Dance Review by Clement Crisp

THE KIROV’S «ROMEO AND JULIET»

...We saw Lavrovsky’s «Romeo and Juliet» on the first night of the Bolshoi Ballet’s first visit to the West, at Covent Garden in 1956. The curtains parted, and there was a triptych with Romeo, Friar Lawrence and Juliet - our first sight of Ulanova, who was to seem that night a genius of the dance in her purity and expressive truth. The staging was handsome; Pyotr Williams’ designs were opulent, so veristic that «one could almost smell the Verona drains», and filled with bustling life, with tremendous drama, with passionate and passionately convincing dancing. We were subjugated by the breadth and grandeur of Lavrovsky’s production - the choreography a bit predictable, perhaps, but done with devastating power - and by the generosity of the performances.

This «Romeo and Juliet» had, though, been first staged for the Kirov Ballet in 1940 with Ulanova, and it is this version which the troupe has now brought to London. It is wholly disappointing. The scenery is credited in the sketchy cast-sheet to "P. Vilyamo" (who is, I suppose, Pyotr Williams). It is predictable, functional, and looks ill-realised and somewhat ricketty. The choreography is not credited at all - a slip, or an admission? - and is shorn of the triptych prologue, which is included in the printed libretto. The company performance is, frankly, miserable. There are phalanxes of people looking shifty and wearing ineffably quaint character costumes... Montague is an embarrassed beanpole; Tybalt has cornered most of the brightest-coloured stuffs, well set off by a gang of chaps pretending to be guards in tin hats and sagging black St. Trinian’s knickers...

These problems are compounded by characterisations no less improbable and unworthy. Shameless mugging or disinterest mark the drama, with a lamentably weak dance style in the few moments which demand classic exactitude. (The unidentified male soloist in the ballroom divertissement was very disappointing; the scenery-chewing in Juliet’s bedroom by her family and the nurse was a ripe example of the art of coarse acting. The National Theatre of Brent could not do better).

Embedded in all this were two valuable interpretations. The curious fact is that they were given by Moscow guests, in the leading roles: Nina Ananiashvili and Yury Posokhov. Ananiashvili shows us Lavrovsky’s Juliet, a child suddenly grown to womanhood as she and Romeo fall in love. We see it happen in the exquisite «private» front-cloth scene at the ball when the lovers are alone, and like Ulanova, Ananiashvili makes it ecstatic, fateful. The later progress of the drama comes inevitably and touchingly from this, and Ananiashvili charges the dance with a powerful physical image. As with Plisetskaya in this role, she justifies the dance by the clarity and power of her style, and beautifully so in the balcony duet.

Posokhov, now with the Royal Danish Ballet, is a superb Romeo. His natural elegance - everything light, true, harmonious - is allied to a quiet dramatic sincerity. He penetrates to the heart of each dance or emotional moment, and shows us its essence. Wonderful the tight focus of his anger in the fight with Tybalt. The ardours of the young lover, the intensity of his feelings - even something heedless in Romeo’s temperament - are beautifully stated...

Together, these two guests reminded us that Leonid Lavrovsky was one of the masters of Soviet ballet, a fact which the Kirov Ballet’s lustreless presentation was at pains to minimise. The presence of the Mariinsky Theatre orchestra was the other positive factor of the evening...