Dance Review by Larry Kaplan

SWAN LAKE

When Nina Ananiashvili danced Swan Lake with Ballet Theatre last May, she had already appeared here as Odette/Odile - first with the Bolshoi in 1990 and then two years later with the Kirov - so the excitement was not that we were seeing her in the complete ballet for the first time. What amazed me was that the ABT performances seemed like a consummation, and allowed us to gauge the sweep and breadth of her sovereign, if not to say, monumental interpretation of the ballet’s leading role.

The irony was that she was able to accomplish such a feat with an American troupe. Several explanations may account for it. First, it is possible that we needed three viewings to begin to take in such a large-scale reading; then, it is also possible that Ananiashvili’s impact derived from her continuing growth and development as an artist.

Finally, it’s likely that the productions we had seen her in before, Grigorovich’s two-act conceptualized treatment and Vinogradov’s more straightforward but dramatically muddled version, got in her way a bit. To be sure the Russian productions have their virtues, and the work of both the Bolshoi and Kirov swan maidens was of a very high order. But remnants of Sovietization cling to these versions that work against individual dancers; unlikely as it seems, I think the ABT production conspired more expressly than the other two in favor of Ananiashvili's full-bodied portrayal.

A recension of the 1967 David Blair staging which was modeled on Nicholas Sergeyev’s mounting for the Royal Ballet that was in turn based on notes from Petipa/Ivanov’s 1895 original, this Swan Lake acted as a kind of tabula rasa against which Ananiashvili could work her magic. Magic it was. In recent years, Ananiashvili has performed with nearly every major company in the West, including New York City Ballet, the Royal Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet, expanding her repertory, enriching her range and adding to her arsenal of effects. She’s also increased her authority and at the present time is one of the world’s few genuine international dance stars.

But it is the purity and authenticity with which Ananiashvili epitomizes the great Russian classical school, which is the foundation of her art, rather than the colors and shades she has added to her palette, that make her Odette/Odile such a colossal creation. Ananiashvili dances the role in a direct line of succession from the great Russian ballerinas of the past, integrating into her characterization, consciously or not, elements of historic interpretations that preceded hers, significantly, I believe, those of Marina Semyonova and Maya Plisetskaya, and it makes her performance unforgettable.

Like Semyonova, who is one of her teachers, Ananiashvili’s movements are graced by what the writer Gennady Smakov calls a special amplitude of gesture and pose, suggesting passion that has long been attributed to the Russian national character. Ananiashvili is Georgian by birth, but that attribute of passion is her rightful heritage because of her position in ballet today as one of the greatest exemplars of the Russian classical style. She’s the real thing, a virtuoso ballerina who can do almost anything - turn, jump, balance, sustain an adagio pose and spin out a long legato phrase of steps that can stop the heart.

What’s more, when the choreography calls for it, she can dance at death - defying speed and take risks that would stop an onrushing diesel. But unlike other pyrotechnicians, Ananiashvili is never cold or athletic. Rather her virtuosity is burnished with a honeyed, lyrical finish, and the sculptural heft and solidity of her movements in the lakeside acts pulsate with life and make the story, which most of us have seen over and over, unfold with unexpected urgency. Above and beyond that, she conveys a comprehensive point of view. On a bird/woman scale of being I’d say she leans in act 2 much more toward Odette as wounded, spellbound creature than proud and suffering princess. Her Swan has come down from the sky and out of the lake but hasn't, for the moment, completely reassumed a human guise.

After her first entrance, during her initial encounter with Siegfried, Ananiashvili’s Odette is terrified, and her eyes burn out at him. She tries to flee, but frozen in fear she angles her torso and averts her head and her neck, folding them back onto her shoulder as if she’s trying to obscure them with her plumage. The position takes on the force of a signature pose and Ananiashvili intensifies it with her arms: their repeated, and apparently, involuntary flutters bring to mind a flood of associations, the flapping of wings, the ripples in a lake, the beating of a heart, associations which sweep the Prince and the audience onto an enchanted realm, where the rest of the ballet is played out. Certain moments in the scene stand out. The adagio, danced at a tempo which sounds appropriate to Western ears, transpires in one long sigh, and the petits battements that conclude it echo in Odette’s variation’s sissone jumps, which follow.

As a matter of course, Ananiashvili is able to astonish with the use of her upper body, (the element that lent an air of miraculous serenity to her Second Movement Symphony in C with New York City Ballet); in Swan Lake the coordination other upper and lower body is equally eloquent. In the act 2 finale the swift placement of both arms in a horizontal position to the left of her torso like wings that are folding up at the concluding phrase of the coda makes high drama out of a moment which ordinarily passes without notice. It’s electrifying, and signals the drama to come in the Black act.

When Agrippina Vaganova tried tempting Plisetskaya to leave Moscow and come to Leningrad to study she promised, "We’ll prepare such a Swan Lake that the devils in hell will sweat". This is the intensity Ananiashvili offers as the Black Swan. She enters like a blast of heat from the furnaces of hell and doesn’t play around with pretending to be Odette. No fluttering arms, or mournful epaulement, except where it counts. And she doesn’t make much of her connection to Rothbart, who isn’t strongly delineated in the ABT production. She’s the devil incarnate, the underside of femininity that is the counterpoint to Odette's trusting, faithful aspect, and she seduces the Prince by her dancing alone.

In the last act, Ananiashvili’s characterization works on yet another level. For the first time in the drama, when fate has decreed that happiness has eluded her, Odette’s human persona comes to the fore. The contrast is heartbreaking. Rarely in my experience has the expression of Odette's betrayal, and her forgiveness, been more emotional.

At the Met, Ananiashvili had a different prince each time, partnerships that were worked out at the last minute when Robert Hill cancelled because of illness. Jeremy Collins, who danced on May 22, is a promising young stylist with classical technique and presence to spare, and he delivered a strong performance, developing a real rapport with his ballerina. The New York Times accurately reported the response that greeted their dancing calling it "delirium" - it was a spontaneous, prolonged ovation, direct from the old days.

Even more excitement was generated four days later when Julio Bocca danced the Prince, a reading in which the drama got played down and dance values took over, with no loss of satisfaction. Ananiashvili and Bocca may not be a partnership made in heaven. He’s a trifle small for her, and the scale they move on doesn’t always jibe. But his technique is awesome. In the air, he transforms himself into a projectile, a smart bomb ready to explode in triple turns after which he floats, parachute-style, to the floor. The amazing thing is that Ananiashvili matched him with rapid-fire, multiple fouettes performed with alternating arm positions in revolutions that moved at what must have been the speed of sound, and then with a balance that looked like Odile’s iron will, exposed.

This was the old time religion of big dancing. Ballerina and partner worked the house and, from the look of it, themselves into a frenzy. New York Newsday said the sound the audience made during the Black Swan coda couldn’t be replicated, except maybe by the explosion of a nuclear reactor, and the "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" element of competition that animated the Black act variations actually served the drama. Since this Odile set out to seduce the prince by dancing, the pyrotechnics worked as an example of the ballet’s essential means of expression - classical steps. The real surprise, then, was the power of the Ananiashvili/Bocca fourth act, in which remorse and despair resulted in tragedy, and apotheosis and redemption.