The Bolshoi Revolution

Slipping down from the spiraling lift of Andrei Uvarov’s Romeo as fluidly as rainwater from a roof, Nadezhda Gracheva senses an invisible fault and signals the rehearsal pianist to halt the music.

“It’s still not right. My arm ends up in the wrong place,” the 26-year-old Bolshoi Theater principal dancing Juliet complains, more to herself than to Uvarov.

“Maybe we should let it go and try later,” suggests Uvarov, panting and impatient--it’s the third hoist that has been aborted by the ballerina.

“No, Andryusha, now,” Gracheva scolds her partner affectionately. “We have to be ready in less than two weeks. Time’s a-wasting.”

And so, Shakespeare’s doomed lovers practice parting at the masquerade thrice more before Gracheva deems the movement up to her exacting standards.

Perfectionism in artistry may be a long-standing tradition in the 221-year-old Bolshoi troupe that enjoyed worldwide acclaim during the culture-coddling Communist era, but in this new age of capitalist realism, the dancers are discovering they must be just as conscientious about the clock.

Today’s Bolshoi ballet company is learning to negotiate the leaner, meaner cultural course of the new Russia. And critics say the troupe bringing a sliver of its famed repertoire to Las Vegas and Los Angeles this month has emerged from the strikes, squabbles and shake-ups of the past few years into a more mature and self-assured theater.

“The Bolshoi is experiencing a rebirth,” says Anatoly Agamirov, Russia’s most influential ballet critic. “People have come to power in the theater who are striving to combine the best of the old traditions with the sweeping changes that are needed.”

Most refreshing, Agamirov says, is the rejuvenation of the ballet’s repertory, which had been without a premiere for 15 years until the March 1995 resignation of artistic director Yuri Grigorovich.

Four newly staged ballets were introduced last season by Grigorovich’s successor, former Bolshoi star Vladimir Vasiliev, and he plans a Christmas Day premiere of his new production of “Swan Lake” that is already drawing acclaim among balletomanes privy to rehearsals and intoxicated by Vasiliev’s enthusiastic descriptions.

“The atmosphere and the attitude in the theater is completely different now. For way too long, for 30 years, the theater was ruled by one individual,” Agamirov says of Grigorovich, describing the last years of his reign as “stagnant.”

In addition to the new ballets, the Bolshoi has revolutionized its policies, allowing its opera company, for instance, to stage works in their original language for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution.

“The caprice of the Communist Party dictated that because the performances were in Russian theaters, they should be sung in Russian--even Verdi and Wagner and Mozart,” the critic recalls incredulously. “Every activity in the theater--every word, every note, every cue was controlled by incompetent people in the Communist Party.”

With the steady erosion of ideological influences and the infusion of fresh ballets under Vasiliev, Agamirov believes the Bolshoi is now presented with one of its greatest creative opportunities.

A mere 18 months have passed since the Bolshoi was tangled in financial crises and a vitriolic labor dispute, yet the company is now showing signs of having weathered the post-Communist sea change.

The switch in 1995 from cradle-to-grave pay and privileges to personal contracts that must be renegotiated each year--the announcement of which was the catalyst for the emotional departure of Grigorovich and the strikes, sackings and lawsuits that followed--is now accepted by the artists as a reality of the new order and has won over many of the leading dancers by opening opportunities for lucrative foreign appearances.

Pre-revolutionary luxuries banned by the Communists, such as season tickets and champagne service in the loges, have been restored with the 221st season that opened Sept. 5, enhancing sales of the more expensive tickets.

A hemorrhage of Russian talent abroad, of major stars like Irek Mukhamedov and Andris Liepa in the 1980s, and the legendary Maya Plisetskaya seven years ago, has been tamed by the new management’s commitment to infuse new works into the theater and to reform scheduling for the leading dancers, allowing them to commit to independent engagements.

Even the bitter rift inflicted in the dance corps when it was forced to choose between protesting Grigorovich’s resignation or accepting the respected Vasiliev as its new artistic leader appears to have been healed by time and the troupe’s show-must-go-on need to get down to business.

“I don’t have time to get involved in theater politics. I’m busy from morning until night,” says Marina Kondratieva, one of the Bolshoi’s most famous teachers and a devoted admirer of Grigorovich.

Those who could not accept the changes sweeping through their company and their country quit to follow Grigorovich on his controversial tours that have invoked the name of the Bolshoi without the theater’s permission.

Bolshoi artists who want to use the theater’s trademark name in any programs or advertisements during foreign appearances must have the administration’s authorization and are usually required to pay about 15% of their earnings as royalties to the theater. The practice has begun generating significant income for the Bolshoi and has legitimized what was previously a bribery scheme in which payments went into bureaucrats’ pockets.

In an interview in the musty recesses of the sprawling petal-pink theater, Vasiliev strikes the long-suffering pose of an artist burdened with the irritating responsibility of a business, but one savvy enough to accept that history has irrevocably changed his profession.

“Any change brings with it elements that are destructive as well as those that are creative,” says the wistful Vasiliev. “None of us would want to see a return of the system and lifestyle of the Soviet era, but it was a time when many great ballet maestros, dancers, singers and choreographers emerged, perhaps because the ballet was one of the few vents for emotion at that time.”

While the Bolshoi enjoyed lavish support and unparalleled prestige during the Soviet era, Vasiliev says the artists suffered “moral corruption.”

