On Dance
JACOBS, LAURA A.
On Dance WHERE THE KIROV DIFFERS BY LAURA A JACOBS For those of us who had never seen Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, but had pieced together an ideal from the glimpses afforded by books and films, and...
...The sloppiness of Zaklinsky and Neff was typical of the Kirov men: Hips fly open, fourth positions wash away, and even elementary enchainements don't hold together...
...By contrast, American companies, even at their best (and ABT looked tip-top this season) lean more toward abstraction—each dancer is a technically refined dot in a big pointillist picture...
...The Kirov performances I saw at Philadelphia's Mann Music Center (the tour also took the company to Washington, D. C., Los Angeles, and then on to Canada) were indeed revelatory—only not in the way I had expected...
...Only Sergei Vikharev, performing the closing night's Paquita Variations (choreographed by Marius Petipa in the 19th century), danced with a sophisticated sense of phrasing...
...And when she moves her elocution is so technically fine, such a natural gift (though I don't mean to suggest she hasn't worked for it), that it almost seems unfair to compare her with others...
...She has more velocity per pound than any of the Kirov men...
...They have their own virtues, but none can claim Kistler's dewy, newly-minted quality...
...The Kirov women showed a disturbing tendency to make technical compromises...
...Injured two long years ago, she has been nursing herself back to performing condition ever so slowly, and finally indicated her readiness to return to major roles last fall...
...She wears her high voltage like a golden aura, capped by her Rapunzel-like hair...
...That kind of routine violation of fundamental rules inevitably raises doubts about the Kirov'smorale, aboutitsvery commitment to the credo of ballet...
...Just when I was wondering how any greatness could ever emerge from this entropy, Altinay Asylmuratova took the stage like a comet shot from a black hole...
...Since the early 19th century, it has been a standard ballet technique for dancers to assume a stance where the thigh bones are rotated in the hip sockets in a manner that brings the heels together and points the toes outward...
...No gooey femininity here— this was weighty, sophisticated stuff...
...Whilethemendidn'thavemuch trouble spinning in the air, their takeoffs and landings were somewhat graceless...
...Sure it is easier, yet it hardly makes any sort of esthetic sense to pirouette in so ungainly a position...
...Kistler is back...
...Some of the blame for the pervasive degeneration in technique has to be laid to artistic director Oleg Vinogradov (he is also a choreographer, andadreadful one judging from the modernist bits of his work I saw...
...With all her high spirits she still manages to convey a sense of effortless nobility quite beyond her years...
...You wonder who decided that it was all right for them to execute pirouettes with the lifted foot laid ankle-un-der knee rather than with toe poised at kneecap...
...On Dance WHERE THE KIROV DIFFERS BY LAURA A JACOBS For those of us who had never seen Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, but had pieced together an ideal from the glimpses afforded by books and films, and from the standard-shattering performances of Kirov defectors Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Barysh-nikov, its recent American tour promised an epiphany at the very least...
...Tcheytchikova is not so exotic as Asylmuratova: She's a larger, leggier, more traditionally proportioned ballerina, and has the sort of open, womanly face that reminds us of Russia's female gymnasts...
...Constantin Zaklinsky, who danced the role of Siegfried in the opening night's Swan Lake, was commanding in size, with a handsome, sensitive face...
...songs by George and Ira Gershwin, choreographed by Balanchine) were thoughtfully conceived, from the joyful flips of her skirt to the grave arrangement of her limbs in those arched-back poses...
...Unfortunately, his method is marred by a self-defeating pragmatism...
...No less great, but cut from rather different cloth, is the New York City Ballet's own magic charmer, Darci Kistler...
...nonetheless, she manages to do what she wants, achieving an altogether heroic range of expression even within a relatively limitedplastique...
...Three weeks later, two surprise performances of Swan Lake's Act II pas de deux appeared on the American Ballet Theater's schedule...
...That went to Olga Tcheytchikova, who danced the part of Odette/Odile in the PBS live broadcast of Swan Lake from Wolf Trap Park near Washington...
...What she misses is the willful imagination of Asylmuratova...
...Both Baryshnikov and Maka-rova were spotted in the Kirov audience in Philadelphia...
...So spectral and voluminous was Makarova's presence that we seemed to be seeing her through a medium of clear, shimmering water...
...Suzanne Farrell burst the paradigm at NYCB...
...1 ts forward thrust is not driving, like the Bolshoi Ballet, but yearning, as though toward a dreamy ideal...
...The Kirov's expressive power was wielded to full advantage in its Philadelphia performance of Swan Lake...
...Asylmuratova did not get the plum role of the Kirov tour...
...The sustained detail constitutes Makarova's greatness...
...His Byronic gusts of passion were a bit thick, but the intention was admirable: Here was a male dancer attempting to sculpt steps on a poetic scale...
