardée”
Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris
Palais Garnier
Paris,  France
June 25 and 26, 2007

by David Vaughan
copyright ©2007 by David Vaughan

It has taken a while for the work of Frederick Ashton to gain a foothold at the Ballet of the Paris Opéra. When Rudolf Nureyev first took over the company, in the early 80s, he wanted to present “La Fille mal gardée.” There was a contretemps of some kind, and Ashton withdrew permission. Instead, the company took on the version recently staged in Geneva by Heinz Spoerli. When “Rhapsody” entered the repertory briefly, in 1996, it didn’t make much of an impression. Then, in 2004, someone had the bright idea of putting on an “Entente Cordiale” gala, with members of the Paris company partnering dancers from the Royal Ballet—Laurent Hilaire with Darcey Bussell in Ashton’s “Awakening” pas de deux from “The Sleeping Beauty,” Manuel Legris with Leanne Benjamin in the “Thaïs” pas de deux, among others. The Royal Ballet itself had a big success with “A Month in the Country” the last time it appeared in Paris.