Welcoming the Mariinsky: Looking Forward to the Original Bayadere

Standard YouTube Licence


The Mariinsky have been in London since the 24 July but this afternoon's matinee performance of La Bayadere will be the only time I shall get to see them on this visit. I usually get to the ballet at least once a week and sometimes much more often, but, unless you count Citrus Arts' Savage Hart and Northern Ballet's preview of The Little Mermaid, today's performance of La Bayadere will be the first show that I will have attended since the Dutch National Ballet's New Moves in Amsterdam at the end of June. I have gone to a few classes but that has been just about it.

The reason I have seen and done so little ballet for the last few weeks is that I have been invited to address the Cambridge IP Law Summer School on Thursday. I don't get a fee but I do get a chance to attend the week's conference which normally costs £3,498 to hear some of the leading practitioners in my field. The topic on which I have been asked to speak is a controversial one on a jurisdiction that allows companies and other private investors to claim compensation from foreign governments in certain circumstances.  There have been two big arbitration decisions on claims brought under this jurisdiction, one of which was decided just a few months ago. As I want to do a good job I have focused all my time and energies on legal research over the last 6 weeks.

I have now written my hand out and sent my Powerpoint to the conference organizer.  I can now concentrate on today's performance.  It should be good. The Mariinsky are the successors to the Imperial Russian Ballet which first performed the work in St Petersburg just over 140 years ago. I will get the chance to see three of the company's rising stars, namely Nadezhda Batoeva, Timur Askerov and Yekaterina Chebykina. I shall watch the ballet with my classmate and friend, Yoshie, who also attended Jane Tucker's La Bayadere intensive at KNT last year (see La Bayadère Intensive Day 1: There's Life in the Old Girl Yet 16 Aug 2016,  La Bayadere Intensive Day 2: Idols and Disembodied Shades 17 Aug 2016 and La Bayadere Intensive Day 3: No Snakes 17 Aug 2016). We shall watch and learn what we should have done from the experts.

La Bayadere is not performed very often in this country.  Most of the versions that we see trace their origins to the Mariinsky by one route or another. One big exception is Stanton Welch's for the Houston Ballet. There was an appeal last year for funds to bring that ballet to Birmingham (see A Birmingham Bayadere 24 Nov 2016). Alas, that project was scuppered when the local authority's reduced its subvention to the company (see How Nikiya must have felt when she saw a snake 21 Jan 2017). I have  seen the trailer for Welch's ballet and several extracts but it is the following parody that really whets my appetite for his show:


Standard YouTube Licence

And I used to think Americans lacked a sense of humour.

Jane Tucker will offer another intensive on Coppelia the week after next for which I have to get back into shape quickly. I am packing my ballet bag in the hope of finding some drop in adult ballet classes in or around Cambridge next week.  Do any of my readers have any suggestions?  I should like to take a class in the East of England but if there are none London is not too far away.

Swan Lake from St Pertersburg

High definition television has created new opportunities for theatre and music lovers in outposts like Holmfirth to see the world's great opera, ballet and theatre companies without the expense and inconvenience of traipsing down to London - or indeed other metropolises such as St. Petersburg and New York. Doubtless it has also created opportunities for those companies to develop new income streams and indeed new audiences.

Over the last 12 months I have watched performances of the Bolshoi and the Met streamed live from Moscow and New York to the National Media Museum in Bradford (a great national asset threatened with closure that we really must save), the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker in Wakefield and, yesterday, the Mariinsky Ballet in Swan Lake in Huddersfield.  It is not the same as watching the companies on the stage.   As Tamara Rojo said when interviewed on BBC Radio's Broadcasting House just before Christmas "It's a different experience." But not necessarily an inferior one.  The cameras go where audiences don't such as the orchestra pit when the maestro waves his raises his baton or in the case of Valery Gergiev his hands. They interview the stars and, in some cases, the composers, conductors, designers, directors and technicians behind the production which provides valuable insights not only into the show but also the work. The New York Met deserves particular commendation in that regard.

Yesterday the ballet was streamed to some audiences in 3D. I got to see it in 2D but that was still good enough. The transmission opened with an interview with Gergiev and Yekaterina Kondaurova (Odette-Odile) from the new Mariinsky about which I blogged last month.   The ballet was danced on the original stage but an audience in the new auditorium watched it in 3D. It is a rare pleasure to hear a ballerina speak, especially Kondaurova who has a good command of English.   The transmission then switched across the road to the Mariinsky foyer where Yorkshireman (not everybody and everything of value in British ballet comes from London, Cheryl) Xander Parish was interviewed.  He danced one of Siegried's friends.

The Mariinsky had rolled out its top team for the world's admiration.  Kondaurova was magnificent as was his partner Timur Askerov. Odette-Odile is a split role requiring considerable dramatic as well as balletic skill to transform from sweet swan to shameless imposter. Not every ballerina can combine those roles but Kondaurova is one who can. My favourite bit of any Swan Lake is Legnani's 32 fouettés and Kondaurova executed them exquisitely. Special praise also go to Vasily Tkachenko who danced the jester. The Mariinsky has produced the legendary male dancers Nijinsky, Nureyev  and Baryshnikov.  In Tkachenko I think we will see another.

Having been brought up on the Royal Ballet's version I missed Fred Ashton's charming Neapolitan divertissement but the end of the Mariinsky's Swan Lake was so much more satisfying than most versions.  Instead of the lovers jumping into the lake and sailing off to Heaven Siegfried tore a lump out of Von Rothbart (danced brilliantly by Andrei Yermakov) who writhed convincingly on the floor as the swans broke free.

St Petersburg is one of the great cities of Europe I have still to visit and the clips of the city in the two intervals were stunning. "We have to go there" I whispered to my foodie friend.  And although borsht isn't doesn't appeal to either of us are now saving our pennies to see Theatre Square for ourselves.