Dance Review by Clive Barnes

KENNEDY CENTER SHINES WITH ALL-BALANCHINE FEST

WASHINGTON - It is proving a smash hit, a sort of ballet revelation - but it could so easily have turned out differently.

It could have been one of those events sadly known in theatrical circles as "Hamlet without the Prince".

Here was the unexpected but inevitable deal - a big, two-week Balanchine Celebration at Washington’s Kennedy Center devoted to the choreographic genius of George Balanchine yet without the participation of Balanchine’s own company, and chosen creative instrument, New York City Ballet.

This was not the first idea of the organizers Charles and Stephanie Reinhart, but an unstoppable force met with an immovable object. Contractually, City Ballet can only appear with its own orchestra. And contractually, every show at Kennedy Center has to be accompanied by its own orchestra.

Call it checkmate or stalemate, the Reinharts and Kennedy Center could not have City Ballet. But good dance came out of orchestral silliness - the Celebration has become a wonderful festival of Balanchine as he is danced all over the country.

These all-Balanchine programs opened last week with one started off by Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet, led by Nina Ananiashvili, Sergei Filin and Dmitri Belogolovtsev, in Mozartiana. Now this is very different from City Ballet’s reading of the same work - not at all different in text, not really different in style, but quite different in feeling. The Bolshoi dancers leaned into the expressiveness of the Tchaikovsky music, their faces, and even bodies, breathed an air more of Pushkin’s Russia than Balanchine’s New York. And it didn’t matter.