Spartacus

Hermann Vogel "Death of Spartacus"

Bolshoi Ballet Spartacus  10 Aug 2019 14:00 Royal Opera House

Ever since I saw a streaming of the ballet from Moscow nearly 6 years ago  I have longed to see it on stage. I have had a long wait because few if any Western companies seem to perform the work and certainly no British ones.  This year, however, the Bolshoi included Spartacus in its London season so I traipsed down to London yesterday to see it.   The ticket in the centre of row G of the stalls wasn't cheap. Neither was the rail fare. The rail network was all over the place as a result of the high winds and the aftermath of Friday's power outage. Nevertheless, I can think of no better use of my time or a better way to spend my money.  I have been going to the ballet for nearly 60 years and see about 50 shows a year.  Rarely have I been more excited by a performance than I was yesterday by the Bolshoi's performance of Spartacus,

As I summarized the plot and discussed the background to the ballet in Spartacus - Streamed Direct to Wakefield 21 Oct 2013, I need not repeat them here. There is, in any case, a full synopsis on the Bolshoi's website and even a video of a performance of the whole ballet adapted for the screen featuring the incoming director of Birmingham Royal Ballet on YouTube.  The show that I saw yesterday featured Igor Tsvirko and Ruslan Skvortsov as Spartacus and Crassus and Margarita Shrayner and Ekaterina Krysanova as Phrygia and Aegina. 

I had already seen Tsvirko on screen in the peasant pas de deux in Giselle (see The Bolshoi does the Business - Giselle streamed from Moscow 12 Oct 2015), the jester in Swan Lake  (see Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Bradford 25 Jan 2015), Count Pepinelli in Marco Spada (see Marco Spada Streamed from Moscow 31 March 2014) and the jester in A Legend of Love (see The Bolshoi's "A Legend of Love" streamed from Moscow 27 Oct 2014).  Magnificent though he was on screen he is so much more impressive in person.  His strength and endurance are amazing,  Spartacus is a long ballet and he is on stage for most of the show.  There were frequent bursts of applause as he demonstrated that strength such as hoisting Shrayner into the air with one hand as though she were a feather.

The last time the Bolshoi came to London I saw Skvortsov dance Siegfried in Swan Lake  (see Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Covent Garden 31 July 2016).  Although I thought that the Bolshoi has better shows and other companies have better Swan Lakes I enjoyed Skvortsov's performance very much.  I listed Skvortsov as one of the outstanding male dancers of 2016. I had also noticed him in the screenings of A Hero of Our Time, The Bright Stream and The Golden Age.  Intensely good looking, his was the first face that appears on stage from the centre of a testudo stamping his feet and brandishing a fasces. Another dancer of prodigious strength and agility.

I cannot recall watching Shrayner dance before but she is beautiful. She has a face that communicates emotion like few others.  One of my friends who knows Spartacus well described it as a man's ballet. That is true because both the gladiators and legionnaires as well as the leading artists perform spectacular feats of endurance attracting ripples of applause throughout the show. But it is also a ballet about two strong women and Phrygia's role is by far the more dignified and graceful,  The one bit of the ballet that the British public knows well is the theme from the Onedin Line largely because the show was never off our TV screens when I was young. That is, of course, Phrygia's solo and pas de deux with Spartacus and I could not help rooting for a tissue as she danced that piece.

I was already a big fan of Krysanova before yesterday's matinee.  I loved her performance as Kathrona in Jean-Christophe Maillot's The Taming of the Shrew which is now one of my all-time favourite ballets (see Bolshoi's Triumph - The Taming of the Shrew 4 Aug 2016).  She was a great Kitri in Don Quixote which I saw on screen in April 2016.  Katharina and Kitri are heroines but Aegina is very different.  There is a telling scene immediately after the legions goosestep off to slay the slaves when Aegina appears goosestepping like the soldiers.  She had just lifted the defeated Crassus out of his despair after losing his fight with Spartacus, given him back his sword and filled him with a desire for vengeance.  I admire her all the more for that.

