Dance Review by Sarah Kaufman

THE BOLSHOI’S ELEGANT, EMOTIONAL "ROMEO"

Rich with Old World grandeur and tuneless spectacle, the Bolshoi Ballet’s full-length production of Romeo and Juliet opened Tuesday night at the Kennedy Center Opera House. After an absence in this country of nearly a decade, the esteemed Russian company is embarking on a national tour - the local appearance is its first stop - and, from the looks of this ballet, it is bound to be a memorable one.

Lavish sets and costumes are a hallmark of the historic Moscow-based company; more surprising was the dean luster of the dancing. Leading a thoroughly excellent cast, the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina, Nina Ananiashvili, used her dagger-sharp technique to emphasize the head long passions that drive this story of unstoppable love.

Yet while Ananiashvili’s Juliet and her Romeo, Andrei Uvarov, were at the poignant heart of this production, this was not a ballet that relied on a single dancer’s star power - though the world-famous Ananiashvili has masses of that.

The Bolshoi has often been distinguished from that other legendary Russian company, St. Petersburg’s Maryinsky Ballet (also known as the Kirov), by its reliance on broad dramatics and overtly physical dancing, which had tended to get in the way of artistry. But whatever coarseness may have been present in the past was absent Tuesday evening. As a whole, the company has a streamlined, refined look. The men, once typified by heavy muscularity, are slim and long-legged. The women, too, are a willowy lot. Whether in the lyrical ballet sequences or in the abundant hard-shoed character dancing, the company moved with a brisk elegance.

Though Shakespeare’s story of the star-crossed lovers, descendants of sworn enemies, is well known and many ballet versions of it exist, the one now danced by the Bolshoi has not been seen in this country since 1959. The company has returned to the version choreographed for it in 1946 by Leonid Lavrovsky, accompanying the dramatic, hotly felt score by Sergei Prokofiev. It had been out of circulation for some time, and the company credits its return to the stage to several former dancers, foremost among them Nikolai Fadeyechev, the father of the Bolshoi Ballet’s artistic director, Alexei Fadeyechev. ...It is an impressive production: a big, emotional Russian ballet as only the Bolshoi can present it.

The scenes of old Verona are framed in soaring Renaissance architecture, while the interiors, especially the Capulet ballroom - where Juliet first meets family foe Romeo - and her bedchamber, are hung with brocades and thickly pleated drapes in rich gold and crimson. Chandeliers and candelabra add sparkle to the ballroom, while the rising sun, with its promise of escape, illuminates Juliet’s room from the window through which Romeo flees after their only night together.

Against the decor’s heavy, oppressive luxury, Ananiashvili shone like a pearl. But her Juliet - strong-willed, acutely sensitive and ultimately courageous - was wholly believable. In love, she found freedom - from her parents, from convention - and that was worth dying for. A flying split leap, her legs slicing open like shears, becomes a stunning metaphor for this yearning, in much the way George Balanchine had incorporated a hungry leap as a recurring symbol in his Prodigal Son...