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</center> <P><B>300 – A Celebration of St. Petersburg – Gala at The Royal Opera House, May 29 2002</B><P>Despite the post-Communist looting of Russia, the Kirov has found ways to cope with the new economic fragility and this Gala showed the Company on very fine form. Hats off to the Mariinsky Theatre Trust for organising this event, which I hope makes lots of money. This second of the two Gala evenings showed bold planning, as all the items were post-1900 with glorious music by Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. My main overall impressions were of wonderful dancing, dynamic orchestral playing and superb voices especially the Russian basses.<P>In the first half, most of the choreography was interesting due to its rarity value rather than intrinsic qualities. Ratmansky’s ‘Middle Duet’ from 1998 shows the Kirov commissioning new work, reflecting the changes that have occurred in the West in the past 20 years. Natalia Sologub and Islom Baimuradov danced beautifully, but the choreography, a mixture of humour and awkward movement a little reminiscent of Forsythe’s ‘In the Middle etc’, seemed more a step on the road of creative exploration rather than the end of the journey. <P>The pas de deux from ‘Spartacus’ was danced to the only tune in the evening that most of us knew – Khatchaturian’s music having been borrowed for the theme to the TV series, ‘The Onegin Line’. We saw the rare, original choreography by Leonid Jacobson, rather than the later version by Grigorovitch, which is still regularly performed by the Bolshoi. This pdd has some charm, but the relatively pedestrian steps mean that the dancers have to emote strongly to achieve any effect. It was good to have seen it, but I feel no need to rush to see the complete version. <P>The balletic high spot of the first half was Belsky’s ‘Leningrad Symphony’ to the gloriously martial 7th Symphony of Shostakovich. In the programme, alongside the glittering stars of today’s Kirov there was a startling image of a skeletal faced man clutching some bread. The memory of those times and the 900,000 who died in the siege of the City between 1941-1944 clearly remains vividly strong in St Petersburg. The ballet paints a very black and white picture of the conflict with none of the ambiguity of ‘The Green Table’ or ‘Dante Sonata’. <P>One could say that the Hitler/Stalin pact, the Katyn Massacre and the imprisonment of so many Russian prisoners of War when they returned to their mother country, paints a much less clear moral picture. However, the choreography does capture the spirit of the ordinary people of this City who resisted the Nazis in such terrible conditions. In 1943 this resistance made it possible for the Soviet Union to win the War on behalf of the Allies at the almost unknown battle of Kursk on the Eastern Front. Eight months before D-Day, when the Germans lost the largest tank battle that the world will ever see, their eventual defeat was decided. <P>The huge leaps of the male defenders, the arrogant goose-stepping of the invaders and the sorrow of the Russian women, particularly in the stillness of the final scene all make for a great emotional sweep reflecting the scale of the conflict, the sacrifices and the suffering. For it to work, you have to give yourself up to its operatic quality, but I was very happy to do so. Daria Pavlenko was very moving in the lead female role, without ever going over the top.<P>After the interval, the choreography was always interesting. We saw ‘The Waltz of the Snowflakes’ from Simonov’s new version of ‘The Nutcracker’. This production has already upset traditionalists and at one stage the Snowflakes lie on their backs and kick their legs in the air. Their motion capture style black tops and tutus with small white blobs like Ping-Pong balls and black lower legs and feet mean that your attention is drawn to the upper body and produces an unusual visual effect that I enjoyed for its rebellious nature. <P>The high spot of the evening was Balanchine’s ‘The Prodigal Son’, the second full one-Act ballet on show – an unusual event at a Gala. This work from 1929 contained the oldest and the most innovative choreography on the programme. I have only seen it once before, danced by BRB at Sadler’s Wells in the early 1990s. Then it seemed very odd to me with the Siren and her long cloak and her strange bald-headed acolytes. Here, with the benefit of a few more years of watching dance and the artistry of the Kirov, it was electrifying. This avant-garde work opens with some dynamic jumps for the Prodigal, which the young Andrei Merkuriev used to good effect to express his longing for freedom from the constraints of the family home. In the next scenes, the choreography for the Acolytes has nothing to do with ballet and Balanchine presumably must have drawn on the movement language of Laban and perhaps the Russian experimentalists of the early-20s to produce their disturbing, scuttling movement, sometimes bobbling across the stage back to back with arms entwined. <P>The crowning glory of the piece was Daria Pavlenko’s Siren. This ravishingly beautiful woman and dancer executed the steps with an icy eroticism that was spellbinding. The sequence where she pirouettes, with her free leg wrapped around the waist of the Prodigal, must rank as one of the most X-certificate moves in all of ballet. She can have my golden trumpets and ewers of wine any day. Merkuriev convincingly made the transition from confident and naïve youth to bewildered and crushed awareness. The final scenes show how adept Balanchine was at story telling when he wanted to be. What a wonderful ballet, to be put alongside ‘Apollo’ and Nijinska’s ‘Les Noces’ as the epitome of 1920’s avant-garde, none of it liked much at the time.<P>The final dance section was an excerpt from the ball scene of Ratmansky’s 2002 version of ‘Cinderella’ with Prokofiev’s wonderful waltz tune played with panache by the Kirov orchestra under Valery Gergiev. They set an example for all orchestras throughout the evening. The choreography is elegant and Diana Vishneva was in superlative form enjoying the high lifts and bringing the music to dynamic life. I hope we see the full version when the Kirov visits next year.<P>At four hours with one interval it was a great evening and set an example as to what can be achieved in a Gala setting. I was particularly pleased to see that the standing places had been sold to enable more dance fans to enjoy the experience at reasonable cost. Let’s hope that this becomes the norm at ROH Galas. I also hope that the Kirov mounts two more Galas to celebrate the 301st Anniversary. <P><BR><p>[This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited June 04, 2002).]
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