Dance Review by Anna Kisselgoff

A DANCE OF REMORSE AND REGENERATION

The Bolshoi Ballet has returned to New York after an absence of 10 years, the same but different. Except for Nina Ananiashvili, who may never have been better than she was in Vladimir Vasiliev’s superbly danced new staging of Giselle on Tuesday night, the current principals are unfamiliar to local audiences.

Yet for all their Western look, the dancers had the old Bolshoi verve, invigorated by the coherent style seen last month during the company’s five-city national tour. New York will not see the Bolshoi’s scintillating performances of Don Quixote, as those cities did. But even the brief run the Lincoln Center Festival 2000 is presenting, with two programs through Sunday (the second is a mixed bill), is better than none.

By any cultural standard the return of the Bolshoi, which made its historic New York debut in 1959, is a major event. The engagement is sold out: the company's mystique remains intact. It is no secret, however, that the Bolshoi has had its ups and downs. Not only do aesthetics change, but reality intrudes as well. More than 20 years of turmoil within the company, a turnover in directors and an adjustment to a society itself in turmoil will take its toll.

Yet the metaphor for the Bolshoi Ballet today could well be the theme of Giselle: remorse and regeneration. There is obviously a spirited effort to pull the company together. This Giselle is persuasive, although not profound. At this performance, it was difficult to be moved but easy to be dazzled by the excellence of the dancing.

Mr. Vasiliev, 60, was appointed in 1995 to a new double post as artistic director and general director of the entire Bolshoi Theater, which includes the opera and ballet troupes. Aleksei Fadeyechev, 40, was named artistic director of the ballet company in 1998...

Mr. Vasiliev's new staging 1997 is a surprise... The entire production has a point of view, which the eroded Giselle of the Kirov did not have here last year...

...Giselle’s mime is retained, and Ms. Ananiashvili was especially vibrant, playful and childlike in Act I, while vigorous as a Will, or ghost, in Act II. Her big solo, usually danced earlier in the same act, was here danced for Bathilde, the fiancee of Albrecht, the aristocrat who seduces Giselle. Rarely has technique been as flawless in this solo, complete with full double turns in attitude and strong hops on toe. Ms. Ananiashvili’s beautiful arabesques in Act II were clearly etched upon the eye.

More than strong support in Act II came from the Queen of the Wills, the young Maria Alexandrova, a statuesque dancer in the grand, expressive Bolshoi style, with a contemporary sleekness. She was stern but exciting.

The Bolshoi corps of Wills had an admirable discipline...