From The International Herald Tribune: Ballet gambles with flash and sparkle BY ROSLYN SULCAS | INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES MILTON KEYNES, ENGLAND — The defection of Alina Cojocaru from the Royal Ballet to the English National Ballet caused a minor sensation in the dance world when it was announced in July, and was widely viewed as a major coup for Tamara Rojo, the company’s new director who was also a former Royal Ballet star. Ms. Cojocaru, who made her debut in the company’s new production of ‘‘Le Corsaire’’ on Thursday night here, is a major ballerina and a major asset to a troupe generally regarded as a tier below the Royal Ballet companies. The busload of journalists from the British national papers arriving at this almost comically unglamorous debut spot, 45 miles, or about 70 kilometers, outside of London was a testament to her power. And that’s what Ms. Rojo wants. She has spoken passionately about transforming English National into a more creative, higher-profile ensemble that will attract top-level dancers and choreographers. It’s an ambitious vision. The company is essentially a touring one, with embattled finances, a mandate to take ballet to the provinces, and no permanent London theater to call home. With the acquisition of Ms. Cojocaru, however, an expensive new production of ‘‘Le Corsaire,’’ and an upcoming season of new works by Liam Scarlett, Akram Khan and Russell Maliphant, Ms. Rojo makes plain her aspirations. Will her gamble pan out? It’s hard to know. ‘‘Le Corsaire,’’ as an opening gambit, might be viewed as a canny acquisition. No other British company performs the full-length ballet. It’s a colorful, unthreatening frolic with lots of flash and sparkle. It has tutus and tiaras, pirates and bare-midriffed slave girls, a patchwork of unimpeachably tuneful, mediocre music (nine composers are credited in this production), and splendid opportunities for dancerly pyrotechnics, melodrama and pathos. On the other hand, no other British company performs the full-length ballet. That means it’s largely unknown, without the drawing power of a ‘‘Swan Lake’’ or ‘‘Sleeping Beauty.’’ It also doesn’t have the unified poetic power of either of those ballets, or the advantage of a Tchaikovsky score, and it needs dancers of significant charisma to pull off the cartoon-shallow characters and silly story. (Pirate falls in love with slave girl, who gets bought by rich pasha and rescued by pirate, then, oh, never mind.) The English National Ballet production is by Anne-Marie Holmes, who first staged the work for the Boston Ballet in 1997, and then for American Ballet Theater the following year. Billed as ‘‘after Marius Petipa and Konstantin Sergeyev,’’ it is almost identical to that of Ballet Theater, with a few small changes that haven’t done much to iron out a lack of dramatic coherence. Petipa, the most important ballet choreographer of the 19th century, created several versions for the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg between 1863 and 1899. Revisions continued throughout the 20th century, with substantial reworkings by Sergeyev in the 1950s and 1970s. There are chunks of Petipa in the solos for the odalisques and the Jardin Animé scene, in which the Pasha dreams of his harem as a garden of flowers. If not a lot remains of the original choreography, there’s almost nothing of ‘‘The Corsair,’’ the 1814 poem by Byron on which the ballet is nominally based. The poem tells the tale of the pirate Conrad, a man ‘‘of loneliness and mystery, scarce seen to smile.’’ In Ms. Holmes’s production, a grin barely leaves Conrad’s face, even when his beloved, Medora, is forced to dance for a prospective harem owner. Although you might think that in a ballet with a thin story, the acting isn’t important, it almost matters more; without the dancers’s complete investment, the triviality feels more acute. And there, for the moment, lies the problem with English National Ballet’s rendition. On Thursday, a pronounced lack of dramatic conviction informed most of the performance, with only Ms. Cojocaru as Medora and Yonah Acosta as Birbanto (Conrad’s chief man, who turns out to be a bad lot) bringing persuasive theatrical verve to their roles. The rest followed the Big Ballet acting manual: The corps de ballet gestured emptily toward the principals as they danced their solos, the slave girls occasionally cowered, and Vadim Muntagirov as Conrad seemed to barely acknowledge that he was a character in a story at all. Hardly anyone appears to be thinking about the meaning behind any gesture; the relationship between, say, Conrad and Ali (Junor Souza), his faithful slave, felt utterly formulaic. Luckily there was Ms. Cojocaru, who after a slightly tense beginning, came into her own in the long, romantic pas de deux in Act 2. Here she brought an intensity and dramatic musicality to the role that momentarily made the ballet feel consequential. Her beautiful flowing line, feather-light jumps, supple back — fully deployed through every movement — and pinpoint timing were in full evidence, as was the charm that made Conrad’s infatuation seem inevitable. Ms. Cojocaru’s impassioned abandon in this pas de deux owed a great deal to the excellent partnering of the long-limbed Mr. Muntagirov. He is a fine dancer capable of all the requisite technical feats, but offering them slightly shyly, without the bravura or heroism that would have provided personality. In the big pas de trois, which should be a show-stopper for Conrad and Ali, it was Ms. Cojocaru’s filigree footwork and the sparkling delicacy of a diagonal series of turns that stayed in the mind. There is clearly plenty of talent at English National Ballet. Erina Takahashi was impressively competent as Medora’s best friend, Gulnare. The tricky Act 1 solos for the three odalisques (Shiori Kase, Alison McWhinney, Laurretta Summerscales) were offered with notable technical accuracy, and the lovely Jardin Animé, set to music by Delibes, was danced with elegance and brio. The corps de ballet men, largely represented in dance terms by the pirates, look less polished, their air slightly strained while pushing through technical demands. In ‘‘Le Corsaire,’’ Ms. Rojo can show off quite a lot of the company’s virtues — Ms. Cojocaru chief among them. If she can bring coherence and drama to the performances — and these are early days yet — ‘‘Le Corsaire’’ could be the calling card that she wants. ◼ Get the best global news and analysis direct to your device – download the IHT apps for free today! For iPad: itunes.apple/us/app/international-herald-tribune/id404757420?mt=8 For iPhone: itunes.apple/us/app/international-herald-tribune/id404764212?mt=8
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 23:46:15 +0000
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