EXPO 86 : ‘SWAN LAKE’ BY KIROV IN VANCOUVER

The Queen Elizabeth Theatre, capacity 2,600, had been sold out for months. Scalpers were asking, and getting, as much as $150 for the few tickets regurgitated on the black market Wednesday night.

Out front, unidentified protestors supporting Soviet Jewry handed out leaflets that masqueraded as the house program. For some strange reason, the leaflets bore an ancient cover drawing of Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Inside, there was ecstatic pandemonium. The dressy audience--a sophisticated audience that generally knew when to be silent and when to be delirious--finally got what it had been waiting for.

After a 21-year hiatus, the mighty, fabled, elusive, opulent, potentially definitive, old-fashioned Kirov Ballet of Leningrad had returned to North America. Here was the company that produced Nijinsky, Fokine, Pavlova, Karsavina, Balanchine, Nureyev, Makarova, Baryshnikov. . . .

When Evgeny Kolobov, the conductor, entered the orchestra pit, he signaled for a long, subtly shaded drum roll. This caused a bit of consternation. It didn’t sound like Tchaikovsky’s soulful and moody prelude to “Swan Lake.”

After a few measures, the assembled throng identified the tune. It turned out to be the Soviet National Anthem. All rise.

Then came the Canadian National Anthem. All sing.

Then came “Swan Lake.”

In the States, “Swan Lake” has come to mean a half-hearted ritual muddled by American Ballet Theatre. We have grown accustomed to a stylistic mishmash, to star indulgences, narrative detours, cardboard pictorialism, musical laxity and an often ragged, dutiful corps de ballet.

Under the circumstances, the Kirov “Swan Lake” serves as a network of reaffirmations and shocks.

The first shock comes with the prelude. The orchestra in the pit is not, alas, that of the Kirov Theater. It is the raucous, underrehearsed Vancouver Symphony. But Kolobov makes it play with passion, with fury, with surging lyricism and, once in a while, with a bona-fide semblance of tenderness.

The curtain rises on Igor Ivanov’s painterly evocation of the forest glen at the foot of a looming medieval castle. They don’t make literal, picture-book scenery like this any more--not, at least, on our side of the Iron Curtain.

Before the evening ends, the designer enhances his gallery with an idyllic, marvelously misty lake scene in which mirrored swans glide across still water. Wicked Odile makes her entrance in a genuinely luxurious castle ballroom that is flanked with tapestries and bedecked with Gothic arches--a particularly far cry from the ABT beer cellar.

Oleg Vinogradov’s 1982 production, a thoughtful if not altogether historic fusion of ancient Petipa and Ivanov choreography plus not-so-ancient Konstantin Sergeyev arrangements, is all of a piece. It takes the dance seriously as drama, yet avoids most of the expressive excesses favored by other companies.

Mime is minimal. Style is everything.

The peasant frolics of Act I are out. We get courtly dances instead, with Renaissance accents.

The ever-athletic jester, unfortunately, is in. He gobbles the air, but makes no one laugh.

The tragic denouement is out. The hero ends up tearing a wing off his nemesis Rothbart (who happens to be dark-haired and clean-shaven). The happy end is in.

The abiding focus is on the swans. That is easy. The glory of the Kirov has always been its corps.

No comparable group on the stage today, anywhere, dances with such uniform elegance, such precision, such unanimity of line and gesture, such sweeping poetic involvement. Vinogradov crowds the stage, magnificently, with 32 incipient ballerinas, and they give this “Swan Lake” its crucial, central impetus.

The leading dancers on opening night were impressive if not exactly memorable.

Olga Chenchikova--formidable in her strength, her clarity and sharp attacks--played Odette-Odile as something of an Odile-Odile. She was cool, tough and brilliant as the pathetic White Swan; equally cool, tough and brilliant as her evil, Black Swan alter ego.

One admired her classical authority. One was fascinated by her refusal to indulge in overt emoting. Still, one lamented the absence of emotional contrast and cumulative expressive impact.

Konstantin Zaklinsky, her prince, made much of an earnest, sympathetic, romantic demeanor; of decent elevation and lovely soft landings; of long, muscular legs and a pervasive aura of innocence. In his limited solo opportunities, however, he displayed neither the polish nor the bravura of his most illustrious predecessors.

In secondary roles, Eldar Aliev flapped his wings with proper menace as Rothbart. Vitaly Tsvetkov capitalized on the pyrotechnics of the Jester. Alexander Matveyev offered a deft portrait of a decidedly melancholy Tutor, and Nina Mikhailova appeared bored and immature as the Queen Mother.

The aristocratic pas de trois in Act I was performed with finesse and/or promise by Irina Chistiakova, Jeanna Aiupova and Aleksander Lunev. The various national dances in the Ball Scene were dispatched, for once, with speed, conviction and allure.

The performance was marred by a few lighting mishaps (the final scene almost ended in a premature blackout). At times, the dancers seemed less than comfortable with the unaccustomed dimensions of the Queen Elizabeth stage.

In the final analysis, however, none of this seemed important. The Kirov was back. That mattered. On the cultural front, a cold war seemed to be over.

This week, Vancouver. Next week, Los Angeles.