Le Corsaire, Don Quixote
Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House
For many years in the West, Le Corsaire was just a pas de deux, a dazzling bravura number historically associated with male ballet legends such as Rudolph Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Then, in the mid-Eighties, the Kirov Ballet, now Marijinsky Ballet, came along with a fast-paced, colourful and highly entertaining complete version, loosely based on the much-interpolated 19th-century original. Since then, a few more versions have cropped up here and there, including the 2007 one signed by Alexei Ratmansky and Yuri Burlaka, respectively the former and current artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet.
Entertaining as it might be, Le Corsaire is not a masterwork. The dramatic adaptation of Byron’s poem is untenable and somewhat cheesy, criminally reduced to a mere pretext for as many nonsensical dance numbers and as many old-fashioned theatrical effects as possible. Hence my reservations about the Ratmansky/Burlaka version, which adds to what has hitherto been the ‘standard’ text more 19th-century-based extras, with dire consequences in terms of length and digestibility. It would appear that the two talented dance-makers indulged in restoring a profusion of long-forgotten dance numbers and narrative episodes that have little or no relevance to today’s ballet-goer, as their only function was to bestow that phoney local colour that 19th-century audiences craved. Personally, I would have happily done without some of the ‘character’ or pseudo-folklore dancing, and all the business with the Shah’s jealous favourite, her fights with the other harem girls, the more-than-laughable imprisonment of the main character, and all the lengthy, and not so well acted, slave-selling stuff in the opening market scene. Even I, a strenuous supporter of ballet mime, mentally begged to have less gesturing and to get more directly to the point: namely, pure ballet dancing — which was equally abundant, though not always exciting or memorable.
Ratmansky’s and Burlaka’s reading of one of the most famous moments from the ballet, the divertissement known as ‘Le jardin animé’, looked choreographically cramped and not well executed on the opening night; and it certainly did not help to have the uneven corps wander around sparkling green flowerbeds and chocolate-box flower-baskets looking, rather unfortunately, like the ultimate Easter Bunny’s habitat. Luckily, the newly restored pas d’eventail looked better both in terms of execution and historical interest. It’s a pity that it occurred in the last act, when both patience and the desire to see another bunch of girls in pretty tutus had long been exhausted.
As Medora, arguably the most abducted heroine in ballet history, Maria Alexandrova, on the opening night, looked classically perfect, but lacked the slightly irreverent humorous twinkle one needs to tackle this kind of ballet. Next to her, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, as the title’s pirate, acted as an old-fashioned matinée idol, but lacked the panache the part calls for. The fact that in this version the character is fully clad in pseudo-Turkish attire did not help him either, as for too many years the Corsaire pas de deux has been associated with a sexy display of bare torsos and bulging biceps, historical accuracy notwithstanding. The sole dancer who seemed to be in line with what this ballet is about was Ivan Vasiliev, who made a brief, though breathtaking appearance in the ‘slave’ duet in act one.
His unbelievably thrilling performance, together with Natalia Osipova’s equally incandescent one, was, at the end of the week, the main ingredient of one of the most amazing versions of Don Quixote I have ever seen. And, judging by the much-deserved standing ovation at the end, I was not the only one to think so.
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