When you watch a show from the amphitheatre as I did when I was a Young Friend the auditorium seems cavernous.  When you sit a few rows from the orchestra the House is intimate.  You feel the audience around you.  When an audience fires up as it did yesterday there can be no experience in the theatre more thrilling.  Yesterday, the audience was boiling.  That brought out the best in the artists - the musicians under Pavel Klinichev as well as the dancers.  It was a performance that I think I shall remember for the rest of my life.

PS  I said that I was no British company had ever performed Spartacus but Sarah Lambert has sent me this footage of a rehearsal by Jenna Roberts & Iain Mackay of Birmingham Royal Ballet which suggests that I may be wrong.   At least bits of it appear to have been performed in Symphony Hall and Northampton.

A Hero of our Time

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Bolshoi Ballet A Hero for our Time streamed from Moscow, 9 April 2017

I could not help wondering whether I was letting my love of ballet get the better of me as I drove for nearly an hour to the nearest cinema to show the Bolshoi's A Hero of our Time on the first really good day of the year, especially as the forecast for the rest of the week is nothing to write home about. But I am very glad I did because this was one of the best live screenings that I have ever seen. It was the Bolshoi Ballet at its very best.

One of the reasons why I trekked to the Pictureville cinema at the Science + Media Museum in Bradford is that I read Lermontov's short stories in translation when I was at school. It was just after I had made the acquaintance of Leon Bakst and other late 19th and early 20th century artists who in turn led me to Diaghilev and eventually to ballet. I had read Princess Mary with particular attention because the death of Grushnitsky in a duel with Pechorin foretold the manner of the author's own death. Lermontov was only 26 when he died. He had published A Hero of our Time the year before his death and it was already in a second edition in his lifetime. Think what he might have achieved and he lived as long as Tolstoy.

A young man's novellas need to be interpreted by a young composer and that is precisely what we got with Ilya Demutsky's score. Demutsky speaks English well having studied in San Francisco and he discussed his work in that language with the presenter Katya Novikova in the interval. He told her that this was his first full-length ballet which makes it all the more remarkable. Novikova had noticed that he opened each ballet with a single instrument on stage: a clarinet for Bela, a cello for Taman and a cor anglais for Princess Mary. Demutsky explained that was to set the atmosphere. For instance, Lermontov had described Taman as "the nastiest little hole of all the seaports of Russia". Demutsky spoke how he had expressed that nastiness in his music.

Lermontov's book is a collection of novellas or long short stories centring around the adventures of Pechorin, a young army officer, who makes his way through the Caucasus mountains which were then the frontier of the Russian empire. The choreographer, Yuri Possokhov, has taken three of those stories, Bela, Taman and Princess Mary. Rather than repeat the plot word for word I shall leave it to my readers to consult the excellent introduction on the "About Performance" and synopsis pages on the Bolshoi's website.

As Pechorin appears in all three ballets, it would have been asking far too much of one dancer to perform that role through the whole show. Especially as there were was a lot of jumping to be done, The role was therefore split between Igor Svirko in Bela, Artem Ovchanrenko in Taman and Ruslan Skvortsov in Princess Mary. Readers will remember that Skvortsov impressed me particularly for his performance as Siegfried in Swan Lake when the company visited London last year.

The Bolshoi fielded three of their best leading ladies with Olga Smirnova dancing the beautiful, tragic Bela,  Yekaterina Shipulina the enticing and ultimately treacherous Undine and the magnificent Svetlana Zakharova as Mary. All three ballerinas were impressive but Zakharova showed her genius in one prolonged camera shot immediately after a duel where her face expressed her complex emotions more completely than any poem or novel. I have never seen this in a dancer before and rarely in an actor, Truly an artiste sans pareil.

