Tradition is often frowned on. Yet, if properly handled, it can be sheer fun and pure bliss, as demonstrated by the Bolshoi Ballet’s current season in London. Far from being museum pieces, the classics so far presented stand out for their vibrant and captivating theatricality. According to an enlightening note by Yuri Grigorovich, the father of Russian contemporary ballet, much of it depends on an approach that favours performance tradition over sterile philology. In other words, care is taken to note the cuts, the interpolations, the revisions and the additions that have helped each ballet stand the test of time, instead of going for a much idealised ‘original’.
The outcome might occasionally look odd to audiences used to the trendy rediscoveries and reconstructions of long-lost originals. But balletic oddity is central to the fun; geographical and cultural incongruities are integral to the choreographic 19th-century Orientalism that a ballet such as La Bayadère (1877) relies on. Any attempt to make things more realistic would spoil the work’s essence.
It was thus a delight to be entertained by the naively and slightly un-PC character dances that, in line with 1877 aesthetics, conjure up intoxicating images of faraway lands. And it was a pleasure to see that, in line with performance tradition, the final ‘white act’ — known as the Kingdom of the Shades — was performed here by 32 members of the corps de ballet, instead of the reduced 28 we get on these shores. The correct number adds greatly to the scene’s effect, as the repetition of their first step creates a mesmerising visual experience.
On the opening night, Svetlana Zakharova took the title role next to Vladislav Lantratov as Solor, her lover. She still has hyper-extended legs and a body that seems to bend in every possible way.
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