Russians’ ‘Swan Lake’ Displays Skill but Offers Scant Emotion

The familiar, small-scale Russian National Ballet “Swan Lake” turned up at the Greek Theatre on Saturday, still a patchwork of many choreographic editions but more reliably danced than in the past--though just as emotionally vacant.

With such Soviet-era hallmarks as an omnipresent Jester and a happy ending, the production relies on a number of staging ploys by former Bolshoi director Yuri Grigorovich (the evil Rothbart continually shadowing Prince Siegfied, for example) but credits him only with the national dances of Act 3.

Performing to tape against flimsy or crudely painted backdrops, the dancers scarcely justify the hollow pretense of the company’s name. But if artistic director Sergei Radchenko can field only a dozen swans for Act 4, those swans have now been drilled to a faultless, if grim, unanimity.

Swan Queen Marina Rzhannikova is a strong allegro technician, capable of the full 32 fouettes (plus pirouette preparation) but also rather lost in the great, lyrical challenges. In the White Swan duet, she strokes Siegfried’s face, then flaps imaginary wings, but none of it connects or means anything. It’s just assigned moves.

Similarly, Zhanat Atymataev as her Prince keeps holding his heart, but his feelings stay locked inside, and his attempts at bravura prove unremarkable.

Radchenko’s company also currently tours full-length Russian classics under the name Moscow Festival Ballet. But because so many of the dancers look as if ballet represented some form of penal servitude, it should really be called the Lubyanka Ballet, after Moscow’s most notorious prison.