There were several other memorable performances in Princess Mary. Denis Savin as the unhappy Grushnitsky. How my heart leapt out to him as he flinched from aiming at his friend Pechorin who seemed to have no qualms in dispatching Grushnitsky. Why is duelling so prominent in Russian literature? There is another in Pushkin's Onegin. Duelling is homicide no less. Kristina Kretova was a compelling Vera. Yet another victim of Pechorin. Finally, the wheelchair dancers deserve a cheer. They are every bit as polished and graceful as the rest of the cast.

I should say a word for the set designer Kirill Serebrennikov and the lighting designer Simon Donger. The conjuring up of ripples of water on the backdrop in Taman impressed me particularly. So, too, of course, did the sanitorium in Princess Mary.  

I am not sure when the Bolshoi will return to Covent Garen but I hope that they will bring A Hero of our Time when they do.

Terpschore Titles: Outstanding Male Dancers

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I have decided to make two awards in this category:  one for principals and soloists of major companies who dance leading roles in full-length ballets and another for the rest. I do that to acknowledge brilliant performances in one act ballets and to avoid comparing the incomparable such as Alvin Ailey's Revelations with the Bolshoi's Swan Lake. In both categories I am looking for a male dancer who has spoken to me in a special way in 2016.

In the latter category, the choice is easy.  It is Damien Johnson of Ballet Black. I have described him as "one of the most exciting dancers on the British stage right now" and I repeat those words now.  I have seen him in no less than five shows this year - three of Ballet Black's triple bill and two of Dogs Don't Do Ballet and in rehearsal at the Barbican. In each performance he has delighted me whether as the Obama-like dad accompanying his excited daughter with her dog in tow to the theatre to see Madame Kanikova in Christopher Marney's Dogs or as the sailor in Christopher Hampson's Storyville which I reviewed for the first time in Ballet Black made my Manchester Day on 20 June 2016. Johnson is one of the reasons why I go to Ballet Black, why I support it not only with my pen (OK keyboard) but also with my widow's mite as a Friend and also why I love that company so.

But where do I start with the first category? There have been so many great performances this year starting with James Hay in Rhapsody and Alexander Campbell in The Two Pigeons in January (see The Royal Ballet's Double Bill 18 Jan 2016); continuing with Artur Shesterikov in Mata Hari, Joseph Caley as Oberon and Jamie Bond as Beliaev in Ashton's Double Bill in February; Tyrone Singleton's magnificent performance as Romeo where he stepped in for Bond at the last moment in March (see A Good Outcome from an Unhappy Event - Singleton's Fine Performance 6 March 2016); Federico Bonelli for his memorable performance as Albrecht (see Cuthbertson's Giselle 3 April 2016) and Vadim Muntagirov in The Winter's Tale a month later; Javier Torres as Cathy Marston's Rochester, Victor Zarallo as Siegfried and Nicholas Shoesmith as Benno in David Dawson's Swan Lake for Scottish Ballet (see Empire Blanche: Dawson's Swan Lake 4 June 2016), Yonah Acosta's Siegfried in English National Ballet's (see Swan Lake in the Round 13 June 2016) and Iain Mackay in The Taming of the Shrew (see Birmingham Royal Ballet performs my favourite ballet at last 21 June 2016) all of which took place in June; Rudy Hawkes as Siegfried in The Australian Ballet's Swan Lake (see The Australian Ballet's Swan Lake - Murphy won me over 17 May 2016). Ruslan Skvortsov as Siegfried in the Bolshoi's (see Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Covent Garden 31 July 2016) or Ty King Wall in Zatmansky's Cinderella, a great ballet that I forgot to discuss in my review of 2016 (see Ratmansky's Razzmatazz 24 July 2016) in July; Vladislav Lantratov as Petrucchio in  Jean-Christophe Maillot's The Taming of the Shrew in August (see Bolshoi's Triumph - The Taming of the Shrew 4 Aug 2016); Mackay and Singleton again in David Bintley's new ballet The Tempest in October; Jozef Varga as Solor in the Dutch National Ballet's La Bayadere in November and Shesterikov again in Coppelia.

