ABT MIXED BILL (NINA IN LE CORSAIRE PAS DE DEUX), MET OPERA HOUSE, NEW YORK, JULY 2000 |
| From: THE NEW YORK TIMES, July 4, 2000 Dance Review by Anna Kisselgoff CLOSING WITH A FLOURISH IN SPITE OF A RESHUFFLING
Beset with injuries and illness, American Ballet Theater performed valiantly and superbly throughout the season. The closing night on Saturday at the Metropolitan Opera House ended on the same note... The Corsaire pas de deux, however, turned up with its announced cast intact: Nina Ananiashvili and Jose Manuel Carreno. Ms. Ananiashvili, a regular member of Ballet Theater in its New York seasons, had been touring the United States with the Bolshoi Ballet, her home company, and returned for the single performance. She is rarely paired with Mr. Carreno, and they both knew how to bring out the dazzle of a familiar showpiece. Like Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, who made this pas de deux their signature, Ms. Ananiashvili and Mr. Carreno worked in harmony but banked on contrast. But unlike the first partnership, theirs reversed dynamics. It is Ms. Ananiashvili who has the flourish and Mr. Carreno, with no loss of brilliant bravura in his many turns and high leaps, who has a quiet center. Silken but exciting, he was every inch the slave, as his role demanded, ready to throw himself at the ballerina’s feet. Ms. Ananiashvili, in top form, conveyed the musical climaxes in all her phrasing, springing into her partner’s lifts and giving her polished pirouettes a fillip as she slid her raised foot down to the other ankle. Her fouettes in the coda had variety, and there was a wonderful moment in the adagio when both partners threw their heads back. Dancing the solo from the full Corsaire (not the Fonteyn version), Ms. Ananiashvili exuded the boldness that colored the entire performance.
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