Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake ***
St Petersburg Ballet Theatre, Coliseum, 25th August 2018
The sets are dowdy and the creased moon looks like a crinkle-cut crisp, but beggars can’t be choosers. Without a Mariinsky or Bolshoi Ballet tour this summer, London has been a desert for the parched balletomane, so a qualified welcome for the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre and their production of Swan Lake. The company tours extensively – hence the crumpled backcloths – and the quality is highly variable. I have less than fond memories of their Bayadère.
Yulia Stepanova (Odile)
© yuliastepanova_bt
St Petersburg Ballet Theatre is a strange beast. It was founded by Konstantin Tachkin nearly 25 years ago. His wife, Irina Kolesnikova, is the company’s only prima ballerina, a perfectly assured dancer technically, but without offering any great dramatic insights. Her biography dominates the glossy programme, but at least it doesn’t bear the title “The Irina Kolesnikova London Season” this time round. In a demanding run of 16 performances over 12 days reinforcements are clearly required and the company attracts classy guest artists. Sharing the role of Odette/Odile, for example, is the terrific Vaganova-trained Yulia Stepanova, a rising star.
Stepanova’s Odette/Odile is no stranger to London audiences. She danced it most sensitively in the 2014 Mariinsky season at Covent Garden, still ranked as a coryphée. With no immediate prospects of promotion, she switched to the Bolshoi in the 2015-16 season, making her Odette/Odile company debut here in London, where I found her Odette emotionally involved, vulnerable and feather-light. Soon after that tour, artistic director Makhar Vaziev catapulted her straight to principal. Stepanova soon adapted to the Bolshoi’s more extrovert style, evident here in her boldness of attack as Odile, whipping through her firecracker fouettés in the Black Swan coda an incredible tempo. Her languid Odette is the epitome of grace, beautifully poised, tragedy etched into her mournful eyes. Her arms are exquisite, with incredible fluidity to her wrists through to feathery fingertips.
St Petersburg Ballet Theatre
© KT
If only some of Stepanova’s emotional involvement had rubbed off on Kimin Kim. The Mariinsky principal is astonishingly assured, his incredible high elevation giving him time to spare in his giant leaps, but his Siegfried remained a blank canvas, beaming through his birthday celebrations without a care in the world. Dimitri Akulinin made for a sinuous Rothbart or “Evil Genius” as he’s dubbed here. In the Soviet denouement, one of his wings is ripped off by Siegfried, breaking the spell to allow a “happy ending” which just feels wrong. Another by-product of the Soviet era is the annoying presence of a jester (nothing against Seiyu Ogaswara, in peppy form). The corps was soggy, the white acts lacking precision. Of the national dances, only the Csardas – a swirl of pink satin – had any punch.
The drab lakeside, wreathed in fog, did little to raise the spirits, but the vaulted ballroom ceiling offered some belated splendour. Sadly, the lighting was crude: blood red beams for Rothbart; Odile’s arrival cloaked in sickly green.
Apart from the stupendous Stepanova, the highlight was a scorching account of Tchaikovsky’s score by the Orchestra of English National Opera under Vadim Nikitin. Woodwinds oozed character, brass was vibrant and the percussion exuberant (the Spanish Dance really fizzed). ENO’s pit band doesn’t get to play much ballet, but they took to Swan Lake like… ducks to water.
(Awaiting production photos… )