BOLSHOI BALLET ROMEO & JULIET, PARAMOUNT, SEATTLE, JUNE 2000 |
| From: SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, June
16, 2000 Dance Review by R.M. Campbell ROMEO AND JULIET...The celebrated Russian company returned to Seattle after a 10-year absence and demonstrated in a three and half hour performance of Leonid Lavrovsky’s Romeo and Juliet that it can look into the past as squarely as it can the future... When the company was last in town, for the Goodwill Arts Festival, Alexei Fadeyechev was one of the company’s leading dancers, with a noble style, brooding ardor and inexhaustible strength. He is part of the new Bolshoi regime: Since 1998, he has been the company’s artistic director... When Lavrovsky was artistic director of the Kirov Ballet, he choreographed Romeo and Juliet to the music of Sergei Prokofiev. The year was 1940. Six years later, the choreographer was artistic director at the Bolshoi and set the ballet on that company with some minor revisions, in part to take advantage of the fabled Bolshoi men... The Kirov brought its ĞRomeoğ on a North American tour in 1992, which made it to Vancouver, but not Seattle. It was a clear statement of the sad shape of that company... However, the terrible exaggerations of the Kirov, which brought tears to the eye for the wrong reason, are generally absent [in the Bolshoi production]. What makes this Bolshoi production noteworthy is the kind of characterization individual dancers bring to their roles... Dancing Juliet was Ananiashvili... She is a dancer of extraordinary refinement in which muscle is hidden in the best silk. Her phrases are seamless and light, her finish beautiful, her line lithe, her expression intense. Her Romeo was Uvarov, also a dancer of expressive range, at once aristocratic and admirable. Nikolai Tsiskaridze’s Mercurtio has a powerful, individual presence on stage that Shakespeare envisioned for his strong-willed creation. Dmitri Belogolovtsev’s Tybalt was equally strong but mean and tough with an electric charge running through him. Alexei Barsegyan was a dramatically ambiguous Paris but, thank goodness, not just another generic nobleman. The jester, Denis Medvedev, had plenty of energy and bravura...
|