Review by Gilles Kennedy

What promised to be just another K-Tel collection of highly paid ballet stars in a pas-de-deux gala turned out instead to be a personalized celebration of the 10th anniversary of Nina Ananiashvili’s Bolshoi debut. This was largely brought about by the dancer addressing the audience after the performance to thank her peers, with none of the showbiz style associated with big ballet names in the West.

The shy young girl interrupting the interpreter was in marked contrast to the glamorous Kitri of her final pas, "Don Quixote" with Alexei Fadeetchev, and she came across, as she does in person, as totally unaware of her assured place in ballet history. The three extra pieces that were danced to make up for the non-appearance of Andris Liepa and Nikolaj Hubbe meant that the ticket prices for once lived up to their investment capacity.

Ananiashvili is the Bolshoi’s best draw now that the company is entering the heinous capitalistic world of few subsidies and unrelenting competition. The impact of the break-up of the Soviet Union on ballet is great; in this country, the ongoing hunt for the authenticity of Russian ballet translates into huge earnings potential and massive audience support.

Her earlier partnership with Liepa, who after a dabble in North American ballet is now in St. Petersburg with the Kirov, was the talking point of the company’s overseas tours. More than one ¥15,000 ticket had been sold here on the strength of his blonde hair coupled with her dark Georgian eyes in the "Swan Lake" Act II.

But Ananiashvili is not just the grieving heroine draped over a comforting arm. Her technique, naturally of the highest level to merit the title of Bolshoi ballerina, is of the kind that breaks athletic records. To see her fling herself into the fouettes in "Don Quixote" solo, with the orchestra scrambling to keep up, is like watching Carl Lewis break a long-jump record with no wind shear-factor considerations.

Breaking records, both personal and industry, is what she did again and again at Tokyo’s Bunkamura on November 27 at the start of a week-long run. Gelsey Kirkland, formerly of the New York City Ballet, was suspected to have been dancing faster than technique alone could allow until, like Ben Johnson, it was attributed to chemical assistance. Ballet is being driven to such gymnastic extremes that drug testing could well become a factor for state-sponsored companies to consider, blurring even further the fine line between art and sport. Ananiashvili’s speed is more humane, less contrived, and wholly harnessed to the artistic ideal. A major part of her attraction on stage is that she is totally unlike the typical blonde, cold Soviet ballerina.

The artistic director pulling the whole show together was Frank Andersen, the artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet, which explained the inclusion of that company’s Rose Gad and Alexander Kolpin on the guest roster. With the exception of Fadeetchev, the other dancers, "my friends", as Ananiashvili termed them, were from the Kirov and the Philadelphia Russian Ballet.

The most exciting dancer was the Kirov’s Farukh Ruzimatov in the Tagunov solo "Tango" with music by Louis Armstrong. The rest of the program was unashamedly classical, with the emphasis on the sensational, but the male dancers pushed their technique in pieces where the limits of physical ability were already assuming new extremes.

As long as the Russian dancers have their beloved Tchaikovsky to dance to, their classical legacy is assured. The Danish dancers, however, brought a refreshingly mortal touch to the proceedings with their Bournonville works. This choreographer is little known in this country, but his choreography, deceptively simple to watch, is the benchmark of professionalism. Kolpin and Gad were perfectly in tune in "La Sylphide" and "Flower Festival at Genzano".

It’s a sign of the welcome that Japanese audiences gave Ananiashvili that she agreed to hold this performance in Tokyo and Yokohama. It’s also a sign of these economic times that it was not held in a city such as Paris or Monte Carlo with historical ties to Russian dancing. But the yen stops here, and Japanese ballet is left untouched by this whirlwind blaze of glory.