The heralded tour by the Bolshoi Ballet presents classical high points, but no real luminaries
Ballet
Andrew Gilder
I could not help wondering, on the way to watch a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet, whether the troupe visiting South Africa was the same as that which performed for the recent meeting of the International Olympic Committee in Moscow.
A scan of the press releases for the tour reveals that the company can call on about 250 dancers and that this year marks its 225th anniversary.
Despite the august ensemble, it was still with an involuntary shudder that I heard the box office attendant say as she handed over a pair of tickets, “That will be R700 please.” Watching the crisp notes being counted out, I sensed a huge onus had been placed on the dancers.
The concert programme presents a number of aspects of the Bolshoi repertoire, from Fokine’s one-act Chopiniana (better known to Western viewers as Les Sylphides), to the variety of pas de deux and solos that make up the second half.
While Fokine’s work unfolds within a suitably pastoral landscape, the divertissements are performed on a bare stage with either a slide of the interior of the Bolshoi Theatre projected on to the back cloth or a black tab behind the dancers.
Unfortunately, the front-of-house lighting washes out the slide, making it less satisfactory than if a coloured cyclorama had been employed.
I inferred from this that the show depends on the ability of the performers, there being nothing else to divert attention.
Fokine is reputed to have regarded Chopiniana as his ideal of the romantic ballet, imbued with a great poetry and sadness.
For this reason the corps de ballet must operate seamlessly and as a subtle frame for the duets and solos. This corps was, on the whole, impressive, successfully creating the dreamlike context upon which the piece pivots.
Konstantin Ivanov, the single male dancer, rose to the technical demands of his partnering role, but provided a jarring element by not displaying the necessary softness in his landings and by succumbing to the temptation to emphasise the split-leg of his grande jete en tournon. This kind of bravura is inappropriate for the style.
Bae Joo Yoon and Anastasia Goriacheva kept a tight rein on their duet, and Olga Suborova danced with delicate power.
Of the three works that stand out from the second half of the evening, two featured Denis Medvedev.
Narcissus, a solo originally for Bolshoi star of the 1960s and 1970s Vladimir Vassiliyev, puts the mythological character through a hybrid of ballet and modern movement.
The choreography alternates between earthbound distortion of the bodyline and throwing the dancer high into the air in arching classical jumps.
Medvedev uses his prodigious elevation to considerable effect, both in this piece and in the pas de deux from La Sylphide, for which he must switch dance styles to that of the Danish master, Bournonville. In this piece he demonstrates excellent beats, tours en lair (to both sides), and a suitably exuberant partnering of Goriacheva.
The third showpiece is the pas de deux from Carnival in Venice, danced by Joo Yoon and Ivannov. The ballerina, ably supported by her partner, shines in this display of bravura classicism.
Other works on the programme include the Dying Swan solo made by Fokine for Pavlova and first performed in December 1907.
Marina Allash makes a good attempt, but, in a piece that is not merely about waving arms and bourres does not bring sufficient pathos to the final mortal struggle of a dying bird.
Anna Tsygankova and Andrey Bolotin danced the Bluebird pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty. The promise of their solid pairing was not fulfilled in the solos, which were merely adequate. Bolotin particularly has some way to go before he can bring the necessary lightness to the Bluebird’s steps. (Aficionados may also be interested to know that the Bolshoi male solo is about half the length of the version typically danced in South Africa, for example by the now defunct State Theatre Ballet Company.)
The Corsaire pas de deux, which should have been the showstopper, was merely competently performed by Maria Alekshandrova and Dimitry Belogolovstev.
The standard choreography of the duet is not overly challenging, leaving ample space for interpretation of the role. Frankly, the pair misunderstood the passion of the piece, replacing smouldering intensity with showmanship.
From a technical point of view, Alekshandrova gave a good account of the solo, but looked uncomfortable in her series of fouettes, just managing to squeeze out the required 32.
Belogolovtsev provided a suitably impressive pirouette combination, but lacked the elasticity in his landings so necessary for the initial jumps in the male solo. His jetes around the stage which, inexplicably, elicited delighted applause from the audience were not particularly spectacular, although his diagonal of slip-jetes, at the beginning of the coda, demonstrated good elevation.
Olga Suborova leads the Russian Dance (Swan Lake Act 3), which looked lonely without the context of the full-scale production.
These dancers are well trained and perform the repertoire competently, but while there were no bad dancers, there were no real luminaries. There are only four male dancers in the entire production and only one, Medvedev, gives a truly memorable performance. Of the women, Joo Yoon stands out.
The Latin maxim caveat emptor springs to mind: “the buyer [in this case, of the tickets] must beware”.
The tour is vaunted as that of the Bolshoi Ballet. One wonders whether there are better dancers among the other 250 and what ticket prices would be if the first team were here.
The details
The Bolshoi Ballet performs at the Opera at the State Theatre, Pretoria from July 27 to 29. Tel: (012) 322 1665.
Performances at the Civic Theatre in Braamfontein take place from July 31 to August 3. Tel (011) 403 3408
@A rich musical feast
Musical
Guy Willoughby
What is opera especially in a South African context, with our rich surfeit of musical styles jostling together from three continents? The question receives a vigorous shake-up in Cape Town Opera’s premiere production of Love and Green Onions, the new “jazz opera” by Michael Williams (book and lyrics) and Denzil Weale (score).
Weale’s music, buoyantly rendered by conductor Graham Scott and a hard-driving percussive band, is a rousing blend of many local elements: kwaito backbeats, township kwela and marabi songs, flattened blues and jazz progressions, torch ballads, African gospel song. It’s an intoxicating blend that spectacularly brings Zakes Mda’s award-winning novel Ways of Dying (1995) a wry take on the ruinous black-on-black violence of the 1980s, welded into an unusual love story to vivid stage life.
If opera is that brand of musical theatre in which music portrays the emotional heart of the drama, then Love and Green Onions is indeed opera, in a style somewhere between Stephen Sondheim’s intricate musical theatre and the communal stage musical pioneered here by Gibson Kente.
There are wonderful performances: jazz diva Gloria Bosman whose voice is a supple jazz instrument if ever there was one as Noria, retired prostitute and grieving mother, who is a dazzling foil for the classically operatic accents of Fikile Mvinjelwa in the role of Toloki, the town pariah and professional mourner, who falls in love with her.
Marcus Desando does his best with the role of Bhut’shaddy, the minibus taxi driver, a rather undeveloped part that does not quite make the transition from book to opera.
The chorus, made up of members of Cape Town Opera’s Vocal Ensemble, forms a major multi-headed character in its own right; Mda’s novel is much concerned with the interplay between individual and community, and the sense of the community as character thrusting, intrusive, gossipy, by turns horrified, angry or amused is neatly achieved here.
The inimitable aspects of the book the odd blend of surreality and quirky humour that pervades Mda’s tale gets a lost in this retelling.
Michael Mitchell’s hard-working set, in steel and corrugated iron, suggests the magic elements infused with the realistic ones, but in Williams’s text these offbeat elements that give the book its texture are undeveloped.
Yet Love and Green Onions is a rich musical feast enlivened by great performances and some fine, infectious songs. Williams and Weale wrest the essential humanity in Mda’s story and give it a dramatic spin.
Love and Green Onions, with some judicious editing and hard revisiting of an over-extended second half, will be an irresistable addition to our growing local operatic repertoire. And it’s great to see the Baxter Theatre Centre and Artscape cooperating to bring challenging musical theatre to the public.
The details
Love and Green Onions is showing at the Baxter Theatre Centre, Main Road, Rondebosch, until July 28. Tel: (021) 685 7880.