There were a handful of performances that really stood out for me this year, namely Singleton's Romeo in March, Bonelli's Albrecht in April, Zarallo and Shoesmith in Dawson's Swan Lake, Varga's Solor and Shesterikov in Mata Hari and Coppelia. I have been twisting and turning all night trying to decide this issue - particularly between Bonelli and Shesterikov. A choice has to be made. I have chosen Shesterikov because of his mastery of two very different roles in two very different ballets. In making that choice I am comforted by the knowledge that I am in very good company for Shesterikov is also the most recent winner of the Alexandra Radius prize (see Principal Dancer Artur Shesterikov wins Radius Prize on the Dutch National Ballet website).

A Bright Stream but not exactly a Live Stream

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Bolshoi Ballet, The Bright Stream, The New Stage, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, 29 April 2012 shown at cinemas on 6 Nov 2016


On Sunday afternoon, cinema audiences around the UK were treated to a recording of a performance of Alexei Ratmansky's revival of The Bright Stream that had taken place on the new stage of the Bolshoi Theatre over 4 years ago. The performance was not actually called a recording though the words "Captured live on Apr 29, 2012" do appear at the bottom of the description of the ballet on Pathe Live's website. The Nottingham Showcase cinema, where I saw The Bright Stream, charged me £12 (even after my over 65 concession) to see the film which is not noticeably less than I would have expected to pay for a live transmission from Covent Garden or Moscow.

Having said all that, the film was still worth watching for it was an opportunity to see a rare example of socialist realism in dance.  Dimitri Shostakovich's score is magnificent and Ratmansky's choreography for this work is just as dazzling as his other creations. In addition, Boris Messerer created some gorgeous sets with biplanes and a steam train crossing the stage at various points. However, the plot is not up to much and the jokes are hardly riveting. Even if Stalin had not taken against Shostakovich for his Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, it is hard to see how this work could have remained in any company's repertoire for long.

The history of the ballet was set out by Judith Mackrell in an article for The Guardian entitled Dance of Death which the Bolshoi theatre reproduced on its website. Mackrell tells us that the work was originally choreographed by Lord Keynes's brother in law, Fedor Lopukhov, which connection probably saved his life. The unfortunate dramaturge,  Adrian Piotrovsky, disappeared with millions of others in Stalin's reign of terror. Shostakovich's career was blighted by Soviet officials before and after the second world war but he stayed alive and was spared the labour camps. The reason for Stalin's displeasure is explained in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and the muddle surrounding Shostakovich's opera, an article by Mackrell's colleague Ed Vulliamy which appeared on 25 Sept 2015.

In Dance of Death Mackrell wrote:

"In the mass of Shostakovich centenary events that have taken place this year, ballet fans haven’t had much to celebrate. It’s not that the composer ignored the form — between 1929 and 1935, he wrote a trio of full-length ballet scores: The Golden Age, The Bolt and The Bright Stream. All three, though, were banned shortly after their premieres, leaving Shostakovich’s reputation so damaged, he was reluctant ever to write for the lyric stage again.
It’s a cause of great regret for Russia’s monolithic ballet companies, the Kirov and the Bolshoi. Both are aware that, had Shostakovich been given full artistic freedom, he may have become one of the great modern ballet composers — as inspirational for the dance-makers of Soviet Russia as Stravinsky was for choreographers in the west."

She is right. Shostakovich's music is so danceable. Even though he never received another commission to write a ballet score his life's work which includes music for film has been a rich mine for dance makers as Jean-Christophe has shown with his Taming of the Shrew (see Bolshoi's Triumph - The Taming of the Shrew 2 Aug 2016). Shostakovich wrote the music for the piece that my over 55 ballet class at the Northern Ballet Academy performed in Leeds on 28 June 2014 (see The Time of My Life 28 June 2014 which Mel Wong reviewed so generously in The Dance DID go on - Northern Ballet Academy Show 2014 28 June 2014).

