When the curtain opened at Zellerbach Auditorium on Wednesday night, the painted backdrop revealed stone archways through which we could see blurs of forest green and brick red, and, centrally, a pathway leading to a vaguely shaped castle in the distance. The Kirov Ballet of Saint Petersburg was presenting its world: one of aristocratic virtues and idealized love marked in precisions of the body’s movement. The Kirov, whose name has changed several times throughout its 200-year history because of political changes in regime, plans ultimately to revert to its former name, the Mariinsky Ballet. Despite the changes in name and personnel, the company’s tradition has remained inviolate.
When the first dancers appeared onstage, wrapped in velvets, furs, and satins and dripping in sequins and rhinestones, it was clear that underneath the opulence were bodies that had been shaped and refined through tens of thousands of hours on the dance floor, repeating the leg circles, pliés, and extensions that are the foundation of Russian ballet. The upright lift of the body as if it were about to take flight, legs extended to their straightest, and the continuous, precise movement that seems as effortless as breathing are only possible through a sequestered tradition that holds rigor and exactitude as the path to Beauty, the divine.
The company opened its weeklong stay, under the auspices of Cal Performances, with a program of mixed repertory, all of which was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa. Although these revivals have been rechoreographed to fit the brilliance of contemporary dancers’ technique, the choreography retains Petipa’s original model, with its emphasis on symmetry and pattern.
Alina Somova of the Kirov Ballet
Photo by Valentin Baranovsky
His was a perception of choreography that George Balanchine, trained at the Mariinsky in its early incarnation as the Imperial Ballet, would later tie into knots, his dancers holding hands while winding into complex figures in the open field of the modernist stage. Balanchine would also unloose the fleetness required by Petipa’s intricate footwork into more dynamic phrasing, making way for contemporary choreographers with their penchant for restless movement and shifting body mass.
The highlight of the evening with the Kirov in Berkeley was the otherworldly Diana Vishneva in the "Land of the Shades" sequence of
La Bayadère. The full ballet tells of the thwarted love of the bayadère, or temple dancer, Nikiya, and her warrior lover, Solor. Through a nefarious plot, Nikiya is murdered on the night of her lover’s wedding to her rival. In a dream induced by opium, Solor imagines that he has gone to the land of the dead where he is reunited with Nikiya in an ecstatic pas de deux.
His drug-laced dream opens, fittingly, with the corps de ballet in white tutus and tulle shawls draping their arms, snaking forward in a slow procession from behind a black curtain at the back of the stage. Their steps are a series of arabesques at the apex of which the supporting leg bends, allowing the extended leg to rise higher as the spine bends back toward the rising extension. Then the leg swings down to continue the dancer’s forward movement. The effect is mesmerizing, visionary. Once everyone is on stage, the corps splits into two lines standing at the sides of the stage.
Slipping Gravity's Chains
Into this starkly ethereal setting, Vishneva enters, with a slight clatter of her boxed satin toe shoes. A dancer with exquisite facial features and extensions as high as the clouds, she captures an emotional tone of profound gravitas even as her body seems to escape the confinement of weight and planetary gravity. In the third of a series of semisupported jetés, her body (or perhaps it was her will) unleashed itself, stretching out in those few counts in a burst of muscular energy that moved past the imaginable, and then retracted, containing itself to keep within the framework of the music.
This deep focus gave her dancing an abstractness perfectly matched to roles in which the dancer embodies the intangible. The other selections of the program, each one a grand pas, were showcases of glittering costumes and sparkling technique. In the grand pas of Paquita, the young Alina Somova was the principal dancer, partnered by Anton Korsakov. The leggy Somova is a vivid contrast to most of the company’s studied precision; she is exuberant in technique and quicksilver in expression. Her volatility balanced the muscular Korsakov’s charming preparations and formidable leaps.
The third act of Raymonda mixed character dancing à la hongrois with classical ballet solos led by the lovely Irma Nioradze as Raymonda. Her solos were marvels of footwork ending with an emphatic pose of her hands, fingers resting in delicate filigree. Yevgeny Ivanchenko danced a regal Jean de Brienne. And everyone was stunningly athletic. No one, but no one, does brisés like the Kirov. Does the choreography call for an assemblé, a tour jeté? Fine, add a few battus in there, while you’re at it.
As refined as the presentation may be, with the Kirov Ballet there is always an underlying athletic bravura. Why else dance?
Jaime Robles is a writer and reviewer. Over the past 10 years she has worked as a librettist for composer Peter Josheff, and their vocal music has been performed by Earplay, Harvest of Song, and as part of Goat Hall productions, StageMedia productions, and the American Composers Forum Salon. She recently finished a short opera libretto for composer Ann Callaway.
