DANCE REVIEW : Kirov Ballet Performs ‘Paquita’ and Contemporary Miniatures

The Saturday Kirov program in Segerstrom Hall seemed like old times: the same mix of “Chopiniana,” “Paquita” and contemporary miniatures that the company offered on the final night of its 1986 engagement in Shrine Auditorium.

“Paquita” remains one of the glories in the Kirov repertory: a suite drawn from a 19th-Century Petipa classic that tests, molds and displays the dancers technically but also allows each soloist to make a personal statement.

Yulia Makhalina hasn’t yet the consummate technical authority required for the prima ballerina role, but she danced stylishly, with gorgeous line, partnered by the conscientious but effortful Eldar Aliev.

The trio found Irina Chistiakova technically uneven but Veronika Ivanova perfectly suited to the lacy network of beaten steps and small turns in her variation. In the solo that Mikhail Baryshnikov interpolated into his “Don Quixote,” Andrei Garbuz looked very polished indeed.

The five major women’s variations juxtaposed dancers who have become familiar this season (Makhalina, Zhanna Ayupova) with others not prominently cast until Saturday (Elvira Krylova, Elena Martinson). Inevitably, though, they were dominated by Tatiana Terekhova, a senior Kirov luminary seen at her most majestic and serene.

Conductor Victor Fedotov adopted faster tempos than the dancers faced in 1986--indeed, faster tempos than American Ballet Theatre or Dance Theatre of Harlem adopt in their “Paquita” productions--and helped enhance the vibrant attacks and intricate footwork that give this ballet its distinctive neo-Spanish flavor.

All of the modern pieces looked as if bravura stunts had been added to the choreographies at the last moment--none more so than Boris Eifman’s “Adagio” (to Albinoni), a study of group solidarity versus individual freedom. Here the intense Evgeny Neff would periodically stop his melodramatic flailing to execute an air-turn with a split-leap termination or something equally difficult and out of character.

Similarly, the hyper-gymnastic adagio from Oleg Vinogradov’s “Knight in a Tiger’s Skin” (music by Alexei Machavariani) lost all sense of human relationships in its relentless pursuit of startling balances. And there were times when even Eldar Aliev and Tatiana Ariskina could not smoothly unsnarl themselves from one another’s interlocking limbs.

Two pieces by Dmitri Bryantsev proved engaging not so much for their obvious dramatic content as their formal movement values. Tracing a path from anguished oppression to a sense of hope, “The Conception” (music by Arvo Part) contrasted brief, galvanic pulsations with sustained gymnastic partnering gambits; limp sprawling with forceful linear statements. Vanda Lubkovskaya and Andrei Bosov danced everything powerfully.

Blithely performed by Irina Chistiakova and Yuri Fateyev, Bryantsev’s jokey character showpiece “Pas de Deux in the Style of the Thirties” (music by Shostakovich) played inventively with asymmetrical body-shapes and other surprising, anti-classical locutions.