Bolshoi Ballet’s La Bayadère at the Phoenix – Maggie Watson reviews

Bolshoi Ballet: La Bayadère, transmitted live to the Phoenix Cinema, Oxford. 27 January 2013

Glamorous and spectacular, the Bolshoi Ballet’s La Bayadère is both exciting and emotive. On Sunday, the easy and graceful style of Vladislav Lantratov (Solor) was elegant and sometimes thrilling. Maria Alexandrova, a very fine dancer, made Gamzatti’s jealousy of Nikia understandable and dramatically logical, and Svetlana Zakharova conveyed the full range of emotions, from love and happiness through revulsion at the Brahmin’s advances to despair at betrayal. Zakharova was exceptionally lyrical in the third act, although she seemed just a little tense in the variation with the shawl, which might have gone better for her. The corps de ballet dancers were impeccably correct, if perhaps a little rigid, as the Shades, gleaming in the blackness that made them seem to float on air as they glided down the ramp.

The “elephant in the room”, of course was the acid attack on Sergei Filin less than a fortnight ago.

 

Royal Ballet’s The Nutcracker broadcast – Maggie Watson reviews

Royal Ballet Nutcracker, broadcast live to the Phoenix Cinema, Oxford. Thursday 13 December 2012

This was the most enjoyable ROH – to- cinema transmission that I’ve seen. The children among the regular ballet audience gave the auditorium the buzz that’s sometimes lacking, and it was fun to be able to see detailed acting in the party scene close-up (not to mention Drosselmeyer’s magic tricks, which for the slightly myopic work better on screen than from the back of the Amphitheatre).

 

Le Corsaire live from Moscow at the Phoenix – Maggie Watson reviews

Le Corsaire:  Bolshoi Ballet, live from Moscow to the Oxford Phoenix , 12 March 2012

Le Corsaire has both a complicated story and a complicated history.  Although based on Byron’s poem, which sprang from his travels and experiences at a particular historical moment, and first performed in Russia at a time when the empire was acutely concerned with developments in the near east, I felt that the context of this production was too vague to tell the story well, and this detracted from its emotional impact.  I found it hard to see how the conflicts between the Greeks, the Turks and the pirates, essential to the momentum of the plot, fitted together, and without clarity around those relationships it was reduced to an improbable story of two lovers who encountered a number of highly confusing difficulties.

I admired the technically magnificent performances of the principles, although, for myself, I don’t care for the way that Bolshoi dancers hold their arms and use their hands, and I was very unhappy about the extra flick of the wrists that some seem to favour as they hit a pose or the peak of a jump.

There certainly were times when the dancing showed conviction and sincerity, and I loved the set corps de ballet piece for the jardin animé, and the first Odalisque solo (the one in which she uses a series of brisés to fly across the stage).  However, I was disappointed by what I felt to be a lack of emotional tension between Conrad (Ruslan Skvortsov) and Medora (Svetlana Lunkina), particularly in the grand pas de deux with which we are all so familiar.  Gulnare (Nina Kaptsova) gave a spirited performance, but I did not believe that she really loved the Pasha, as the libretto flashed up on the screen before the trick wedding stated.

The production was based on the 1899 Petipa staging, with some costumes beautifully reconstructed from the original designs, however, to my mind it wasn’t danced in the style of a nineteenth century ballet;  the performances seemed very twentieth century, with very high extensions and the kind of “fireworks” that I associate with the Soviets.  The styles of sets and staging were variable:  in particular, I thought that the cave and the shipwreck might have been from Disney.  Perhaps this is due to the risk inherent in any recreation, which is the unconscious tendency to stamp it with our own times:  in this case I think it resulted in unintentional pastiche.

Much of the music was familiar to me, although I had never seen this ballet before, and while some is charming, the quality is inconsistent, and the artistic cohesion of the ballet wasn’t helped by the Bolshoi tradition of allowing dancers to take lengthy reverences during the performances.  Seeing this production helped me to understand why Fokine believed that ballet needed to be reformed.

Maggie