Problems Can’t Dampen Bolshoi’s Passion, Spirit

The Bolshoi Ballet has always been greater than its choreography, greater than its stars and greatest perhaps at emotionally connecting with its audience under any circumstances.

By now, nearly everyone knows that the company is in a time of high-risk transition, adjusting to new economic realities in force after the fall of communism, new artistic priorities following the 1995 ouster of its artistic director, new competition in the form of ad hoc troupes appropriating the Bolshoi name--and, most recently, new touring problems in America caused by inexperienced management.

No matter. Whatever may be happening offstage and backstage, the unique Bolshoi generosity of spirit has survived intact. After a six-year absence, the company returned to the Shrine Auditorium on Wednesday, dancing a 1969 Yuri Grigorovich production of “Swan Lake” that was always mediocre and is being dumped before the end of this year. Eroded by hard use, the Simon Virsaladze settings looked hopelessly shabby and there wasn’t even a bona fide Swan Queen on view. Moreover, one of the greatest companies in the world faced an audience of no more than 1,000 in a venue that has 6,300 seats.

However, passion blazed even before the curtain rose in superb playing by the Bolshoi Orchestra under the uncredited Alexander Kopylov. And world-class classicism shone immediately afterward when Andrei Uvarov flew onto the stage as Siegfried with the highest, lightest jumps and softest landings imaginable. Better still, the 16 couples dancing at Siegfried’s birthday party reminded America of how a corps’ perfect unanimity and elegance can fuse with the music in a statement of sublime harmony: the classical ideal.

This ideal could be glimpsed occasionally in the mini-Bolshoi, trainee-Bolshoi and faux-Bolshoi groups dancing in America since 1990, but never with the thrilling grandeur that the full company offered so unstintingly on Wednesday.

Familiar from many previous tours and video editions, the Grigorovich “Swan Lake” offers less drama and contrast than most others by deleting nearly all the traditional storytelling mime and putting the third-act national dances up on pointe. Indeed, it seems to aim for impressionistic abstraction much of the time, yet periodically descends to crudeness in the definition of key plot points and the intrusive, unmusical passages for Rothbart and the Jester. The happy ending (a Soviet mandate) comes from nowhere--and the use of ugly, ascending/descending scenic panels proves just as arbitrary.

On Wednesday, Uvarov didn’t really act his way through such problems and contradictions but rather seemed to be in meditation, oblivious to them and to any need to compete with the antic virtuosity of Mikhail Sharkov as the Jester or the melodramatic virtuosity of Ruslan Pronin as Rothbart. Yes, Sharkov and Pronin danced skillfully, but whenever Uvarov took to the air, they faded away and all you could see was one nobly aligned body soaring in his natural habitat.

Uvarov also served as a capable partner for Nadezhda Grachova, a 26-year-old ballerina from Kazakhstan who looked far more comfortable with the high-speed fireworks of Odile than the sustained lyricism demanded of Odette. Strongly and diligently, she executed the choreographic text, but substituted a pouty glamour for any sense of Odette’s suffering and always remained outclassed by the flawless Bolshoi swan-corps in purity of style.

Like Paloma Herrera of American Ballet Theatre and Elizabeth Loscavio of San Francisco Ballet, Grachova belongs to a generation schooled for maximum velocity and bravura force. At its best, her dancing conveys a sense of space-devouring freedom, at its worst naked physical skill without any metaphorical, emotional or spiritual dimension whatsoever. It may be Bolshoi in scale, but never in soul.

* The Bolshoi Ballet dances “Swan Lake” tonight at 8; “Don Quixote,” Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.; “La Sylphide,” Tuesday-Thursday at 8 p.m. Shrine Auditorium, 649 W. Jefferson Blvd. Tickets: $30-$95. (213) 480-3232 or (888) BOLSHOI.

* A TEPID WELCOME: Troupe sells only 1,000 tickets for opening Shrine show. F31