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Trouping the Classics

"Sleeping Beauty"
Tchaikovsky Perm Ballet
Lehman Center
Bronx, NY
March 11, 2006

"Swan Lake"
Tchaikovsky Perm Ballet
McCarter Theater
Priniceton, N.J.
March 12, 2006

by Leigh Witchel
copyright 2006 by Leigh Witchel

The proper Russian name of The Perm Academic Theater Opera and Ballet—P. I. Tchaikovsky is a mouthful.  It’s been shortened while they are touring the United States to Tchaikovsky Perm Ballet or Tchaikovsky Ballet and Orchestra. The identity confusion is typical of translations from Russian to English, but it disappears onstage.  Tchaikovsky Perm Ballet isn’t a pickup company. The theater was founded in 1870, the ballet company in the mid-1920s. During World War II the Kirov ballet was evacuated to Perm.

The company’s US tour doesn’t resemble the tours of its bigger siblings at the Bolshoi or Mariinsky; it’s more akin to the Ballets Russes. It's doing one night stands across the country, but instead of one-act ballets the dancers are performing “Swan Lake” and “Sleeping Beauty” night after night. On a Saturday they danced “Sleeping Beauty” at the Lehman Center in The Bronx. The performance ended at 10:00 pm. Assumedly they ate afterwards, if they could find an open restaurant by the time they cleared out of the theater. Then probably they slept, woke up and got on a bus to load into the McCarter Theater in Princeton, rehearse and have the curtain go up on “Swan Lake” at 4:00 pm. They performed in Boston two days later.

The productions are subject to similar exigencies.  At Lehman, there is only one cast listed, and miracle of miracles, it seems to list the actual dancers. At McCarter, we got the infamous Russian cast list with three names for a solo part. None of the three dancers listed actually performed Siegfried; he was the Bluebird from the previous night.  

A throne serves double duty, appearing in both ballets. The Lehman Center is perhaps half the depth of an opera house stage. The backdrop for the prologue didn’t quite fit, so it hung askew. There wasn’t room onstage during the prologue for Aurora’s crib, so occasionally a maid or Catalabutte would trot out the infant doll, but during their conflict with Carabosse the fairies were protecting thin air. Red Riding Hood has to let her grandmother starve because she’s bringing Aurora’s roses instead of the food basket she didn’t have room to pack. Somehow, the company managed to fit twelve couples on the Lehman stage for the Act I Garland Waltz. The McCarter stage is not wider, but it is deeper. Stage depth makes the layering important to classical choreography possible so “Swan Lake” looked richer in texture. There were 24 swans in the corps de ballet, but the four big swans got cut to three.

Underneath the adversity of touring lies a company with solid training. The dancers wouldn’t be able to do as well as they did otherwise. There were a few bobbles in performance, but they were from the strain of performing every night in a different theater. Even more amazingly, the company toured with its own orchestra. Doing the math in one’s head, one wonders how they do it. The answers I came up with involved very low salaries.

Both the “Sleeping Beauty” and “Swan Lake” look relatively familiar. There were no radical departures or reinterpretations. “Swan Lake” is Natalia Makarova’s production originally staged for London Festival Ballet that has, joy of joys, Frederick Ashton’s Act I waltz and portions of his Act IV in it, or something related to them. An unnerving program note explained how Ashton gave Makarova a free hand to alter the final act as she saw fit for her production. Even not knowing the Ashton well, one can see where one hand ends and another begins. Most of the “after Petipa” choreography is linear, and suddenly the dances break into organic shapes and circles. 

Makarova’s setting occasionally favors her own steps instead of more familiar ones and cuts almost all the mime.  Her vocabulary is perfectly fine, but her changes are sometimes odd dramatically and more often musically. The transition from Act I to the lakeside involves the Prince and Benno chasing each other from the court to the lake while searching to the Act II overture; also neither seems to be able to see von Rothbart at the lakeside. What she’s trying to do practically (cut an intermission and also eliminate the need for hunters by filling the stage in other ways) has its reasons, but it doesn’t work well with the music.  At the beginning of Act III Makarova inserts a sarabande led by the Prince.  It makes sense dramatically, showing how unhappy the Prince is on being forced back to the court, but musically it’s a sore thumb. In the same act she shreds the princesses’ waltz to add extra fanfares for their entries.  The calamitous ending of Act III ended up more confused than chaotic and the ending of Act IV also seemed muddled, perhaps because of the difficulty of seeing the apotheosis through the scrim.