...forifVinogradovfoIlowsthepatternof many other ballet directors (notably Baryshnikov at American Ballet Theater), he entrusts to them much of the responsibility for company grooming...
...Who has stopped caring...
...Founded in 1783 by Catherine II as Russia's Imperial Ballet Company, it was the cradle of the classical dance we know today as well as of the neoclassicism of George Balanchine, who elaborated the lessons he learned at the Imperial Theater School into the lean and mean American style we associate with the New York City Ballet...
...Rolling on and off pointe with a mossy resilience I've rarely seen equaled (it's all in the metatarsals), Tcheytchikova can muster a great deal of elegance and delicacy...
...She has merely to stand there and we feel clouds roll off the sun...
...Her tiniest motions were most exquisite of all...
...she looked rushed and disengaged...
...By Western lights, the members of the Kirov are not very well trained in the turn-out...
...As Makarova eased forward into an arabesque penehee, Baryshnikov's head buoyed back, as if the sight of his new love in such a deeply trusting position sent a wave of ecstasy through him...
...Baryshnikov neverfails to remind us that there is nothing arbitrary about the principles of ballet technique...
...She's a dancer's dancer, and a choreographer's dream...
...Often, evoking a diva bracing a note, she concludes a momentous phrase with a magnificent flourish of the arms and head...
...Turn-out gives way, the lifted foot droops, tradition drifts...
...Interestingly, in Philadelphia the Kirov did not bring out its best dancers until the final night...
...age may have brought some caution to her movements, yet it also seems to have lent them a historical patina: Her Odette dissolved the century lying between us and Lev Ivanov's original choreographic inspiration...
...Viewed from the balcony, it was won-drously sentient: Lines straight, carriage unstrained, the flock pulled in their wings and angled their heads, as if sharing an instinctual response to an ancient echo...
...No one would say whether or not it was in response to the Kirov's imbalanced but formidable Swan Lake that Baryshnikov again donned his black tights and Makarova came out of the retirement she had announced last fall...
...His almost prehensile feel for his ownmomen-tum puts him on a continuum with Ba-ryshnikov, although Vikharev is slighter and thus will probably never get the danseur noble roles at the Kirov...
...The adagio of the pas left Baryshnikov little to do, yet his absorption was impressive: The concentration he brings to all his dancing, even partnering, is at present unparalleled among the world's male dancers...
...One of the keys to understanding how the Leningraders differ from their American counterparts involves the simple concept of the"turn-out...
...It is regrettable that Asylmuratova shares the inadequate turn-out of her colleagues...
...Aleksander Lunev is another young Kirov dancer who exudes promise (although his limbs do not course with ambition quite the way Vikharev's do...
...When she executed a sous-sus, one leg slid softly, knowingly down the other, nestling in with airless closure...
...He was scarcely able to maintain definition in space, however, and by the end of the evening he looked merely beefy...
...Her small head upon straight neck upon curving spine suggests a chess knight, but her carriage is that of a stallion...
...the grandeur isn't there...
...Raven-haired, dark-eyed, with a short Tartar nose, she resembles no other ballerina...
...Paradoxically, though, the lack of turn-out confers a certain advantage on the corps: Since there is limited range for individual movement, greater collective control is possible and the overall limpidness that results facilitates expression...
...This does not really impede the company's strongest dancers, but the less gifted principals are seriously diminished...
...As for her roles this past season, it must be said that the performance she gave in the second movement of Symphony in C(music by Bizet, choreography by Balanchine) left something to be desired...
...ButasTitaniainBalanchine's.4 Midsummer Night's Dream, her phrasing was gorgeously transparent...
...This permits greater range and plasticity of movement...
...Enthusiasm colors everything Kistler does—her first baby steps must have been joyfully bold...
...You can see that their thighs are muscled differently from those of American dancers...
...Perhaps he should give up his dreary choreography for a while and see that discipline is reasserted...
...Reservations about individual dancers and technical shortcomings aside, it must be said that the Kirov remains the most expressive company in the world...
...Vikharev's landings were as energized as his takeoffs, products of forethought rather than gravity...
...It's exciting to see a ballerina revel in her power this way...
...Her gestures in "The Man I Love" from M ho Cares...
...The perfection of his stance was not only a pleasure in itself, but it also made the dramatic image extraordi-narilyapparent...
...Makarova has always danced with willful abandon...
...Proportioned with an extravagance that justifies her flamboyant character, Asylmuratova is a beauty and a presence...
...The Kirov ballet masters and mistresses probably also must be held accountable...
...He'd be marvelous as Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty...
...It was then apparent that the company does not currently have any male dancers of Baryshnikov's stature...
...The next night Evgeny Neff, on the stringy side, was equally deficient in the role...
...Kistler, the fair-haired child, is shaping it anew...
...Kistler's bountiful effects are partly derived from her long, svelte legs, paring knife pointes, and floating calm in her upper body...
Vol. 69 • August 1986 • No. 11
