Bolshoi Rebounds, but Something’s Amiss

Reestablishing the commercial viability of one of the dance world’s oldest and best-known franchises, the Bolshoi Ballet ended one sold-out engagement on Sunday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and begins another tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

The success of these two weeklong visits to Southern California culture palaces offers an object lesson in high-stakes ballet marketing, for only four years ago the same company danced sure-fire repertory to empty houses at Shrine Auditorium.

That 1996 tour (which also included an equally disastrous visit to Las Vegas) was produced by Russian Legends Productions, utterly inexperienced in dance presentation and determined to sell the Bolshoi over the Internet, with virtually no conventional advertising or publicity, at ticket prices that rose to $300 for the best seats each night.

In contrast, the current tour (which has included equally successful dates in Washington, D.C., Seattle and Chicago) is being managed by dance veterans--the Kennedy Center in Washington and David Eden Productions--with a top of $90 per ticket for the local performances. (A separate Bolshoi engagement, with different repertory but Nina Ananiashvili still front and center, is also scheduled at Lincoln Center during July.)

Bolshoi 2000 advance PR, including brochures, focused on the presence of international star ballerina Ananiashvili (not on the ’96 tour), with no other dancers even named. The producers were taking no chances: Ananiashvili had been contracted to dance the lead roles in the first performances of each of the ballets (a clumsy new “Don Quixote” and an operatic old “Romeo and Juliet”) in every city.

Her participation not only brought a unique dimension of artistry to the tour performances but also reassured potential patrons that this was not just another of those dreadful, unauthorized, fly-by-night “Stars of . . .” troupes that degraded the Bolshoi name in the early to mid-1990s.

OK: Mission accomplished. The Bolshoi is back as a magnet for well-heeled balletomanes and, as always, the legendary vitality of the company makes its appearances an ideal way to introduce young people to classical dance. Every large performing arts center in the nation will no doubt shortly be calling Moscow to ask about 2002, and there’s plenty of new repertory to choose from.

However, the six Pavilion performances raised major questions about the current artistic level of the Bolshoi and, in particular, the quality of its coaching. Apart from Ananiashvili, one-note portrayals diminished the repertory night after night, with the Bolshoi’s tradition of blazing individuality replaced all too often by drab, cookie-cutter interpretations.

Indeed, during the intermissions, you could look through Dwight Grell’s extensive collection of production photographs in the exhibition upstairs and see evidence that previous Bolshoi dancers had lots of ideas and feelings about the characters in “Don Quixote” and, particularly, “Romeo and Juliet” that never surfaced in the Nina-less performances on the Pavilion stage.

Talent wasn’t the issue: Leading principals Andrei Uvarov and Sergei Filin each commanded the resources to be more memorable as Romeo than they were this weekend. Both proved committed and sincere in the role--but without the complexity of character that marked the performances of their illustrious company predecessors and that can be enjoyed in the dancing of the younger generation of Kirov dancers today.

Eternal rivals for supremacy in Russian classicism, the Kirov and the Bolshoi have each recently come through the trauma of dumping long-entrenched artistic directors and the risk of showcasing for foreign audiences a host of unknown young principals. But Kirov performances in New York a year ago (its last U.S. visit) gloried in the kinds of personal interpretive nuance that are the result of detailed coaching and that were largely absent in Bolshoi performances at the Pavilion last week--replaced by raw fervor.

And raw fervor was all that principal Dmitri Belogolovtsev could offer as Tybalt and Romeo on Friday night and Saturday afternoon, respectively--though on Sunday, when he danced the male lead in “Don Quixote,” you could at last see his erratic but genuine technical powers.

Belogolovtsev can’t act or partner reliably, his classical line is a mess, and he doesn’t dance three steps in a row without screwing up at least one of them. But bolts of bravura lightning flash often enough in this kind of role to guarantee him a place on the Bolshoi stage.

Opposite him in “Don Quixote”: Maria Alexandrova, ranked as a first soloist but already big news for her spectacular speed, precision, balances, jump and arrowy classical line. However, her all-purpose smile and tendency to take every phrase at maximum velocity--even in the vision scene--made you wonder if she has any expressive talents or aptitude for lyricism.

Without exceeding the performances of their colleagues earlier in the run, Ilya Ryzhakov (Espada), Irina Zibrova (Gypsy Dance) and Anastasia Yatsenko (second solo in the grand pas de deux) danced with secure technique and abundant spirit Sunday. In the mime roles, Kirill Shulepov used Sancho Panza as a pretext for a relentless shtick scavenger hunt, but Victor Alekhine brought a welcome touch of lunacy to the posturings of Gamache.

This may not be the best of all possible Bolshois--though there are, reportedly, young paragons named Nikolai Tsiskaridze and Svetlana Lunkina, not on this tour, who might help erase any disappointment in company star power. Yet here and now, the Bolshoi dancers serve this brain-dead “Don Quixote” staging far more expertly than it serves them. And their incandescent skill, beauty and love of dance could ultimately be more significant than full houses or ambitious new company directors in securing the future of their great artistic legacy.

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* Bolshoi Ballet at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. “Don Quixote”: tonight through Thursday , 7:30 p.m. “Romeo and Juliet”: Friday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, 1:30 and 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m. $20-$85. (714) 556-ARTS.