Dance Review by Megan Halverson

 SNOW FALLS IN MARCH

Nothing sparkles quite as beautifully as a layer of fresh snow on a 20 below zero kind of day. Nothing, that is, except designer Desmond Heeley’s dreamy, winter wonderland set for Houston Ballet’s premiere of The Snow Maiden. Seen first through a shaded scrim, the Snow Maiden’s frosty realm lights up to reveal snow-flocked trees, frolicking deer and eventually, the delicate Snow Maiden herself. It’s a fairy-tale setting for a Russian folk-tale ballet, just the thing for blowy March weather, and just the thing to introduce Houston to a Russian prima ballerina.

Critics and balletomanes alike have lauded Ben Stevenson’s ability to tell a good tale in an old form, the 19th-century story ballet. This new work brings all the usual Stevenson elements - crisply elegant dancing, comic interludes and lush settings - into perfect balance. It’s hard to decide what to like best here, with a delicately unfolding story, pretty divertissements and fairy-tale cast. Appropriately, a new ballerina steps up to create the role of Snegurochka, the Snow Maiden, and in doing so, assumes the traits of a Stevenson ballerina. Any regular balletgoer can tick them off for you in the lobby: A Stevenson dancer is often as likely to charm an audience with her ability to create and sustain a character as she is to charm by virtue of her technical perfection. She is gracious but commanding, as the oeuvre of sorcerers, maidens and lithe spirits demands. Bolshoi prima ballerina Nina Ananiashvili, who dances the title role, has those attributes, along with a rare artistry that her own heritage provides: the classic Russian ballet technique, in which perfect balance, extravagant extension and graceful interpretation are expected of each dancer.

Last Thursday’s opening night was an evening that got its narrative hook into the audience early and didn’t slacken for two and a half hours - the perfect length in which to unfold such a story. Wispy and delicate though she may be, when Ananiashvili pounces playfully on her father (Father Frost, that is) in the first scene, she’s as sweetly funny as any ballet heroine can be...

...Snegurochka is captivated by a village youth, Misgir, while watching him cavort with his fiancee from her icy tree perch. The happy couple departs, but Misgir, danced with princely radiance by Carlos Acosta, returns to fetch his cap. Snegurochka sweetly invites him to dance with her the way he did with his fiancee, the lovely Coupava (Tiekka Schofield), moments before. Here, Ananiashvili is a vision of feathery softness, her supple legs extending delicately earthward as if to remind us that she floats above the stage...

Each time Misgir looks as if he’s about to leave, the Snow Maiden sweetly invites him back to dance with her. Having watched him from the tree, she has some ideas of what she’d like to try. When he appears hesitant, she places his hands on her hips and motions upward with her hands, indicating that she’d like to be lifted in the same way he lifted Coupava. When he does, it’s as beautiful and touching as any moment in classical ballet. This is the art at its apex: where character and skill meet to transport the audience.

Ananiashvili is a different ballerina from the powerful virtuosos Houston audiences are used to. Her technique is just as beautiful, and her ability to weave subtlety into a character-driven ballet is astonishing. Her use of gesture suggests more than careful rehearsal; it suggests the maturity that comes only after years of dancing story ballets and refining the tiniest fluctuations of movement, from the crown of the head through the fingertips and on down. The delicate extensions that were the Snow Maiden’s courting gesture begin to sink closer and closer to the floor as her fate - brought on by her newly warmed, beating heart - becomes dear. What was a playful flirtation in the first act becomes an act of human longing in the third, complicated by Misgir’s impending marriage. It’s not a happy ending, but in ballet, where truth and beauty reign supreme, happy endings are rare.