BALLET REVIEW : School Still On for Bolshoi’s Young Troupe

The distance between the classroom and the stage has seldom seemed so profound as during the program Tuesday by the Bolshoi Ballet Academy at the Pantages Theatre, opening night of a seven-performance engagement.

“Ecole de Ballet,” a 1962 showpiece for the mighty parent company, suggested that Bolshoi artistry exists on a continuum: neophytes imperceptibly evolving into flamboyant professionals. No such luck. At the Pantages, we see student dancing that is mostly cautious and self-absorbed--neat, prim and vacant, as in Marianna Ryzhkina’s performance of a pas de deux by Maxim Martirosyan from “La Fille mal Gardee” opposite the likable, competent but quickly tired Yuri Klevtsov.

Where’s the bloom of genuine Bolshoi dancing, the joy, the individuality? Executing short pieces and excerpts to taped music, this appealing group of 16- to 24-year-old seniors and recent graduates of the Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow looks grimly overtaxed, dutifully academic. Indeed, they come fully alive only in secondary assignments (a pas de six from Igor Uksusnikov’s version of “Laurencia,” for instance) and, especially, in two Ukrainian-style specialties: Zakharov’s solo “Gopak” (rousingly performed by Alexei Musatov) and Pobezhimov’s surging “Septet.” Maybe the Pantages should have asked for the Moiseyev Academy instead. . . .

The Tuesday program began with the disastrously anti -academic Ekaterina Besergani faking her way through the ballerina role in a suite from Petipa’s classical warhorse “Paquita.” Breaking the rules, Besergani unleashed mile-high extensions that caused her placement to go out of whack, and jumps that lost their shape and steadiness in pursuit of sheer power. Even her gestural bravura often threw her off balance--and she proved no more successful later on in the grieving platitudes of Martirosyan’s duet “Consolation.” Obviously, she has nerve, if nothing else, but why expose her in such unsuitable challenges?

Alexei Malykhin partnered her capably both times, exuding the magnetic presence of a major dancer without ever doing anything remotely remarkable in his solos.

In contrast, stocky virtuoso Michael Shannon (a Los Angeles teen-ager who is currently the only American at the academy) came on strong in “Paquita,” revealing a fine jump, excellent turns but also occasional lapses in terminations. Shannon may lack the distinctive personality and ideal line of Malykhin but he is at home in the air and, while that lasts, his future is secure.

After intermission came nine miniatures, ranging from the familiar (Messerer’s gymnastic duet “Spring Waters,” roughly tackled by Elena Kotova and Vitali Yoganson) to the obscure (Usmanov’s saccharine character trio “Spring,” fervently interpreted by Natalia Bashkatova, Elina Melnichenko and Elena Utva).

Although some of these divertissements evoked dancing-school recitals at their most deadly, two of them featured exciting gold-medal winners from the recent Moscow International Ballet Competition. Guest artists Galina Stepanyenko (of the Stanislavsky Ballet Theatre) and Vladimir Malakhov (of the Moscow Classical Ballet) are not ideally suited in either height or temperament, but their performance of Petipa’s Black Swan pas de deux had the faultless authority audience have come to expect from Soviet dancers.

Stepanyenko made a steely, imperious Odile, mistress of a spectacular jump and enough prowess in turns to embellish her fouettes and piques with pirouettes. Malakhov lifted her none too easily, but delivered elegantly stretched, smooth, speedy dancing in his solo and the coda.

Malakhov also nearly redeemed “Narcissus,” a ridiculous Goleizovsky solo that found him wearing a silver unitard with big appliqued stars over his heart and his right buttock. Between spasms of crude character definition, the choreography allowed him plenty of opportunities for sudden, magical ascents into turning combinations high off the floor: the evening’s only indelible moments.

And his curtain call held one more astonishment: The jump (illustrated in the Bolshoi Academy posters, souvenir programs and ads) in which his backbend is so extreme that he touches the top of his head with the heel of his foot. In the photograph, the leap looks heroic, but Malakhov made it look easy, even offhand, on Tuesday--just another way of acknowledging applause.

This kind of unstinting generosity used to be the great secret of Bolshoi dancing, but only a few of the Bolshoi Academy principals Tuesday understood it half so well. When they do, they’ll move from the classroom to the stage with no trouble at all.

The Bolshoi Ballet Academy continues at the Pantages through Sunday, with many changes of program and casting.