Dance

...It was tastefully crafted though scarcely memorable, and Dianne Bell was sensuously taut with Nureyev...

...His gentle nature is assaulted by physical illness, epilepsy, murderous pursuit by Rogozhin...

...Panov's "Idiot" is a lavish spectacle, operatic in its density of plot—three acts and sixteen scenes—and dramatic in its extensive use of mime...

...Panov has announced that he is already thinking of'' War and Peace'' as the subject of his next ballet...

...Despite Evdokimova's finely phrased mythical bird, the ballet never established itself...

...A full evening of this overacting however has the peculiar ability to lose its nineteenth century quality and become almost, but not quite, normal...

...Nureyev has eliminated some of the more difficult moves, such as the one-legged balance while supporting the ballerina on his own hip, that he choreographed for his younger abilities...

...He does, but with a considerable loss in line...

...Panov's is essentially a Soviet ballet, mounted in the West with the best of intentions but as out of touch with contemporary sensibility as is the whole socialist realist esthetic...

...Her turns are crisp, the bearing noble, and her overall presentation glittering...

...she is a lyrical, romantic dancer of special grace...

...The "Snowflakes" divertissement is by far the most effective and owes much to Vainonen's Kirov setting of the scene...

...There is however an unpleasant driven quality to his dancing which can look like ebullience but in essence is a frantic rush to get all of the steps in, no matter how untidily...

...eventually he ends in a hallucinatory state of nervous collapse, swinging from the rope of a huge bell as the world is consumed in flames...

...His physical skills are less than they once were, but the loss has little effect when he is projecting an essentially mime role...

...Panov sees the Dostoyevsky story as a struggle for the soul of Russia between a barren materialist society and people like himself, possessed by religious conviction and fervor...

...Nureyev's "The Nutcracker" is a Freudian interpretation of the familiar child's story and has old Drosselmeyer transformed into the young prince, friends and relatives into bats, and Christmas Eve into a coming-of-age ritual...

...Galina Panova demonstrated her stature as a world class dancer in everything that she did, especially as Miss Julie in Birgit Cullberg's ballet of the same name...

...DON McDONAGH Commonweal: 468...

...The latest and most elaborate is "The Idiot," based on the Dostoyevsky novel and seen first in 29 August 1980: 467 the United States during the company's July season at New York's Metropolitan Opera House...

...The leer is broadened to a grimace, the smile slashes into a savage rictus, and the glance emerges as an intense stare...

...Nureyev partnered Eva Evdokimova as Clara...

...The music simply does not support such an interpretation, and the best parts of the production are those pure dance episodes that stud its two acts...

...but he still manages to project considerable intensity to his audience...

...They may have left the system but the system has not left them...

...Rudolf Nureyev as the "idiot" Prince Myshkin, in fact a "clown of God," emerges with considerable honor from this overblown production...

...But ' 'The Idiot'' is, in truth, a production that the officially godless Bolshoi or Kirov, Panov's own former company, could quite happily have mounted...

...It was a particular pleasure to see Robert Blankshine, a former Joffrey dancer, in the cleanly danced "Pastorale" variation with Janet Popelski and Linda Thorp...

...The seven couples departed from the stylish social dance in a series of "balletic" episodes that did not, however, develop the tango in any organic way...

...They returned to the keystone back bends and crouched walks of the original...

...The company's settings, ordinarily quite sumptuous, were a bit hazy and impressionistic in complete contrast to the firm hard-edged originals of Sven Erixon's...

...The program included the Don Quixote Pas de Deux, or rather Panov's version of it which is remote from the original and emerged as a tasteless show piece...

...The bellrope scene was actually used in the Bolshoi's "Ivan the Terrible...

...The final program consisted of a mixed bill featuring a new work from Hans van Manen, "Five Tangos...

...The company itself has some fine dancers but, despite its outstanding production capabilities, is less than world class technically...

...John Cranko's "The Firebird" never settled its basic tonality as either parody of the original Fokine production or a reinterpretation...

...Their interpretation, of course, would stress the capitalist Rogozhin's ravenous greed and moral terpitude—and yet would still be perfectly consistent with what appears here on the stage...

...They would present the ballet with the same elaborate production values and dance it as melodramatically, even do so with a shade more conviction than can most of the members of the Berlin Ballet, who have been tainted with the twentieth century...

...Valery Panov, who was persecuted for a year and a half after he applied for permission to emigrate six years ago, has found a niche for himself as artistic director of the Berlin Ballet and in the past three years has choreographed three productions for them...

...His portrayal of Myshkin is that of a childlike innocent adrift in a conniving world, represented most forcefully by Rogozhin...

...Panov's own brooding intensity is given full rein in the part of Rogozhin, but his concept of acting is more akin to the cartoon aspects of melodrama than to the subtler nuances of contemporary stagecraft...

...It is actually necessary to read two densely printed pages of program notes to grasp the narrative, which is advanced for the most part by unimaginably pedestrian choreography...