Tempi fugit

"Giselle"
Mariinsky Ballet
Opera House
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
February 12, 2011 (evening)

by Alexandra Tomalonis
copyright 2011 by Alexandra Tomalonis

Uliana Lopatkina danced Giselle Saturday night in the Mariinsky Ballet's week-long run of the 19th century Romantic classic. it was a full house, and an expectant one; Lopatkina is the company's senior ballerina and, many feel, its finest. In many ways, Lopatkina did not disappoint. Her dancing was exquisite: poetic, technically flawless and beautifully phrased and mimed. And yet it was so carefully thought through, it was as though Lopatkina were giving a private performance for herself.

The lugubrious tempi set by conductor Alexei Repnikov for the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra did not help. The ballet opened at a fairly (and appropriately) brisk tempo, but at the first big act one villagers' dance, the brakes were put on, and the orchestra slowed to a crawl, where it remained for the rest of the performance. There were a few times when the music was slowed even further a few counts into one of Lopakina's solos.

The extreme slowness, the languid perfection, all turned attention away from Giselle, the peasant girl who makes the mistake of falling in love with the tall, dark handsome stranger (Danil Korsuntsev) who happens to be a Count in disguised, and one with a fiancée, to boot. Yet Lopatkina had begun the ballet with a beautiful detail. In Giselle's first solo, when she first peaks out of her cottage and bounds around the stage, Lopatkina turned her head slightly from side to side, making it clear that this was Giselle looking for Albrecht, not a ballerina showing off. Later in the act, when Giselle's mother tells her daughter to be careful and not dance too much or she will die and become a Wili, Lopatkina's reaction made the mime scene (cut long ago) unnecessary. Her shiver, the way she seemed, for a moment, to already be a ghost girl, got the point across. The mother's scene was a reminder, not the telling of a tale.

Lopatkina's second act was beautifully danced, though less detailed. The second act was beautifully danced by everyone. Ekaterina Kondaurova's Myrtha was absolutely gorgeous, strong and imperious, and her extremely slow, perfect bourrées at the beginning of the act made her seem to float across the stage.  Korsuntsev, a very sweet and sympathetic Albrecht, was not only a superb partner, but a fine and noble dancer, with very clean and polished landings.

The Maryinsky corps is the company's heart, and while the patterns were, as always, lovely, the dancers were not well arranged, giving the picket fence effect rather than that of a pearl necklace when they were in a line. The peasant pas de deux dancers were not what one usually sees at the Maryinsky; one saw the schooling, but not ideal bodies nor fine technique. This "Giselle" was a much better production than the company's "Le Corsaire" of a few seasons ago, but the company is still far from its glory days.