The main characters in the ballet are Zina, a former dance student who had married Pyotr an agriculture student and buried herself in the countryside, her friend from ballet school who had stuck with ballet and become a dancer with a touring dance troupe and the male lead in the company who appears in plus fours. There are some lovely bits of mime when Zina recognizes her old friend and they catch up on each other's news. "Look at you!" Zina gestures pointing to her friend's clothes. "Are you married?" asks the dancer by pointing to her ring figure, "and do you have any children?" patting three imaginary heads. "And how about you?" "Oh no! Haven't had an opportunity to meet the right bloke" motions the dancer. Pyotr meets the dancer and becomes infatuated leaving Zina quite desolate which is the only bit of drama in the ballet. Happily the ballet dancer is a good sort and agrees to an elaborate subterfuge to teach her erring husband a lesson. The story gets a bit silly after that with the male lead exchanging his plus fours for a tutu. Better than political satire in Soviet eyes, I suppose, but not really the uplifting stuff that might have inspired Stakhanov and his pals to chisel out a few more lumps of coal each day.

On 29 April 2012 Zina was danced by Svetlana Lunkina, the lead female dancer by Maria Alexandrova, Pyotr by Mikhail Lobukhin and the male lead by Ruslan Skvortsov. I had last seen Skvortsov as Siegfried (see Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Covent Garden 31 July 2016). It was good to see him again in a very different role.

Finally, a message to Janet McNulty whose views on Nixon's Swan Lake are somewhat different from mine. The Bright Stream is another ballet with bikes. If you have not seen it you should. You may like it.

The Golden Age

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Bolshoi Ballet The Golden Age, streamed from the Bolshoi Theatre, 16 Oct 2016, 16:00

The history of The Golden Age is almost as fascinating as the ballet itself and could easily be the plot of a ballet in its own right.  As Katerina Novikova told cinema audiences briefly in the interval, this ballet was originally about football. It was originally a three act ballet which was choreographed by Vasili Vainonen, Leonid Jacobson and V. Chesnakov and first performed in Leningrad (St Petersburg) at the Kirov (Mariinsky) Theatre on 26 Oct 1930.

Wikipedia gives the following information on the plot:

"The ballet is a satirical take on the political and cultural change in 1920s' Europe. It follows a Soviet football team in a Western city where they come into contact with many politically incorrect bad characters such as the Diva, the Fascist, the Agent Provocateur, the Negro and others. The team fall victim to match rigging, police harassment, and unjust imprisonment by the evil bourgeoisie. The team are freed from jail when the local workers overthrow their capitalist overlords and the ballet ends with a dance of solidarity between the workers and the football team."

The score was composed by Dmitri Shostakovich when he was only 24. He wrote a profusion of danceable music as  Jean-Christophe Maillot has shown with his masterly The Taming of the Shrew (see Bolshoi's Triumph - The Taming of the Shrew 4 Aug 2016). Even I have danced to one of his works, namely Shostakovich's Waltz for Flute, Clarinet and Piano "The Return of Maxim"1937 Op 45 (see The Time of My Life 28 June 2014 which Mel reviewed very generously in The Dance DID go on - Northern Ballet Academy Show 2014 28 June 2014). Apart from being a great composer, Shostakovich was something of a football fan describing the so called "beautiful game" as the "ballet of the masses". Rather more flattering than John Osborne's description of ballet as "poofs' football" (see page 387 of John Heilpern's John Osborne: A Patriot for Us Google Books).

Apparently the original ballet was performed 18 times before it was pulled by the Soviet authorities and never staged again. Shostakovich's beautiful score remained forgotten for many years like The Sleeping Beauty until it was revived in 1982 by Yuri Grigorovich and Isaak Glikman. They produced a new libretto based on the rivalry between Boris, a young fisherman, and the criminal, Yashka, for the heart of Rita, a cabaret dancer which is complicated by the jealousy of Yashka's moll, Lyuska, who competes with Rita for Yashka's attention. The synopsis is set out in some detail on the Bolshhoi's website.

