ROYAL BALLET, THE PRINCE OF THE PAGODAS, ROYAL OPERA HOUSE, COVENT GARDEN, NOVEMBER, 1990 |
| From: THE MAIL ON SUNDAY, November
25,1990 Dance Review by Jeffery Taylor DARING FEET OF A WELCOME GUESTSOVIET guest stars appearing with the Royal Ballet usually stick to the classics. The expansive Russian style, our experts say, is too flamboyant for the constraints of British choreography - they’ll never get their feet round the twiddly bits. Well, the Bolshoi’s Nina Ananiashvili proved them wrong. She sparkled through Kenneth MacMillan’s «The Prince Of The Pagodas» at the Opera House on Friday, her flickering feet making mincemeat of every choreographic convolution. Miss Ananiashvili was a fairy - tale Princess, effortlessly making sense of every arbitrary change of mood. She dealt fearlessly with each choreographic demand as it arose and allowed the plot’s complicated symbolism to speak for itself. And her shamelessly broken - and very un -English - wrists and swooping arms and legs perfectly reflected Benjamin Britten’s lagged score... |