A Fille that owes Nothing to Ashton or Lanchbery

Krasnoyarsk State Opera House

Author MaxBioHazard 
Licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
Source Wikipedia Krasnojarsk

The Russian State Ballet of Siberia La Fille mal gardée 15 Feb 2019 Liverpool Empire

Krasnoyarsk is a city in Siberia with a population of just over a million on approximately the same latitude as Dundee. According to Google Maps, it is 4,559 miles away and takes over 14½ hours to reach by air or 5 days by surface transportation.

An opera house with a resident ballet company opened in that city in 1978.  The company's founder members included graduates of the Vaganova Ballet Academy and the Moscow State Academy of Choreography.  Krasnoyarsk has produced some fine dancers over the years despite its remoteness and modest population. They include Anna Ol of the Dutch National Ballet and Viktoria Tereshkina of the Mariinsky.  Many of those dancers trained or began their training in the city and some such as Ol danced with the Krasnoyarsk opera house company.

Every year artists from the Krasnoyarsk opera house ballet tour the United Kingdom as The Russian State Ballet of Siberia (see Anna Lidster Promoting Krasnoyarsk: How the Russian State Ballet of Siberia has won British hearts 3 March 2013 The Siberian Times). I am not sure why they chose that name. It may be that they think that the name of their city might be a bit of a mouthful for British tongues or it may be because they recruit a few extra dancers for the tour such as Francesco Bruni and Francisco Gimenez. However, it is clear from comparing the Russian State Ballet of Siberia's programme with the Krasnoyarsk opera house's website that the two companies are substantially the same.

The tourists have a punishing schedule.  They opened at St David's Hall in Cardiff with The Snow Maiden on 19 Dec 2018 and they will finish in Oxford on 16 March 2019 with Swan Lake. By the end of their tour, they will have performed 6 full-length ballets in 24 venues in every one of our constituent nations except Northern Ireland.  On Friday they reached Liverpool which is where I saw them for the first time.

I was attracted to Liverpool by the show rather than by the company.  They were to dance La Fille mal gardée with music by Hertel rather than Lanchbery and choreography by Gorsky rather than Ashton. La Fille mal gardée is in one sense the oldest ballet in the modern repertoire having first been performed at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux less than a fortnight before the storming of the Bastille but the version that we know was premiered in 1960.

To my great surprise and joy, Friday's performance was not at all inferior to the Ashton-Lanchbery-Lancaster version. I would go so far as to say that I left the Empire somewhat more elated than when I left the Lowry in October after seeing BRB's latest production which had somehow expanded into three acts. The story was very much the same. The only significant difference is that Colas gets into Simone's house disguised as a notaire rather than hidden under a bundle of wheat sheaves.

There were a few other differences.  Instead of churning butter half-heartedly, a distracted Lise collected a couple of eggs from the henhouse while her mother gathered a basketful.  Nobody dressed as poultry though there were computer generated animations of pigs and other animals crossing the backcloth which earned a few laughs from the audience. There was a sort of ribbon dance but it did not end up as a love knot and Simone performed a clog dance though not the one we know.  Alain was not swept into the sky by the storm clutching his umbrella.  Nor was he made to resemble a carthorse.

But there were elements that do not occur in the Ashton version such as a full-blown classical pas de deux complete with entrée, male and female solos and coda.  Lise dons a classical tutu which could not possibly have been in the Dauberval version. In the Russian version, Lise dances at least as many fouettés as Odile in Swan Lake or Kitri in Don Quixote.

As in Ashton's version, Simone was danced by a man.  In this case Pavel Kirchev, a Bulgarian guest artist who dances with the Varna ballet.  He reminded me quite a lot of Stanley Holden. Elena Svinko was a delightful Lise, coquettish and feisty.  She had teeth and she used them on poor Alain (Ilia Kaprov) biting his fingers and ear and stamping on his foot as he tried to express affection.  Marcello Pelizzoni, who trained in Moscow and dances with the Krasnoyarsk ballet, was Colas. He has impressive elevation, power and grace and I delighted in his virtuosity.

Considering the time they must have spent on the road and the need to pack and repack almost every day I was pleasantly surprised that the sets and costumes seemed so fresh and that the cast had so much energy.  I shall try to catch their Swan Lake when they come to Halifax or Sheffield.

