Dance Review by Chris Jones

SINGULARLY BOLSHOI

Ananiashvili embodies strength, frailty

Sensuality and angularity may usually describe oppositional forms of movement and posture, but they surely combine in the extraordinary work of Nina Ananiashvili, prima ballerina of the 224-year-old Bolshoi Ballet.

Nearly four hours after the advertised starting time for Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet on Tuesday night, the vast stage of the Auditorium Theatre was still filled with the 90 ebullient dancers taking part in the Bolshoi’s first full - blown United States tour in 10 years. And Nina Ananiashvili had revealed to Chicagoans why tickets fly whenever she appears with the Royal Ballet or the American Ballet Theatre. With the Tokyo Ballet, she reportedly commands up to $30.000 an appearance.

If you want to see why, you will need to wait until Friday, when Ananiashvili dances Kitri in Don Quixote. In Chicago, Ananiashvili’s contract says she dances opening nights only (subsequent performances of Romeo and Juliet feature a partially different cast).

She must need rest from physical and emotional exhaustion.

Ananiashvili’s thin body can be so still and straight, it seems to exist only in two dimensions. And yet she also manages to convey extraordinary vulnerability and sensuality. Especially during her intensely powerful scenes with Paris (the splendid Alexei Barsegyan), you’d swear this 37-year-old dancer was in her teens.

Even without such a star, an evening of ballet comes no grander. The huge (and surprisingly young) cast swarms like bees around Petr Williams’ lovably traditionalist wing-and-drop settings...

Whatever they say about modernizing the Bolshoi, there are no post -modern concessions here. Instead of the shorter, more familiar Kenneth Macmillan version (choreographed for the Royal Ballet in 1965), the Bolshoi re-creates the classic 1938 libretto and choreography of Leonid Lavrovsky...

...There is some extraordinary work on display.

As the Jester, Denis Medvedev has a better leap than Michael Jordan. Dmitri Belogolovtsev is an intense and strong Tibalt and there’s quiet but delightful dancing from Maria Allash as Juliet’s girlfriend.

But... it’s mainly Ananiashvili’s emotional honesty that allows this epic performance to transcend its specific cultural milieu.