Pete suggests

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Spectacularly disappointing

Giannandrea Poesio

Wednesday, 30th July 2008

Mikhailovsky Ballet
London Coliseum

It is a pity, however, that history and tradition formed the backbone of the last programme presented by the Mikhailovsky in London. A pity because their composite bill, almost exclusively based on 19th-century works from the golden era of the Imperial Russian Ballet repertoire, was performed only once as a farewell item, whereas it could have been a much better visiting card than the Spartacus they opened with. Petipa’s 1896 La Halte de Cavalerie is twee and a bit prissy, but it provides a unique insight into what the great ballet master was up to when he was not creating classics such as Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake. The ballet, which has long been a warhorse of the Mikhailovsky Ballet — known in the Soviet and immediately post-Soviet eras as the Ballet of the Maly Theatre — elicited well-deserved applause and laughter.

Applause also saluted the endless series of duets and ‘party numbers’ performed in the second part of the almost three-hour-long programme, as well as at the inevitable divertissement from Paquita, in the third and final part of the evening, another display of pure balletic bravura. Yet those who could see beyond the flashy and pseudo-flashy tricks the dancers continuously resorted to remained severely disappointed by the lack of stylistic consistency that informed the whole programme — something ballet-goers of my generation would have never expected from a Russian company. Let’s hope that the National Ballet of China, due to open before this article is published, will provide less disappointment.