Some Bolshoi happenings.

The 'Amazing Natalia Osipova' made her debut, June 6, as the ballerina in "The Bright Stream." I couldn't find any comments on her performance at the Bolshoi forum.

There will be a "Premiere" of Le Corsaire, June 21-24. It is described below from the Bolshoi Theater site.No casting announced.

"Use is made in the production of music by Leo Delibes, Cesare Pugni, Pyotr von Oldenburg, Riccardo Drigo, Albert Zabel, Julius Gerber.
Music dramaturgy conception – Yuri Burlaka
Score restored by Alexander Troitsky
The original score by Adolphe Adam/Leo Delibes for Le Corsaire has been made available by L'Opera national de Paris from the archives of La Bibliotheque nationale de France
The choreographic notation has been made available by the Harvard University Theatre Collection
Evgeny Ponomaryov's costume sketches (1899) used in the production have been made available by the St. Petersburg State Theatre Library".

http://www.bolshoi.ru/en/season/ballet/ ... afisha#dyn

Thanks for posting the news! I've updated the title to make this the general Bolshoi news topic for 2007- 2008, so feel free to post news (as released by press offices or reliable newspapers), thoughts, reviews and commentary. We will create separate topics for tours when appropriate.

Kate

The casting for the "Primiere" of Le Corsaire has been posted at the Bolshoi Theater site.

Medora is being performed by Svetlana Zakharova, Svetlana Lunkina, Galina Stepanenko and Maria Alexandrova,

http://www.bolshoi.ru/en/season/ballet/ ... act26=info

(click "cast" at right)

Sadly, both Stepanenko and Osipova have been injured and will not take part in the forthcoming performances of Le Corsaire in Moscow. They have been already replaced by other ballerinas as can bee seen on the Bolshoi's website:

http://bolshoi.ru/en/season/ballet/prem ... act26=info

We can only pray that they recover quickly and are back to their usual superb form.

Oddly enough - speak of the Devil, and the Devil, is stretching and hyper-extensions - someone has quite literally forwarded this link this minute

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S07Dba-Kso

One sees Osipova at age 16, turning herself into a pretzel, stretching the hip-joint into positions that no osteopath would believe physically possible, and then doing the piqué arabesque fondue on the diagonal in the Rose Adago with a clash of cymbals at each hyper-extension.

She then explains that she has often been in horrendous pain. At age 16.

WHEN, jadies and lentilmen, will we finally understand that classical dancing is ONE thing, and the pretzel trade, quite another?

Agrippina Vaganova herself, in person, forbade all stretching. She would throw people out of the studio if she caught them stretching! Because she knew that it weakens the body - PERMANENTLY. A ligament stretched out of shape will never bounce back.

Now, although limited stretching may be useful to "de-bunch" muscle fibre, and Vaganova may have taken a slightly exaggerated stand on this, we have got to get our heads sorted.

We are encouraging people to enter the pretzel trade, because we WANT the hyperextensions. Therefore - be logical, gang ! we presumably WANT the injuries. Toss out the old (the 23 year olds), and in with the new (the 17 year olds).

We choose people with excessively-slender and delicate construction, because they are lax, and because we can then allow them to put all the force down into the leg, without it showing. Until the body breaks.

One is very, very sorry for Osipova, because she is a talented young girl, but given what she has already put that body through, one fears that her career will be very short indeed.

Clement Crisp went to Moscow to review the new production, seems he considered it over long but is generally positive.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/6aa7b296-22b8-1 ... 10621.html

From the Bolshoi site it looks like nothing will be happening in Moscow (Bolshoi-wise) until October 10 when the season will start with four performances of Le Corsaire. No casts listed yet.

Tonight will begin four nights of the 'revived' Le Corsaire. The Medoras will start with Svetlana Zakharova, end with Maria Alexandrova and have Anna Antonicheva in the middle two nights in a row.

Gulnare will be danced once by Yekaterina Krysanova (whom I like very much) and twice by Yekaterina Shipulina. Two Conrads will be danced by Nikolai Tsiskaridze.

A fifth night will be Giselle with Nadezhda Gracheva.

http://www.bolshoi.ru/en/poster/index.p ... 6=20071010

For those Natalia Osipova fans among us, and I put myself high on the list, she will be debuting in "Giselle" in about ten days (Nov. 22).

http://www.bolshoi.ru/en/season/ballet/ ... 6=1348#dyn

It will be a significant step for her and I wish her only the best.

It will also make comparisons between her and another one of my shining star favorites, Evgenia Obraztsova (Kirov), all the more interesting. Some may feel that the only thing that they have in common is their size. Neither of them are giants in size, but like another non-giant in size, Alina Cojocaru (Royal Ballet), they become giants on the stage (and seem to be lovely human beings offstage as well).

In my mind the one thing that they all have in common is that in their own way each one radiates with Warmth, like a Solar Dreamscape.

Now Natalia Osipova is literally moving into Evgenia Obraztsova territory.

If you haven't at least seen the Evgenia Obraztsova video clip floating around the internet from "Romeo and Juliet" you are missing one of the most beautiful ballet performances happening these days. There is also a video clip of Alina Cojocaru's "Romeo and Juliet" on the internet. Having seen this performance myself in Saint Petersburg last April, I don't think that the video really captures the Wonderfulness of how well she performs this role. Somehow the Remarkable Subtleties seem to be missing.

Hopefully Natalia Osipova will have a great success making a new step into a slightly more ethereal world. From what I have seen so far, when the time is right, she should have quite an impact.

