Dance Review by Mary Clarke

PRINCE OF THE PAGODAS

I welcome, with all my heart, the presence of Russian dancers as guests, or, even better, members of the Royal Ballet. They provide incentive and stimulus to our dancers and they, in turn, enjoy the opportunities of dancing unfamilair choreography.

On Friday Nina Ananiashvili and Alexei Fadeyechev took the leading roles in Kenneth MacMillan’s «Prince Of The Pagodas» for the first time and were obviously enjoying themselves. She has a diamond sharp technique which blazes in the last act - dazzling turns, ravishing arms - but she is rather more the ballerina than the dewy young Princess Rose of MacMillan’s ballet...

Fadeyechev on the other hand brings to the role of the Prince of the Pagodas exactly the right heroic quality - the Royal Ballet does not breed heroes. Son of a famous father, he invests the part with passion, with handsome presence and, with remarkable understanding of the tortures of the man maliciously transformed into a Salamander. Above all, I relish the sheer fun he injected into the final battle against the four kings who are rivals to the hand of Princess Rose. He is no stranger to fighting roles (a magnificent Ivan the Terrible with the Bolshoi) but he has an exchanting way of teasing in a fight when he is playing a fairytale character as distinct from a real and tragic one.