The fascinating part of Grigorovich's plot is that it is set in 1923 immediately after the civil war when Lenin revoked some of the controls of war communism to incentivize agricultural and industrial production in order to feed the Soviet who were suffering a catastrophic famine. That relaxation was known as the New Economic Policy ("NEP"). It achieved its economic objectives very quickly but led to all sorts of inequalities and imbalances and ultimately crime which are the backdrop to the ballet. The NEP was reversed in 1928 after Joseph Stalin came to power and many of those who responded to the incentives provided by the policy were destroyed over the next few years in Stalin's purges.

In their version of The Golden Age, Grigorovich and Glikman created powerful roles for the protagonists, Boris, Rita, Yashka and Lyuska, as well as some great character roles and some spectacular dances for the corps. Simon Virsaladze created some gorgeous sets and costumes for the 1982 production. I caught the tail end of Ms Novikova's conversation with a wardrobe mistress who described how those costumes had been lovingly preserved all those years in the hope of a revival. Audiences were given a glimpse of the workmanship in close ups of the dancers while waiting to take their curtain calls at the end of the show. Grigoroivch appears to have borrowed some of Shostakovich's music from other shows - or perhaps the other way round - for I recognized Tea for Two which ends The Taming of the Shrew at the start of Act II of The Golden Age.

Boris was danced by Ruslan Skvortsov whom I had last seen as "the prince" (otherwise known as Siegfried) in Swan Lake in London (see Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Covent Garden 31 July 2016). Nina Kaptsova danced Rita. I think yesterday was the first time I had seen her but I hope it will not be the last. More familiar was Mikhail Lobukhin who danced Yashka.  I had seen him before at least in HDTV transmissions.  Another face that I think I recognized was Ekaterina Krysanova who was Lyushka.

The choreography had so many breathtaking lifts and jumps not to mention spectacular fouettes, grands jetes en tournant and other virtuosity not only for the principals and soloists but also for the corps that it is hard to single anything out for special attention. However, I loved the first pas de deux between Boris and Rita in Act I where they fell in love and was riveted by Lyushka's passion at the end of Act II where she throws herself at Yashka and is stabbed for her pains. We are used to praising the Bolshoi's dancers for their technique but the four principals are also superb dance actors.

The ballet appeared to receive a rapturous curtain call in Moscow which must have been echoes in cinemas around the world. There was clapping even at the National Media Museum in Bradford, hundreds of miles from Moscow, even though it could not possibly have been heard on the Bolshoi's stage. Our Yorkshire audience floated out of the Cubby Broccoli on a cloud as elated as if we had been there. A wonderful compliment to the engineers of Pathe-Live as well as the magnificent artists in Moscow who brought us that great spectacle.

Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Covent Garden

Swan Lake, Bolshoi Ballet 2016 by Victor Hochauser, Standard YouTube Licence

Bolshoi Ballet, Swan Lake, Royal Opera House, 30 July 2016, 14:00

After seeing the live streaming of the Bolshoi's Swan Lake in January 2015 I wrote the following in Grigorovich's Swan Lake in Bradford 26 Jan 2016:

"Grigorovich's version of Swan Lake is different. As I have noted von Rothbart becomes "the evil genius". The show is compressed into two acts instead of three or four. There is no prologue explaining how Odette became a swan, no gift of a bow, no trip by the lads to the lake to try it out, the lovely divertissements in the royal palace in what is normally Act III are turned into a pitch by the various princesses and the whole episode takes place in Siegfried's imagination so that nobody has to jump into the lake in the last scene. Looking on the positive side there are expanded roles for the jester (danced by Igor Tsvirko) and also for von Rothbart danced by Belyakov.
Now I was brought on Ashton's version for the Royal Ballet which has been lovingly preserved by English National Ballet (see What Manchester does today 10 Oct 2014) and I have to say that I do prefer that version. I don't take kindly to change for change's sake when it comes to my favourite ballets such as The Nutcracker and Swan Lake but that's not to say that I am against innovation. Grigorovich's versions of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker do work though not perhaps as fairy tales as much of the magic of those stories is removed from them.
Overall I enjoyed the performance very much indeed. Tchaikovsky's magnificent score remains which was conducted well by Pavel Sorokin. Above all there was some glorious dancing. Particularly the pas de deux in the seduction scene in the palace. Rodkin and Zakharova are fine artists. His jumps and her fouettés were thrilling. They were both supported well by Tvirko and Belyakov and a splendid corps. Simon Virsaladze's designs did not show up well in the cinema but they may well have been more impressive on the Bolshoi's historic stage."

