Review: The Kirov Ballet at The Lowry

May 16 2008 Chester Chronicle

THE KIROV BALLET/The Lowry, Salford Quays

REVIEW/by Peggy Woodcock

KIROV dancers are stunningly alike. Small poised heads, long graceful bodies and limbs.

They move with the same fluidity and leap like thistledown, effortlessly, landing with barely a whisper. Lovely.

Which is not to say they are Stepford dancers. Far from it, as was apparent with their performance of Jewels at The Lowry, Salford Quays, on Tuesday.

This ballet in three parts gave us three dances echoing the jewels of their titles and all very different. Yes, the corps de ballet, very properly, moved as one and were stars in their own right. But, the soloists, they commanded the stage with their contrasting personalities.

Emeralds was classical and elegant, personified by Oleya Novikova and Anastasia Kolegova.

Aesthetically it was vibrant, both in costume and patterning, and the dancing was superb. Kirov technique is way beyond what we are used to. Intense training gives it both ease and joy in performance.

Rubies was a knockout, from the curtain raiser, on a spectacle of blood red and white. Stravinsky’s music encouraged a freer, jazzy, choreography, unusual, with eastern influence in some hand and foot movements. Novikova and Ekaterina Kondaurova gave us two superb interpretations, the one playful, the other, bold, Amazonian.

Diamonds, glittering in every way, produced an awed, breath-held response followed by storms of applause. Even the huge Lyric stage struggled to hold the 24-strong corps de ballet and several soloists as they danced, flowing in white to Tchaikovsky’s music.

The ever-changing formations supported a series of beautifully performed romantic dances for two, three and four soloists. The ballerinas had exquisite line. Their male partners, often eclipsed by the virtuoso women, in this ballet had the opportunity for powerful, athletic scenes.

Thursday’s Gala Evening was a balletic sandwich, a divertissements of delights preceded by Chopiniana, also known as Les Sylphides, the ultimate ballet blanc, and following by the haunting Kingdom of the Shades scene from La Bayadere.

For me a complete ballet is more satisfying, but there was no denying the charm of this programme with its classical outside and such a varied filling. Divertissements was made up of four pas de deux ranging from the fun of Harlequinade to the lyricism of Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky.

The Talisman was striking in its eastern influence, but the dynamite of the night lay with the Grand Pas Classique, balletic fireworks performed to perfection by Viktoria Tereshkina and Leonid Sarafanov. Her exacting poise was superb - small wonder she was rained with flowers in the curtain calls.