THE ELAN OF ONE DANCER

 IN THE ENTIRE puzzling extravaganza that constitutes the Bolshoi Opera’s ĞMladağ there is one through-line of perfection in the person of Nina Ananiashvili, the Bolshoi ballerina.

As the ghost, or shade, of the murdered Mlada, Ananiashvili materializes in a long, gauzy white gown that accentuates her slender form. She is the strongest and most fluid of wraiths, kneeling and swirling her arms in a stunning port de bras, rising onto point in an extravagant yet limpid arabesque.

Ananiashvili manages to create an epic sweep of her very own throughout the opera while picking her way through clots of doll-bearing tribes-people, hunkering dwarfs, evil gods and ghosts...

She is a stunning fish out of water, cast into the midst of a throng consisting for the most part of non-dancers.

For such dancers as exist, there are a few tantalizing passages of Russian folk dance, performed in snaking circles or lines, and it would have been nice to see more fulfillment of this aspect of Rimsky-Korsakov’s score...

The only point at which ĞMladağ takes on physical momentum is during the Egyptian sequence, conjured up by the Black God Chernobog.

...The scene, highly stylized, is a distinct entity, unlike any other part of the opera...

Here again is Ananiashvili, this time as Cleopatra’s ghost, whom Chernobog has brought to tempt Yaromir, Mlada’s beau, to fall in love with Voislava, the prince’s daughter who has jealously murdered Mlada.