Tchaikovsky with a twist

Those who think that the dancing is all that matters in productions of 19th century classics might have changed their minds if they’d spent the weekend with the Perm State Ballet at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

Two full-length Tchaikovsky masterworks, conducted with equal authority by Valery Platonov and played by the Perm orchestra with urgency and a sense of singing tone, found Russia’s third-largest company battling against a familiar, dilapidated “Swan Lake” but making a new, exemplary “Sleeping Beauty” into one of the year’s indispensable ballet experiences.

Even in the shabby “Swan Lake” scenery by Alla Kozhenkova, the distinctive stretch and remarkable refinement of Perm style (especially among the women) earned admiration. But this 1956 staging, reportedly revised in 1972, 1989 and 1993, preserved the worst indulgences of Soviet-era revisionism.

These dubious hallmarks included a happy ending (here very confused in its action plan); an intrusive jester pumping out bravura steps to inappropriate music; a Rothbart used for similar purposes; and passages that were originally intended for storytelling pantomime but now became devoted to feeble padding strategies: walking to nowhere, generalized finger-pointing or choreographic diddling.

The Perm swan corps looked cramped on the Cerritos stage but maintained the requisite unanimity of impulse and placement. However, many of the group’s gestural statements looked eroded or incomplete -- another sign that this production needed refurbishing from the ground up.

On Friday, Yulia Mashkina danced Odette and Odile with faultless purity of style and as much dramatic power as the staging allowed, even managing to triumph over the dangerous partnering of Sergei Mershin as Siegfried.

Genuinely seductive instead of transparently evil as Odile, Mashkina also conveyed Odette’s suffering artfully, while Mershin looked wholly comfortable only when he could take to the air. Alexandr Volkov glowered between air turns as Rothbart, but the menace and the virtuosity never meshed.

Happily, these artists all looked much better 24 hours later, when Mashkina made a commanding Lilac Fairy, Mershin an elegant Bluebird and Volkov a feisty Carabosse in a “Sleeping Beauty” richly and resourcefully designed by Vyacheslav Okunev.

Distinguished by a clear narrative line and ravishing choreographic details, this fresh, insightful production (abridged to just under three hours) also dated back to 1956, with revisions in 1970 and 1977 -- but was restaged and redesigned earlier this year. Here the company gave storytelling pantomime its full value, sometimes revising and sharpening it, and also increased the amount of male dancing in this feast of female showpieces.

The only serious lapse occurred in the Awakening Scene, where normally a massive chord is heard when Prince Desire kisses Aurora and breaks Carabosse’s evil spell. The Perm version, however, had Desire stab Carabosse on that chord, a big mistake. It’s love, not steel, that conquers evil in “The Sleeping Beauty,” and choreographer Marius Petipa not only had Carabosse survive, she became a guest at Aurora’s wedding.

On Saturday evening, the Perm wedding scene lacked Carabosse but featured the stellar Natalia Moiseeva projecting radiant command of classicism in the role of Florine, and Yara Araptanova exuding brilliance in the Diamond solos. Like Mershin in “Swan Lake,” Roman Geer looked cowed by partnering challenges as Desire and made an uneven soloist.

As Aurora, Elena Kulagina danced with reliable technical exactitude, delicacy of style and dramatic suavity, suggesting in the Vision Scene that she was floating through complex step combinations and floor patterns while asleep. However, tour de force challenges -- particularly in the last-act pas de deux -- often proved picture-perfect but strangely downsized or underpowered.

As has been noted by more than one reviewer on past U.S. tours, Perm ballerinas tend to be extremely skinny, but Kulagina appeared alarmingly thin on Saturday -- and her dancing sometimes seemed thin as well.

If the difference between the old Perm “Swan Lake” and the new Perm “Sleeping Beauty” suggested that artistic director/ballet master David Avdysh is well on the way to upgrading his company’s repertory to international standards, the unhealthy emaciation of such leading women as Kulagina should encourage him to rethink other Perm priorities as well.