Dance Review by Anna Kisselgoff

Leonid Lavrovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, for which Prokofiev wrote his now-famous score, was a landmark ballet, a milestone in dramatic realism that revealed a startling new esthetic to the Western world.

Now this historic work has returned to New York for the first time since 1959...with the Kirov Ballet...

The revival’s first performance this season on Thursday night was led by a team trained at the Bolshoi Ballet, the Kirov’s rival in Moscow. Nina Ananiashvili, a guest artist still affiliated with the Bolshoi, was the vibrant and vulnerable Juliet, and Andris Liepa, who left the Bolshoi for the Kirov a few years ago, was the bold and impulsive Romeo. It was a pair that showed Shakespeare’s lovers ripe for love and they scored the season’s greatest personal triumph so far.

There is something appropriate about Bolshoi dancers leading off with this staging... Lavrovsky (1905-1967) created his sprawling canvas of love and class struggle in 1940 in Leningrad for the Kirov... But in 1944 Lavrovsky became the Bolshoi’s artistic director and restaged the Prokofiev "Romeo" there in 1946. It was with this production that the Bolshoi made its memorable American debut at the old Metropolitan Opera House in 1959.

Primarily, the work was a frame for the special emotional gifts of the top Soviet ballerina of her time. Although Miss Ulanova transferred to the Bolshoi after the war, she was trained in Leningrad, a Kirov ballerina and a product of its classical heritage. But she also became the embodiment of a dance esthetic that accommodated itself to the political policy of Socialist Realism. Movement for movement’s sake was frowned upon: Miss Ulanova’s dramatic gestures fused into a remarkable liquid flow...

As Thursday’s performance demonstrated, current dancers are more classically oriented and apparently some of the choreography, especially for Mr. Liepa’s turns in the air and Miss Ananiashvili’s dazzling and streaking leaps, has been adapted to current virtuosic standards.

On their own contemporary terms, the leads registered a heartfelt impact. Miss Ananiashvili... in her delicious playfulness with Marina Abdullayeva’s strongly played worry-bird nurse, was crushingly struck down in the third act. Mr. Liepa, amazingly forward in his pursuit of Juliet as a... Romeo full of charm, was in sleek classical form...