"Don Quixote" reviews.

Sarah Crompton for The Telegraph.

The Telegraph

Judith Flanders for The Arts Desk.

The Arts Desk

***** Probably The Finest Overall Evening That I've Ever Been To At The Ballet ! *****


"Scotch Symphony"
(George Balanchine)

Anastasia Matvienko, Alexander Sergeyev

Yana Selina, Vasiliy Tkachenko, Anton Pimonov

and Artists of the Mariinsky Ballet


"In The Night"
(Jerome Robbins)

Yevgenia Obraztsova, Filipp Stepin

Alina Somova, Yevgeny Ivanchenko

Ulyana Lopatkina, Daniil Korsuntsev

and Artists of the Mariinsky Ballet


"Ballet Imperial"
(George Balanchine)

Viktoria Tereshkina, Vladimir Shklyarov

Valeria Martynyuk, Andrey Timofeev, Maxim Zyuzin

and Artists of the Mariinsky Ballet

Reviews of the Balanchine/Robbins program.

Sarah Crompton for The Telegraph.

The Telegraph

Ismene Brown for The Arts Desk.

The Arts Desk

Judith Mackrell for The Guardian.

The Guardian

Sarah Frater for the Evening Standard.

Evening Standard

Luke Jennings reviews "Don Quixote" and the Balanchine/Robbins program for The Observer.

The Observer

I would like to second Buddy's comments about the Triple Bill, it was certainly the best peformance of the tour so far with a scorching performance of Ballet Imperial by Viktoria Tereshkina, in fact in all the decades I've been watching this ballet I've never seen it danced better.

Clement Crisp reviews the Balanchine/Robbins program for the Financial Times.

Financial Times

Ekaterina Kondaurova -- "Swan Lake"

Absolutely Magnificent !

Reviews of "Anna Karenina."

Judith Mackrell for The Guardian.

The Guardian

The Financial Times (byline missing).

Financial Times

Sarah Crompton for the Telegraph.

The Telegraph

Judith Flanders for The Arts Desk.

The Arts Desk

Viktoria Tereshkina's performance in "Ballet Imperial," for me, was one of the absolute highlights of the year. I thought that she handled the complexity of Balanchine steps wonderfully and infused her own sense of perception and understanding magnificently on top of that. I've never seen her give such a meaningful 'characterization' and this was to a ballet that's supposed to be essentially 'abstract' (just about the dance). For me, with her remarkable facial expression, she gave the steps a sublime human significance.

The Kirov is rationing its Don Q’s this time around with just two performances in the current season and I managed to get to both.

Opening night started off as a dreary affair with the same lack of commitment from the ensemble that I noted in Swan Lake; fortunately there were bright patches such as Konduarova as the Street Dancer and Valerya Martinyuk’s Cupid, also an impressively classical Espada from Alexander Sergeyev, though personally I thought he looked an unlikely candidate for the bull ring. Islom Baimuradov’s Gipsy came close to stealing the show as a Johnny Depp look-alike straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean, for all the world looking like Jack Sparrow’s long lost Viennese brother. On the debit side Oksana Skorik dismayed the regulars with the kind of extensions that make me wince. Was this her Covent Garden debut? If it was it was inauspicious.

The Matvienki, Denis and Anastasia, danced the leads and clearly delighted the audience, but the rather cool comments I have read about Anastasia M. of late seemed justified as she was less impressive than in her Mikhailovsky days. She makes a very passable Kitri though and danced the first act castanet solo with considerable élan but was in general inconsistent throughout and didn’t really conquer the role although her fouettes were notable for being pretty much on the spot: all enjoyable enough but not hitting the heights.

