Ismene Brown

Young at heart

They made the ‘Jardin Animé’ scene in Le Corsaire into a piece of kinetic theatre, and created a marvellous spectacle in Stalin’s favourite ballet The Flames of Paris

issue 20 August 2016

The second half of the Bolshoi tour brought much fresher fare than the first: following the ubiquitous warhorses Don Quixote and Swan Lake, we got three jolly nights of Moscow speciality: an iffy Shakespeare comedy nailed by superb performing, a giddy rewrite of Stalin’s favourite ballet and a breathtakingly fruity restoration of a 19th-century ballet entertainment, with pirate ships, dancing gardens and a vision of the hedonistic life of abducted women somewhat at odds with Boko Haram’s.

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