The San Francisco Ballet, founded in 1933 as the first ballet company in America, opened its 86th repertory season with the annual gala concert featuring a champagne promenade in the lobby and a bill featuring two world premieres and several “house” ballets by resident choreographer/director Helgi Tomasson. Prior to curtain, Chairman of the Board of Trustees Carl Pasquerelli presented Dede Wilsey with the Lew Christensen award for her work as a trustee. Ms. Wilsey declared the company one of the best in the world, which many would agree is an apt characterisation for this West coast troupe.

VaganovaToday has been following the rehearsal process the last few weeks at the Bolshoi with Forsythe representatives Noah Gelber and Kathryn Bennetts, who have been setting Artefacte Suite on the Bolshoi. A full review will appear in Dance Europe magazine in the December/January issue. But the two-ballet programme, which also includes a new version of Petrushka by choreographer Edward Klug is a purely modern addition to the Moscow troupe’s repertoire that is challenging in terms of the speed and coordination required in these newer, non-classical forms of movement.

VaganovaToday wishes the casts all the best in the upcoming premiere on 20 November 2018. Merde!

As early as spring 2018, sidewalk signs and metro billboards held the poster for the International Ballet Stars Gala to be held at the Kremlin on 7 October. The list of international participants was impressive indeed, including stars from Berlin, Vienna, Norway, Saint Petersburg, and of course Moscow’s local Stanislavsky, Bolshoi, and Kremlin troupes. Sponsored by the Vinokur Fund, and filmed for Russia’s Kultura TV channel, the large-scale production required intense coordination by producer Mikhail Sheynin, best known for his work producing the controversial film “Mathilde” about the life of Mathilde Ksessinskaya, the pre-revolutionary ballerina who had a relationship with Tsarevich Nikolai.

You graduated in 2011 from the Vaganova Academy under Ludmila Kovaleva, a pedagogue who has trained some of the biggest names in ballet, including Diana Vishneva. What was it like working with her?

I really love and respect Ludmila Valentinovna and am very thankful to her for all the knowledge and skills that she gave me. Even now, it is very interesting for me to work with her, not only on technique, but also on my roles. She has an uncanny ability to connect technical elements to the meaning of a ballet role, so that these elements become inseparable from the character and you no longer need to worry about them when you perform them, they just come to you naturally.

You’ve been at the helm of the Stanislavsky over a season now. Have you noticed changes in the dancers since you arrived?

Yes. There is a certain consciousness about work, in a way. I think the company pays attention to work and they have learned and grown, they’ve gained maturity, they’ve become aware of what I want in terms of the form of work. The basis of academicism is the same everywhere, so that is unchanged. You can make it come alive in various ways, but the quality of work itself, that is what I demand of them.

In Russia, we have an extremely large ballet public and the classical traditions. In Europe they are things that are at the same afraid of speed and i think we have to pay attention to that. The young generation of Instagram and Facebook has a need to be able to identify with the large classical ballets. So its truly the quality and the way you make these ballets come to life that will allow us to preserve those links between the repertoire and the public of tomorrow.

The main houses in Russia have devoted their spring seasons to Petipa, either highlighting warhorse classics that are, in this country, constantly in the rotating repertoire, or creating special gala evenings to honor the choreographer. In March, the Mariinsky began a series of performances honouring the great master, inviting artists from the Bolshoi and beyond to dance Petipa works. And after a series of Bayaderes last month, the Bolshoi held two gala concerts with mixed-bill divertissements including foreign guests as its own tribute.

The Grigorovich version of La Bayadère hails back to 1991, when the ballet returned to the Bolshoi stage after a 50-year absence. Its predecessor, a version created by Alexander Gorsky, rejected the Petipa original, focusing on the wedding celebration rather than the Shades scene, and including, as old records note, “flashes of arm” that destroyed the Petipa choreography.

Grigorovich’s approach, however, retains many of the Petipa basics, with the addition of his personal adjustments to both choreography and sets, but no significant alteration to the libretto. The overture that accompanies the curtain opening, for example, set to the dance of the fakirs, differs from the Petipa version that runs at the Mariinsky.

Just four years ago, I first interviewed Nadezhda Batoeva for Dance Europe magazine. At the time, she was a promising young new addition to the Mariinsky Theatre, just five years into her employment with the troupe, who explained the challenges in entering and training at the Vaganova Academy.

Coming from a family of mechanical engineers, Batoeva’s background was far from the world of ballet and at first, it wasn’t easy. “Only in the last 3 years [of study at the Academy] was I given a more favoured position in class and allowed to stand in the centre of the barre (an honoured position for the best students),” she said in that interview.

And yet, now a first soloist with the troupe, just one rank away from principal dancer, one would never have guessed that the young ballerina had had earlier struggles. On 21 March she debuted as Odette-Odile in Swan Lake, the acid test in Russia for any classical ballerina. In the reliable hands of Xander Parish as her Prince Siegfried, Batoeva made her mark with a fresh interpretation of this traditional role.

Though hailing from France, Marius Petipa, who would have turned 200 years old on March 11, made a name for himself in Saint Petersburg, at the then “Bolshoi Kamenniy”, now Mariinsky Theatre, where he served as balletmaster for 34 years and where the bulk of his ballets premiered. In this “Year of Petipa”, the house that the great choreographer called home replaced their annual international ballet festival with a hybrid version focusing on Petipa ballets. Rampant with Sleeping Beauties at the start, the festival moved on to include guest artists from Moscow and New York, and even a debut in Swan Lake.

The month of February brought a myriad of events in Moscow and beyond for balletgoers. Here are some of the highlights:

– On 9 February, Artemy Belyakov reprised the role of Crassus in Spartacus at the Bolshoi.
–Former Bolshoi Star, now freelancer Prima Maria Alexandrova debuted in Alexei Miroschnichenko’s Cinderella in the city of Perm.
– On 21 February, the Mariinsky held an evening in honour of Alla Shelest. Ekaterina Kondaurova opened the evening with the White Adagio from Swan Lake. That was followed by Ekaterina Osmolkina with Vladimir Shklyarov in the duet from Legend of Love. The list of guests performing divertiseements included Vladislav Lantratov and Maria Alexandrova in the Grand pas from Don Quixote among others. The bill from the evening is here: https://www.mariinsky.ru/playbill/playbill/2019/2/…
–The Perm Ballet Theatre travelled to Moscow to present 2 performances as part of the Golden Mask Awards for the past season. The first night, 25 February, they danced Alexei Miroschnichenko’s Nutcracker and the second night 27 February, at the Helicon Opera Theatre, they performed Robbins’ Four Seasons.
– Another set of performances the scandalously popular ballet, Nureyev, closed out the month at the Bolshoi.

Note to readers: VaganovaToday has experienced some plagiarism issues recently from print magazines. All reviews on this site are copyrighted.