Frohes neues Jahr

Musikverein Vienna    Source Wikipedia

Like the Scots, we Mancunians make (or at least did make) a fuss of New Year. My family kept the tradition of "letting in the New Year" even in suburban Surrey where I lived from the age of 6 until I went away to St Andrews for university and to Los Angeles for graduate school. Indeed I have kept up the tradition even in those exotic places where they have their own ways of celebrating the New Year. The head of the household (so long as he has or had black hair) slips out at 23:55 on 31 Dec with a gift wrapped slice of bread and lump of coal symbolizing a hope for food and warmth in the coming winter and returns at about 00:02 on 1 Jan to be greeted by mother with a slice of Christmas cake, a mince pie and a glass of sherry.

I love New Year even more - or rather very much more - than Christmas with its tarnished tinsel, moulting pine needles, re-cycled turkey, bad temper, insincerity and utter extravagance. I celebrate it quietly with family or friends. I have tried the American way with a party, the Scots way with wall to wall whisky, the London way freezing for fireworks, even the Sierra Leonean way with a watch night service followed by wild rejoicing "Happy new year me no die-o, Tell God tenke for life" but I like the Mancunian way best.

Before the New Year is even out of nappies there is the New Year's Day concert from the Musikverein in Vienna. It is one of the few television programmes I endeavour not to miss. I hope one day to attend the concert in person. I was actually a guest at a function in the Musikverein when the City Council invited the International Bar Association for which the Austrian post office actually issued a special stamp. And as a balletomane the best part of the whole concert is the dancing.

We tend to overlook Austria's contribution to ballet but it is not insignificant. Ludwig Minkus, the composer of the score for Don Quixote came from Vienna and indeed died there in 1917. There is Lichine's delightful Graduation Ball to the music of Johann Strauss which used to be part of Festival's repertoire but has sadly been dropped. There are the dancers of the Vienna State Ballet which include our very own James Stephens of Huddersfield. As I said in my review of The Choral's Messiah we dance as well as sing in Huddersfield and we have David Bintley to prove it. Indeed, I think a little bit of our Huddersfield music may be played occasionally to the 12 dance superstars of the future.

This year the State Ballet performed three dances, two from the Liechtenstein Palace and a waltz from the Musikverein itself. Much of the attention this year was on Vivienne Westwood's costumes for the dancers - very Graduation Ball and very La Syulphide - but I think Ashley Page's choreography deserved a cheer. I particularly liked his arrangement of Lanner's Die Romantiker and the Blue Danube. I was distracted from the choreography for Delibes's Sylvia by the tartan which did not seem to relate to the ballet at all.

Before writing this post I read Dave Tries Ballet's Goals for 2014 and had a few reflections of my own. Whereas Dave looks forward I have looked back at some of the many delights of the year.

Sarah Kundi's Depouillage which led me to the magnificent Ballet Black and from there to MurleyDance with its talented dancers. I can't watch Kundi without tears welling up though, having said that, I am an equally passionate fan of the other 5 dancers.

Much the same thing happened with the Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet. Because I was married to a Sierra Leonean for nearly 28 years I was intrigued to learn about Michaela dePrince and was thrilled by what I saw of her virtuosity on YouTube. But seeing her on film was nothing compared to seeing her on stage. She is quite the most exciting dancer I have seen in years. And she is one of 12 outstanding talents.   I love them all.

Other highlights of the year? I saw the Stuttgart Ballet dance Taming of the Shrew at last, a ballet that I have wanted to see for the last 44 years.  I rekindled my love for Scottish Ballet through watching Hansel and Gretel.  I experienced something remarkable at the West Yorkshire Playhouse when my beloved Northern Ballet danced A Midsummer Night's Dream. And I saw Nixon's Cinderella less than a week ago which was a triumph.

I have seen a lot of ballet in 2013 and I look forward to some more this year. I am looking forward in particular to seeing Antoinette Sibley again at the Royal Ballet School on 2 Feb.

At the end of the concert in Vienna the conductor and orchestra wish the world "Frohes neues Jahr" and that gentle readers is my wish to all of you.