Dance Review by Clive Barnes

A REFRESHED SWAN LAKE

THE Bolshoi Ballet is back in town - not, this time, at the Metropolitan Opera House, but next door at the New York State Theater - and for most of New York’s balletgoers that simple statement is enough to cause a stampede, even at the current stratospherically high seat prices (top pop $105), common enough in Europe but hitherto unknown in the United States.

In some very special way, Bolshoi Ballet has become a kind of brand name... representing a style of ballet perceived as big, sumptuous, heroic and spectacular.

On Tuesday it opened its two-week season - its first New York appearance for three years - with a ballet certainly associated with the company, but not one readily lending itself to the customarily accepted proportions of that Bolshoi Image.

With the retirement of Natalia Bessmertnova, and... withdrawal of the company’s current prima ballerina, Lyudmila Semenyaka..., more and more emphasis is being placed on the Georgian ballerina Nina Ananiashvili, who opened the season as Odette/Odile, partnered by Aleksei Fadeyechev.

Ananiashvili is an ever-improving, ever interesting dancer, and her Odette/Odile, with the Swan Queen made dreamily soft and languorous, and the Evil Magician’s daughter Odile, given a neatly diabolical glitter, is now a superb interpretation, all black pearl and blue diamond.