Dance Review by Clement Crisp

"Don Quixote" needs just this enthusiasm, this abandoning of everything save a desire to wring the last drop of fun from the choreography, to be acceptable. As whistled through by the Bolshoi, it is an unfailing pleasure

Don Quixote was created in Moscow in 1869 as a very jolly spectacle by Marius Petipa. It was revised in Moscow by Alexander Gorsky in 1900 - and further edited by him - and it is the Gorsky version which has become the standard text throughout Russia. This season, for the Bolshoi Ballet of which he is director, Alexey Fadeyechev has gone back as far as is possible to the first Gorsky staging, has given it pretty designs (the costumes are those conceived for a production in 1903 in Moscow), cleaned away the choreographic overpainting and dingy varnish that are the depredations of the years, and showed it to us at the Coliseum, a spanking production which his troupe dance with readiest wit and energy. I thought it a delight.

This old ballet is as silly as they come in matter of drama - the narrative would not convince a drunk three-year old - and as serious as they come in dance. It calls upon those essential Muscovite qualities of vivid character playing, brave technique, a joy in the very act of dancing. So its merry throng of Hispanic impersonators, toreadors, street dancers, dryads, aristos and innkeepers, the Don as barmy as ever (very sympathetically done by Andrey Sitnikov), Sancho as foolish (a warm-hearted portrait by Alexander Petukhov), yielding gypsy girls (Svetlana Tigleva wonderfully exotic), and everyone on stage seeming as glad to be there as we were glad to see them.

Don Quixote needs just this enthusiasm, this abandoning of everything save a desire to wring the last drop of fun and flash from the choreography, to be acceptable. As whistled through by the Bolshoi's artists, it is an unfailing pleasure. Lots of good things from the soloists: Svetlana Uvarova and Anastasia Iatsenko as the sparkiest of friends for the heroine; Maria Allash and Yulia Malkhasyants setting fire to the streets as they dance; two delightful variations from Maria Alexandrova (a young artist to treasure) and Nina Speranskaya; and in the deadly role of Cupid, which is usually given to a short girl more vivacious than is desirable, Nina Kaptsova, who has charm as well as a charming technique.

But Don Quixote must stand or fall on its principals. Great ballerinas have always enjoyed themselves in it and for Nina Ananiashvili it is a wonderful vehicle. She spins and poses and plays with fan and castanets, sparkles, and turns those dark eyes on the world and has it in her thrall. It is an interpretation in which her good humor is evident in acting as in dancing. She smiles; the dance smiles. Irresistible, and irresistibly stylish, too.

Her Basilio was Andrey Uvarov, his playing attractive, his dancing clear, easy, always polished. He is by nature a prince on stage, but he did not give the impression that he was slumming: Basilio was happily part of the drama. A word, too for Igor Melanin's foppish Gamache: afflicted with a wonky knee, the role was given wit.

So was the score: during this season the Bolshoi orchestra under Alexander Sotnikov and Alexander Kopylov has performed with superb dedication, illuminating music that is often darkened by routine interpretation. This Bolshoi Ballet visit has brought us a handsome, youthful troupe, with secure artistry at every level - and with the corps de ballet an unfailing marvel. The Bolshoi is changing, of course, but only in the way that any great company must find its own organic momentum of change. It is still what it was when we first saw it 43 years ago - a great ensemble.