Young at heart

The second half of the Bolshoi tour brought much fresher fare than the first: following the ubiquitous warhorses Don Quixote and Swan Lake, we got three jolly nights of Moscow speciality: an iffy Shakespeare comedy nailed by superb performing, a giddy rewrite of Stalin’s favourite ballet and a breathtakingly fruity restoration of a 19th-century ballet entertainment, with pirate ships, dancing gardens and a vision of the hedonistic life of abducted women somewhat at odds with Boko Haram’s.

The sexual politics of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew are potentially tricky for ballet since the woman is physically dependent on the man. But Monte Carlo choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot was quite smart in his very modern-mannered 2014 creation for the Bolshoi at exploiting how body language can contradict or invert the intention of classical vocabulary, the psychology of movement.

For sure, oafish Petruchio drunkenly drags Katharina about by her armpits, but in the glowering Kristina Kretova’s expressive flounces, this girl radiates total impatience with the kind of feline wiliness of sister Bianca — brilliantly smug Nina Kaptsova, all pretty-pretty, smiley-smiley, men drooling all over her — and she loathes dapper types.