Concerts Opera Dance Theater Gigs Exhibits

	Vadim Lapin / Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater The "Grand Pas" scene from "Paquita" is an excellent addition to the theater's repertoire.

A Legacy of Dance

Three one-act ballets premiered at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theater on Sunday - and two of them were successes.

By Raymond Stults
Published: March 28, 2008

As the final legacy of his 2 1/2 years as ballet artistic director of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater, Mikhail Lavrovsky, a former star dancer at the Bolshoi Theater, has left a three-part program that would surely test the mettle of even the world's most eminent ballet troupes.

Premiered last Sunday, the new triple bill combines a pair of enormously popular scenes from ballets by legendary Mariinsky Theater balletmaster Marius Petipa -- the "Grand Pas" from "Paquita" and "The Kingdom of the Shades" from "La Bayadere," -- with the "Walpurgis Night" ballet sequence from Charles Gounod's opera "Faust," as choreographed for the Bolshoi Theater in 1949 by Lavrovsky's father, Leonid Lavrovsky.

With two of the three works nicely hitting the target, and the third that should improve with further drill, the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko has come up with an addition to its repertoire likely to be greeted as warmly by future audiences as it was by the cheering house that witnessed it on Sunday.

"Paquita" was the first of over 70 ballets created by Petipa in his more than half a century at the Mariinsky. But its most renowned segment, the "Grand Pas," came into being only at a revival some 24 years after the ballet's original 1847 premiere.

Danced to one of the most captivating of the many scores written by Austrian Ludwig Minkus during his lengthy tenure as the Mariinsky's official ballet composer, the "Grand Pas" calls for a pair of lead dancers, secondary soloists to dance its variations and a female corps de ballet.

Featured in the lead parts on Sunday were the theater's senior prima ballerina, Tatyana Chernobrovkina, and Bulgarian-born Georgi Smilevski. Back in the mid-1990s, I recall hearing Chernobrovkina described by an expert as the finest ballerina then to be seen on the Moscow stage. She may now be approaching the end of her career, but she nevertheless remains the very picture of elegance and precision. Smilevski provided her with stylish support and danced gracefully in his solo turns.

With all four of the female variations drawing well-deserved ovations and remarkably accurate work by the corps de ballet, the "Grand Pas" added up to display of classical dance of which the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko can justly be proud.

Unfortunately, the same could be said of "The Kingdom of the Shades," which came second on the program.

Anyone who has seen the Bolshoi's full-length "La Bayadere" is unlikely to forget its awesome third-act spectacle of 32 ghostly "shades," clad in white tutus, slowly descending a steep mountainside arabesque-by-arabesque. In place of a mountainside, the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko has substituted a star-studded high-tech background and a low-lying pair of gently sloping ramps. And its reduced complement of 24 "shades" came nowhere close on Sunday to the matching the razor-sharp precision usually displayed by the women of the Bolshoi's corps de ballet.

In the lengthy duet that followed, Natalya Somova started off promisingly as Nikiya, the bayadere (or Indian temple dancer) of the ballet's title, but went on to mar her performance with inaccurate foot work. Roman Malenko, on the other hand, gave a stalwart account of Solor, the grieving lover of Nikiya, who finds himself transported in a dream to the eerie realm to which death has brought her.

Though the theater's program attributes the music of "Walpurgis Night" to Charles Gounod, it is now generally believed that Gounod farmed out the writing to his colleague Leo Delibes, the composer of such still-popular ballets as "Coppelia" and "Sylvia," the former of which is due to be revived at the Bolshoi in a new production next season.

According to German legend, Walpurgis Night, which falls at the end of April, involves an orgy of witches and gods reveling in the arrival of spring. In the final act of Gounod's opera, it serves to give the hapless Faust a glimpse of Mephistopheles' satanic kingdom.

Neither the music nor Leonid Lavrovsky's staging has much about it that could be called satanic. The principal characters are the gods Bacchus and Pan, plus a female Bacchante, a quartet of rather well-behaved satyrs and trio of nymphs. Otherwise, the stage is filled with what looks suspiciously like the crowd at a student costume party.

In fairness to Lavrovsky, the ballet was created at time when official prudishness forbade anything on the Soviet stage that might resemble a real orgy. And within the limits he was forced to observe, Lavrovsky managed to come up with a wonderfully exuberant work featuring a wide of assortment of imaginative steps and some truly daredevil leaps and carries.

The troupe on Sunday danced it with great skill and genuine enthusiasm. Natalya Ledovskaya gave a dazzling performance of the Bacchante, with Mikhail Pukhov expertly partnering her as an appropriately imposing Bacchus.

The triple bill, combining scenes from "Paquita" (Pakhita) and "La Bayadere" (Bayaderka) with "Walpurgis Night" (Valpurgiyeva Noch), next plays on Apr. 25 and May 29 at 7 p.m. at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater, located at 17 Bolshaya Dmitrovka. Metro Tverskaya, Chekhovskaya. Tel. 629-8388. www.stanmus.ru

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