Dance Review by Karen Nelson

Nina Ananiashvili’s appearance at Jacob’s Pillow last week with a chamber troupe of Russian dancers and musicians was a coup that ended the 1999 season in grand style.

BECKET. Shortly after becoming ice - skating champion in Georgia (then part of the Soviet Union), Nina Ananiashvili switched to classical dance and has since established herself as one of the world’s most compelling ballerinas. She is now a principal at both the Bolshoi and American Ballet Theatre, and she performs as a guest with numerous other companies.

Her appearance at Jacob’s Pillow last week with a chamber troupe of Russian dancers and musicians was a coup that ended the 1999 season in grand style.

The professionalism and enterprise apparent throughout Wednesday’s opening performance earned a well - deserved standing ovation at the end of the evening. Having selected four demanding pieces for the program, spanning the years 1836 - 1998, Ananiashvili ensured that the actual execution was on the right scale for the Pillow stage, making the Ted Shawn Theatre seem like the Bolshoi’s blood brother.

The program was a testament both to the traditions and to the vitality of classical dance. The older pieces, a pas de deux from «La Sylphide», created in 1836 by the great Danish choreographer August Bournonville, and «Diana and Actaeon», a showpiece choreographed by Russia’s renowned pedagogue Agrippina Vaganova in 1934, honored the legacy of ballet.

The new pieces, both by Alexei Ratmansky, born in Kiev and now dancing with the Royal Danish Ballet, have encouraged many who have seen them to think that Ratmansky may help end the choreographic drought that has prevailed in ballet since George Balanchine's death in 1983.

The largest - scale work, comprising the second half of the program, was Ratmansky’s 1998 «Dreams about Japan». This is a bold essay that allies the immense technical resources of trained ballet dancers with «the simplicity and philosophical depth» of Japanese Kabuki. Ananiashvili, Tatiana Terekhova, Inna Petrova, Sergei Filin, Andrei Uvarov, Dmitri Belogolovstev, and Dmitri Gudanov performed to a Japanese percussion score performed live by musicians from the Bolshoi Theatre. Framed by an Introduction and a Finale, the dance offered Ratmansky’s assured and downright exciting treatment of dance portions of four Kabuki plays. What in lesser hands would have been an exercise in cultural stereotyping, in Ratmansky’s choreography is an excellent reason to go to the theater. Along with the polished dancing and musical performance, the vibrantly detailed costumes and makeup contributed to an exhilarating experience (one, that, by the way, has won favor with Japanese audiences).

The program opened with «Charms of Mannerism», choreographed by Ratmansky in 1997 to music by Francois Couperin. A plotless study of the possibilities for fresh use of ballet’s time - honored assumptions concerning how people should present themselves, the piece’s pairs, trios, and quartets successfully demonstrate that if you accept a well - constructed traditional ballet on its own terms, it can register as a valid example of contemporary dance.