Regarding Natalia Osipova's debut as Giselle. The only thing that I have found so far is a review from an internet forum in Moscow. My russian is very limited but I will give it a go with the help of my internet translator when I get a chance.

I can say that the review is loaded with little *Smiley* symbols !


PS Using two different translators the reviewer says that s/he may have been sceptical at first but that Natalia Osipova's performance exceded her greatest expectations !

Osipova's an absolute gem. I understand she will be repeating her Giselle in Turin next month. Lucky Italians.

I couldn't agree with you more Cassandra !

I am going to go out on a limb a bit here. I think that a key initial factor to watch, from what I have seen so far, in the 'lyrical' development of Natalia Osipova will be the beautiful and expressive use of Her Hands.

Natalia Osipova----Giselle

The last time I looked at the Bolshoi discussion forum from Russia there were four reviews of Natalia Osipova's debut in Giselle. One is by a lady named Nadya and another is by the forum moderator, Michail Alexandrova.

http://forum.balletfriends.ru/viewtopic ... df282ff104

Translator

http://dictionary.reference.com/translate/

It was Nadya's review that I referred to several posts ago when beginning this discussion. Michail is the one who brought us the internet question and answer session with Maria Alexandrova several years ago. His current review of Natalia Osipova is very complete and by far the longest posted. A friend of mine, who speaks russian, verbally translated much of the two reviews. I would like to refer to them because they will give some excellent insight into the Giselle performance.

Both Nadya and Michail shared initial apprehensions that they were going to see a very 'flamboyant', Kitri-ish (Don Quixote) interpretation. Natalia Osipova is already world famous for this performance. Both were very pleasantly surprised that this wasn't the case.

Both reviewers were 'overwhelmingly' impressed with the performance. Michail states that most of the balletomanes there (that he can identify, I guess) and most of the audience were very pleased. He heard comments such as "Brilliant!" from audience members. Nadya states that there were six or seven curtain calls !

Nadya saw Natalia Osipova's portrayal in Act I of Giselle as an enthusiastic, innocent country girl, made very believable. She felt that Act I worked perfectly. She also viewed Andrei Mercuriev's portrayal of Albrecht as being one of a sympathetic and sincere person entrapped in his previous commitments, but sincerely in love with Giselle.

Michail remarks that he was concerned that he might be seeing a lot of 'athleticism'. He comments that the jumps, etc. were indeed huge--but done with amazing Gracefulness. He says that he has never seen anything like this before and that this is now the new standard as far as he is concerned. He thought it was Amazing ! He also philosophizes about how something like this is in Another Realm.

Both reviewers were extremely impressed with the Emotion that Natalia Osipova conveyed. They both refer to the mad scene. It was done with such reality and such believability. Nadya said it brought tears to her eyes. Michail compares Natalia Osipova to Diana Vishneva in this respect. He admires both for their ability to convey great emotion.

Michail discusses Act II very completely and makes some very interesting observations.

He says that when Natalia Osipova first encounters the Willis, she is unexpectedly excited, perhaps almost joyous, at the freedom of an afterlife.

In her first encounter with Albrecht and in the pas de deux afterwards, she portrays a gentle, overwhelming love for Albrecht, continuing their original love and almost 'apologizing' for interrupting their love with the her madness.

This is very interesting stuff !

The end of Act II is performed again with great enthusiasm as Giselle does all she can and finally saves Albrecht. Michail states that this was exactly as Gautier, the author, intended and quotes Gautier to support this.

As always it is up to us as individuals to make our own interpretation and judgement if we are fortunate enough to be able to see this performance. Both these viewers were extremely excited with what they saw and offer some very interesting insights for us to consider.

There are now a series of video clips on the internet of Natalia Osipova's Giselle performance. I do not want to direct you to them unless I get some sort of ok from a moderator. They are fairly well hidden at the moment.

I only mention them now because they are invaluable to commenting on this performance. The videos are taken from a distance so detail is hard to make out.

I have only viewed them once so my evaluation is rather limited.

The Act II 'ethereal' dancing does look fairly impressive to me.

Natalia Osipova----Giselle

From what I have read and seen on the internet so far and from what I have seen live of Natalia Osipova I am forming a picture in my mind of how this performance might be.

Most important is that Natalia Osipova might not be breaking the mold as has been suggested by one reviewer, but in fact might be significantly nuancing the traditional idea. She may be in fact retaining her wonderful youthfulness even into the afterlife. I can see this working so well for Natalia Osipova. She also may be blending her amazing bravura capabilities (jumps, spins, etc.) with wonderful grace and airiness. This could be very appropriate for this most dreamlike of ballets.

Not wishing to discuss video clips any more than necessary I would like to say that she seems to have developed some Beautiful Long Lines in her Act II dancing. She is not a tall person and for me this is very impressive and lovely.


It Could Be That She Is Taking Her Wonderfully Joyous And Youthful Personality And Her Amazing Technical Abilities And Beautifully Adapting Them To A Very Credible And Possibly Remarkable Interpretation Of The Traditionally Loved Giselle.


Now all I have to do is somehow get to one of these performances and see for real. Hopefully one of us will be able to see this performance before too long and will be able to define it much more clearly. It wouldn't surprise me at all if it shows up at next year's Mariinsky Festival in March. It would not be out of character with past Festival decisions. It is certainly on my wish list. If that does happen maybe Catherine or jpc (or possibly myself) can tell you more about it.

So far it would seem that this is a performance well worth the attention and praise that it is apparently generating.