Yesterday I saw that production live on stage in Covent Garden. It was perhaps not quite the same as seeing it in the company's home in Moscow where I believe the stage is enormous but it was certainly the next best thing. My first impressions which I jotted down in BalletcoForum as soon as I returned from London were, however, very similar:

"I enjoyed it very much with two tiny reservations. I wasn't entirely happy with Grigorovich's libretto and I found the sets and costumes a little dowdy. However the important things were the choreography and dancing and I couldn't fault them at all. I was very impressed with all the cast - Nikulina and Skvortsov, of course, but also Georgy Gusev who danced the jester. His energy and virtuosity reminded me of Wayne Sleep in the 1970s."

The cast that I saw yesterday was different from the one I saw in the live streaming.  Anna Nikulina danced Odette-Odile, Ruslan Skvortsov Siegfried, Mikhail Kryuchkov the "evil genius" (or von Rothbart as I still prefer to think of him) and Georgy Gusev the fool (in the sense of court jester). Each and every member of the cast danced well.  I should say a special word about Gusev who impressed me particularly. with his energy and virtuosity. He reminded me of Wayne Sleep when I first took an interest in ballet in the early 1970s.

There was one anxious millisecond when Nikulina appeared to lose her footing that caused the person next to me to draw in breath sharply but it was barely perceptible from where I was sitting and she recovered immediately.

Notwithstanding the same niggles about the synopsis and the sets which I had mentioned in 2015, I enjoyed the show very much and I congratulate and thank everybody involved for a very good performance. It was well worth the 500 mile (800 km) trek to and from London.

I have to say that I found the audience a little grudging. The Bolshoi seem to come to London every three years or so (see the Bolshoi's Tours page on the company's website) and perhaps the Southerners are used to them but the applause was pretty sparing. At one point I think I was the only one clapping while the house lights were still dimmed and the spotlight was on the break in the curtains for the first curtain call by the principals. When Kryuchkov appeared at half time there was actually a bit of booing not because he wasn't good (he was fine) but because he was dancing the villain. I don't think they have many pantos in Russia so the poor bloke must have wondered what on earth he had done wrong. Nothing at all, mate! You were great. Finally, only Nikulina got flowers even though several other women artists deserved them too and even her bouquet looked like it had come from Tesco even though she had done her company and audience proud. Relations between our governments are a bit strained at the moment with lurid reports in The Times about propaganda units in Edinburgh, but that's no excuse for lukewarm treatment of the dancers. These fine artists are guests in our country and I for one am very glad that they are here.

The Bolshoi have brought a varied and interesting programme to London (see Bolshoi Ballet on the Royal Opera House's website). I have a ticket for The Taming of The Shrew which I liked a lot when I saw the live streaming (see Competition for Cranko: The Bolshoi's Taming of the Shrew streamed from Moscow 25 Jan 2016) and if it wasn't for the small matter of having to advise clients and prepare cases for court I would have seen The Flames of Paris and Le Corsaire too. 

Finally a word on the programmes. They cost a whopping £12. "You can see a whole ballet for that where I come from" I protested to the usher together with a whole lot of other North Country expletives. She replied with a sweet smile: "Well, ours cost £7 and the Bolshoi's covers the whole season so it's not bad value really." Put like that, perhaps she's right.