High Honors for Heat and Light
The Kirov Ballet's ensemble took high honors in its all-Michel Fokine program over the weekend. The women were all but unsurpassable in "Chopiniana," and both women and men gave as much heat and light to "Scheherazade" as the cramped City Center stage could support. The "Chopiniana" corps was even better than it has been in the recent past — a little less synchronized and neatly regimented, more susceptible to musical rubato.
On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, the very young Daria Vasnetsova danced the ballerina lead in "Chopiniana." Over the past year I've seen her dance classical solos in Russia, where she seemed like just another one of those high-kicking tricksters the Kirov has been churning out. Here she was completely different: No movement she made ever seemed forced or generic. In both performances on Saturday and again on Sunday, another very young dancer, Yulia Bolshakova, danced the Prelude, the most mysterious and elusive of the solos. Ms. Bolshakova was too literal in showing us the aural affinities of this particular sylph, but the dancer's enthusiasm was engaging. Both Ms. Vasnetsova's and Ms. Bolshakova's bodies were lovely models of responsiveness, avoiding the triteness that can come from indiscriminate youthful facility.
Ekaterina Osmolkina is one of many talented young Kirov dancers who have been turned by overwork into something resembling utility performers. In New York, though, Ms. Osmolkina has seemed more rested and more mentally focused. She polished the imagery in her "Paquita" solo last week, and floated through her "Chopiniana" Mazurka on Saturday night. Igor Kolb lacked spiritual intensity dancing opposite Ms. Osmolkina in the role of the Poet. In addition, his plié was perfunctory rather than soft and whispering. In the afternoon performance, Danila Korsuntsev demonstrated a physicality somewhere between rangy and willowy, and he was pleasantly attentive to Ms. Vasnetsova. On Sunday afternoon, Evgeni Ivanchenko was perhaps the best of all three Poets. He had a way of letting his working leg spring upward in jumps, so that gravity was denied but space was not pummeled.
The rose as symbol and metaphor of the romantic, social, and sexual exhilaration of a young woman returning from her first ball is the impetus behind Fokine's "Le Spectre de la Rose."
The Rose was created in 1911 by Nijinsky, whose stocky body seemed to his audiences capable of metamorphosing into every kind of substance and essence, but the complexity and chiaroscuro of the role were not visible at City Center. Both Anton Korsakov, who danced it Saturday afternoon, and Leonid Sarafanov, who danced it Saturday night and Sunday matinee, were modern, overly hybridized Roses, without fragrance or erotic charge. They each looked not so much androgynous as disconcertingly prepubescent. But by Mr. Sarafanov's second performance, I no longer expected to see "Spectre" as it was conceived by Fokine; instead, Mr. Sarafanov's puckish, puppyish, and now more fluidly danced performance manifested its own appeal.
Two vastly different interpretations of the "Dying Swan" solo were on offer: Uliana Lopatkina's Swan was neither fighting nor succumbing to death so much as imperturbably distanced from it. Diana Vishneva is very new to the role and, perhaps to distinguish her performance from Ms. Lopatkina's, was more reliant on externalized melodrama.
The last time I saw the Kirov perform "Scheherazade" was at Covent Garden in 2000, when they looked magnificent in it. Even with a reduced cast, the Kirov's performance at City Center looked like a tempest in a teapot, particularly during Fokine's epic bacchanal, with the dancers visibly apprehensive about tripping or colliding with each other. On Sunday afternoon, Igor Zelensky made a surprise appearance as the Golden Slave. He was in great shape, wonderfully leonine. Valery Gergiev also alighted at City Center on Sunday to conduct the day's "Scheherazade." Maestro Gergiev gave expansive shape to the long and gripping overture, and his tempi for the dancers were reasonable.