“Sleeping Beauty” is more familiar; the main dancing variations are the common ones between Western and Russian productions. There aren’t any pas de chats on pointe in the “finger” variation (no great loss), the Lilac Fairy bows to Carabosse in “b-plus” instead of first position and in the Act III grand pas Aurora doesn’t do fish dives, but a rather pretty variant on the usual Soviet step: she begins with the usual en dedans turn but Desiré dips her and then replaces her to an unsupported balance in a back attitude. Dramatically, this version is quite recognizable. The hunting scene is pared down to a quick dance, but the Vision scene is robust.  The knitting ladies in Act I don’t have a clue how to knit, just like in our versions.  There is one brief odd interpolation for Carabosse in Act I. After Aurora pricks her finger, the court freezes and Carabosse addresses the audience to announce the fulfillment of her curse. Perhaps oddest of all, (though it happens in a flash and little is made of it) on his way to the castle to waken Aurora, the Prince runs through Carabosse’s minions and Carabosse with his sword.  Still, one of the most gorgeously naïve moments in the ballet happens in the prologue when the corps of fairies line up in a diagonal to wag their fingers at Carabosse and shoo her offstage.

The “Swan Lake” sets were designed by Peter Farmer; the “Beauty” set designed by Vyacheslav Okunev was seen at a disadvantage, but his costumes were also more garish than those by Galina Solovyeva for “Swan Lake”. The poor King, with a tiny velvet crown straight out of a margarine commercial and pastel pink and blue robes trimmed riotously with ermine, looked like the third runner-up in an Easter egg decorating contest.

The company brought three principal ballerinas with them.  I saw two, Elena Kulagina as Odette/Odile and Natalia Moiseeva as Aurora. Kulagina, the more senior of the two, is also the more unorthodox. She’s atypical to the company in her weirdly torqued lines, but it made more sense in “Swan Lake” than it would have in “Beauty”.  She’s a better Odile than Odette, even with dutiful single fouettés. As Aurora, Moiseeva is less of a virtuoso than a powerhouse. You can sense it every time she rolls through her foot or finds her axis in turns. She works with intimidating strength and learned delicacy. Moiseeva was at her best in the grand pas in Act III, where her strength was an analogue for maturity. In an impressive way, she looks like she’s danced the role hundreds of times.

The leading men, Sergei Mershin and Alexei Tyukov, switched off leading roles with Mershin dancing Desiré then Benno, and Tyukov dancing the Bluebird then Siegfried. 

Mershin is the princelier of the two; he’s well-built with a deep plié, an easy jump and he’s a fine partner. Tyukov was with the company, but now dances in Cincinnati Ballet (via the now defunct Ballet Internationale).  He can do more tricks, but has a tighter plié and is not as adept a partner.

At the soloist level, Natalia Makina was a long, lovely Lilac Fairy, who mimed in what seems to be the Russian way— as beautiful gesture rather than speech.  Her dancing looked stuck at times but the tempo for her variation in the prologue was painfully slow. Yaroslava Araptanova danced a fairy variation in “Beauty”, Princess Florine, the second variation in the Act I pas de trois in “Swan Lake”, a princess in Act III—like most of the company, she was in everything.  Araptanova is quite thin but very strong with a warm presence. She has a soaring jump (many of the women here tend to lurch and throw themselves into grand jetés) and she’s definitely one to watch.

The corps de ballet is tall and long. There are a few short men sprinkled in, but not many. There is a consistency of style and training that makes the company worth seeing. A corps de ballet that is well-trained to a company style is a rarity and is what places the classical repertory, even under adverse circumstances, into context.

Photos:
First: The Precious Jewels.
Second: Yaroslava Araptanova and Sergei Mershin (who also danced the role of the Prince) in the Blue Bird pas de deux.

Volume 4, No. 11
March 20, 2006
copyright ©2006 Leigh Witchel
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last updated on March 20, 2006