It was Obraztsova as Kitri the following night and it seemed the entire company was enlivened by her presence. I had the same feelings about seeing her as Kitri as I had for the Bolshoi’s Krysanova in the role last year as both dancers have a refined quality that one doesn’t associate with the role of Kitri, it seemed a case of miscasting at first glance but in fact both have the stagecraft and acting abilities to carry off a role to which they may appear momentarily to be temperamentally unsuited to. Obraztsova was a sunny, high-spirited Kitri, with her blonde hair darkened for the occasion, cheeky in her dealings with flirtatious Basilio and pugnaciously defying her bad tempered father. Her dancing was glorious with her Dulcinea persona of the second act being outstandingly fine; my only regret was that this dancer had just this one leading role on this tour.

Her Basil was Timofeyev, a dancer I hadn’t seen in a leading role before. Looking anything but Spanish was a slight handicap but one couldn’t fault his dancing that was impressive from beginning to end and he was clearly a first rate partner too. Kondaurova was Dryad Queen with her impressive breadth of movement and regal manner and we were treated to an appearance by the now rarely seem Sofia Gumerova as the Street Dancer: luxury casting indeed. All in all it was a very enjoyable evening and one in which Ms Obraztsova has no doubt added many more admirers to her growing legion of fans.

Thanks, Cassandra. It now appears that Kondaurova will replace Somova in tomorrow's BAYADERE matinee! Lucky Londoners, to see the majestic 'Big Red' as Nikiya!!! She is gorgeous in the role and should be more secure with Denis Matvienko as her partner, rather than Ivanchenko, who was somewhat shaky last February when I saw them in Ottawa. [In Ottawa, Matvienko danced with Vishneva.]

A rumour was circulating last week that she would dance Nikiya, but I only got confirmation last night. As a fan of Matvienko I had bought a ticket anyway, but thrilled by this news as I have only seen our 'Big Red' in the last act when she danced it in Manchester a couple of years ago.

Anna Karenina is a long, dense read and I suspect more people are familiar with film or TV versions than have actually read the book. The main characters are to a modern reader singularly unattractive and you close the book with a better understanding of why the Russian revolution took place. Anna Karenina and her milieu are society idlers with few redeeming virtues and the central character, Konstantin Levin, spends most of the novel in pursuit of a much younger woman in a manner that wouldn’t engender much sympathy today. Only Dolly, the constantly pregnant wife of Anna’s philandering brother Steve, seems thoroughly decent, though Anna’s hated husband, Karenin, is one of the few that actually has a job and shows touching compassion towards baby Anna, the child discarded as an inconvenient by-product of their affair by Anna and her lover Vronsky. The book also concerns itself with arguments over the existence of God while Levin theorizes a lot about the state of Russian agriculture. Try putting all that into a ballet of a lot less than two hours. Anna’s tragedy is basically a love Triangle, she loves Vronsky, but loves her young son perhaps more, and her husband won’t relinquish the child unless she relinquishes her lover. The lovers flee to Venice to escape the censorious society of St Petersburg, but she returns to catch a moment with her child before deciding to take her life by jumping under a train.

Ratmansky makes a brave stab of turning all this into a ballet, but he doesn’t really succeed. The sets are inspired with a use of back projections that are superior to anything similar that I’ve seen, but Rodion Shchedrin’s score is a hindrance as it was created for a completely different production and I think its episodic form restricts Ratmansky’s ideas. There are a lot of named characters on the cast sheet, some of whom appear fleetingly and those unfamiliar with the book clearly found it difficult to distinguish one from another. As Anna Karenina Diana Vishneva seems to live the part and her anguish is uncomfortably real, but I would have preferred her in a production that perhaps did away with peripheral characters and concentrated on the core drama. The actual choreography is of the high standard one expects from Ratmansky and the ballet is by no means a flop but it is no triumph either and I left the theatre wondering why this was brought to London instead of his highly acclaimed version of The Little Hump-backed Horse.

Neil Norman reviews "Anna Karenina" for the Daily Express.

Daily Express

Zoe Anderson reviews "Anna Karenina" for The Independent.

The Independent

Louise Levene reviews "Anna Karenina" for The Telegraph.

The Telegraph

Sarah Frater reviews "La Bayadere" for the Evening Standard.

Evening Standard

Clement Crisp reviews "La Bayadere" for the Financial Times.

Financial Times