Dance Review by Clement Crisp

A FEAST OF FROZEN DELIGHTS

There is no denying, and certainly not at the box-office, the public taste for full-length ballets. It is, fundamentally, a Bad Thing, but the price of theatre tickets being what it is, and the obtuseness of audience preference being what it is, ballet companies bow to the inevitable and play full -evening works whose titles - at least - are known, either as race-memories of what we used to see in the dear dead days of the Tsar at the Mariinsky Theatre, or as reminders of World Literature. (From The Hunchback of Notre Dame to Edward II the library shelves are being pillaged. I await, with breath un-bated, stagings of The Well of Loneliness or The Satanic Verses).

It is a miserable situation, and few are the companies who, dependant upon box-office takings, dare try and buck the trend. A run of evenings made up of short ballets, by master choreographers or by interesting newcomers, is tantamount to bankruptcy. Only New York City Ballet, with its treasure-house of Balanchlne and Robbins works and its tradition of new single-act stagings each season, can rely upon a sophisticated audience ready to rejoice in choreographic variety. (And NYCB also plays full-evening and bankable pieces!)

All of which serves to introduce the newest full-evening piece: Ben Stevenson’s The Snow Maiden, which received its first performances last week by Stevenson’s Houston Ballet. It is a big and opulent staging, handsome in its Desmond Heeley designs and in its Tchaikovsky score (John Lanchbery has, once again, confected a dramatically convincing patchwork from a variety of sources). It is, significantly, a joint staging with American Ballet Theatre, which will show it during the company’s traditional early-summer season in New York in June...

...Ben Stevenson has made two earlier versions. His latest production, which I saw twice, is markedly successful. Stevenson’s creative language is traditional in its classicism - he is also a celebrated teacher, and his Houston dancers are an admirably assured ensemble, their style academically clean and elegant - and he sets out his tale across three acts with a nice sense of dramatic progress and tragic momentum.

Desmond Heeley’s sets are a brilliant exercise in icy architecture: the stage glitters and shimmers with frost, with a forest and a town translucent and hallucinatory - recalling the village made of ice that was built to amuse Catherine the Great.

On the secure base of Lanchbery’s Tchaikovskian compilation - the not over-inspired incidental music to the play; the enchanting set of piano pieces celebrating the months; music from operas, and the great entr’acte from Sleeping Beauty - Stevenson moves from opening scenes of the Ice Maiden happy in a frozen domain to her obsession with Misgir (shades of Ondine here) and to the last act’s denouement when, at the wedding of Misgir and Coupava, she melts in the spring warmth.

The production is interesting in that it offers two strong and well-balanced female roles. A particular cachet of these first performances was the presence, as guest, of the Bolshoi ballerina Nina Ananiashvili, who will also dance in New York with ABT. Ananiashvili’s lyricism, her serene control of everything Stevenson offers her, a touching emotional intensity (and her beautiful Georgian eyes - like Karsavina’s, as we see them in the portraits that celebrated her beauty) tell everything of the Snow Maiden’s story...

The first Misgir was the Cuban danseur, Carlos Acosta. We saw him in London four years ago as a very young and raw-talented danseur with English National Ballet. His seasons with Houston Ballet (and with the company’s teaching, be it noted) have splendidly polished his technique: his dancing is big, bold, brilliant, and civilised in manner. He gave Misgir a fiery presence that explained his attraction for the Snow Maiden...

Ben Stevenson’s choreography is well-made - its duets notably responsive to emotion - and he understands exactly how the machinery of a full-length ballet can be made to work. The tale is told with clarity. More significantly, the dances have a poetic subtlety that makes us know the sorrows of the characters. The company performances were everywhere excellent in the spacious Brown Theatre, which is its home. The score was admirably played by the Houston Ballet Orchestra under Lanchbery. Heeley's boldly coloured and opulent costuming gleamed against the frozen delights of his sots. The eye feasted.