“What most [dancers] want is to have both, the freedom of the capitalist system with the support and perquisites they had under socialism,” the artistic director observes with amusement. “They are happy to make a hundred times their previous salaries, but some want to work as little as they did before. They remember the days when they wouldn’t have to dance for two months but they were paid regularly.”

Those who have adapted and thrived under the contract system are what he refers to as “artists with a capital A, who are driven to always do more and could never become complacent.”

“There are many in the ballet world here who think that if a dancer goes abroad to perform, that he or she is committing an act of treason,” Vasiliev says. “I think it’s wonderful. The performers have a chance to express themselves elsewhere in the world and in turn bring back something of the outside world to our theater. It keeps the energy and ideas flowing.”

The contract system that dancers originally reacted to with venomous opposition has significantly raised salaries for the artists without burdening the theater with a corresponding rise in expenses, as the short-term contracts free the administration from the costly overhead it carried when pay and benefits were eternal and based on seniority rather than talent.

A top ballerina at the Bolshoi made little more than $100 a month two years ago. Now, with a base salary of $280 a month and $470 for each performance, a typical dancer appearing three times a month earns $1,700. The remuneration for foreign tours is considerably more generous, as ticket prices are often 10 times those at home.

Gracheva, who will dance the leading roles in “Swan Lake,” “La Sylphide” and “Don Quixote,” the three full-length ballets the Bolshoi will present during next month’s U.S. visit, says she finds the new atmosphere at the Bolshoi both spiritually and financially enriching.

“I feel that everything is changing for the better, as much as it can in our unpredictable profession,” she says.

Another of the Bolshoi’s leading principals, Galina Stepanenko, concedes with a tinge of surprise that her career is flourishing in the new conditions.

“We in the ballet are very conservative, and we were used to the old system, which made it difficult to change,” says the 30-year-old who will alternate with Gracheva during the U.S. visit. “But we’ve come to realize that not all change is bad. A lot of new opportunities have been opened up for us with the contract system.”

Like most of the dancers, she expresses glowing admiration for the deposed Grigorovich, attributing her success to his tutelage and describing him as “a great man and a brilliant teacher.”

Even Vasiliev has praise for his predecessor’s talent, but criticizes Grigorovich for transforming the Bolshoi into a forum exclusively for his own works.

“It would be like allowing someone to read only the works of Dostoevski. He’s a genius, but he is not the only one,” says the soft-spoken Vasiliev, whose artistic disputes with Grigorovich date back nearly two decades. “The Bolshoi Theater should be a treasury of all the best in the ballet world.”

The troupe has been slimmed down slightly from the Communist-era colossus, but with more than 2,000 people still on the payroll, it remains one of the biggest theater companies in the world.

“It is very difficult to keep all of the ballets current, but it is one of the distinctive elements of this theater that we have such a broad repertory,” says ballet director Vyacheslav Gordeyev, noting that the troupe is prepared to stage any one of 24 ballets this season.

Despite the new focus on expanding and revitalizing the repertory, Grigorovich’s versions of “Swan Lake” and “Don Quixote” will be staged in Las Vegas and Los Angeles because those are the only ones for which the sets and costumes are in order.

Why Las Vegas and Los Angeles? Bolshoi spokeswoman Svetlana N. Zavarotna would only say that the company is “happy to perform in any American city.” According to U.S. tour producer Ed Martin, his company, Russian Legends Productions, has been talking to the Bolshoi since 1992 about doing a limited American tour.

“All along,” explains Martin from Oklahoma, “we wanted a destination city [like Las Vegas], rather than a point-to-point tour--a place to which people would want to travel in order to see the world’s greatest ballet.” Los Angeles, the troupe’s point of entry and exit, was a logical addition. A two-city-only schedule, with relatively long runs at both sites, means that the touring company of 124 dancers, 82 musicians plus set workers, teachers, costume artists and administrators will be able to spend their time performing and getting to know their host cities rather than packing and unpacking.

There is also talk of the two-city tour being a test run for a longer tour at a later date. Any such plans, says one Bolshoi orchestra musician privately, would be good news.

“We don’t get many offers these days, and we, actors and musicians, are happy to go on any foreign tour,” he says. “It’s not like the old days when we had offers that covered almost the entire year. . . . We are not beggars, but these days we are not choosers either, to be frank.”

Gordeyev says the company’s foreign tours allow a reprieve from the current clutter and disruption at the scaffold-shrouded theater. After years of delay and hand-wringing over who would pay for the project, a $350-million reconstruction and expansion began a few months ago on the building whose foundations have been slowly sinking into an underground channel.

A new wing housing a second stage is set to open in December 1998, and refurbishing work on the old theater can begin only once the troupe has moved out.

Hopefully, by the year 2000, Gordeyev says, the Bolshoi will have completed both its physical and spiritual renovations.

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The Bolshoi Ballet appears at the Aladdin Theater for the Performing Arts, 3667 Las Vegas Blvd. South, Las Vegas, Tuesday through Oct. 20, except Mondays, all performances at 8 p.m. (“Swan Lake” Tuesday through Friday; “La Sylphide” Oct. 12, 13, 15, 16; “Don Quixote” Oct. 17-20), and at the Shrine Auditorium, 665 W. Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles, Oct. 23-31, except Mondays, all performances 8 p.m. except Oct 27, 2 p.m. (“Swan Lake” Oct. 23-25; “Don Quixote” Oct. 26, 27; “La Sylphide” Oct. 29-31). $30-$300. 1-888-265-7464 or Ticketmaster.