Swan Lake by St Petersburg Ballet Theatre Ballet review
IRINA KOLESNIKOVA in Swan Lake sweeps you away into a world of passion, dangerous deception and ultimate forgiveness.
Yes, her technique is top of the range, but you could say the same about Rembrandt and you would seriously miss the point.
Out of the tools of their trades both artists conjure not just shapes, however skilful, but human emotions that both echo through time and thump you in the gut.
We all know Swan Lake, the world’s favourite ballet, is a jolly romp of a cautionary tale about the Swan Queen Odette, (Kolesnikova) cursed by evil magician, Rothbart (Dmitry Akulinin) and the slightly dippy Prince Siegfried (Vadim Muntagirov) who swears his love for the feathery one then falls for Rothbart’s sexy daughter, Odile, also danced by Kolesnikova.
“Huh, just like a man,” I can hear from half the world’s population, but it is precisely that very deeply personal reality that this remarkable Russian born and trained dancer so powerfully brings to life.
The steps of the 1895 work by Court choreographer Petipa to Tchaikovsky’s commissioned score are of classroom simplicity and amazingly this is where Kolesnikova triumphs. Her first duet with Siegfried is recognised as a supremely perfect combination of movement and music.
Swan Lake, Irina Kolesnikova Dmitry Akulinin - St Petersburg Ballet
Taken breathlessly slowly, Kolesnikova not only performs each basic step with astonishing correctness but fills the auditorium with the danger of her vulnerability and yearning for help.
No quivering lips or melodrama, just letting the steps and her total immersion in her character’s message move us.
And boy, does it do the trick. Tchaikovsky’s well known melodies seem no longer to emanate from the orchestra pit but to pour through her. What she is saying to us came first, not the music. A rare phenomenon.
In the Act III Prince’s birthday celebrations the company shines in a series of national dances within Simon Pastukh’s chandelier strewn ballroom.
The Spanish dance has a rarely seen sophisticated elegance while Larissa Fabrichnova and Anton Maltsev’s Neapolitan is simply adorable.
But all eyes focus on Kolesnikova’s Odile as she seduces Siegfried with her glittering virtuosity.
Kalesnikova carries us away with her seductive gifts of persuasion and we, too, forget about Odette. This remarkable woman repeats herself in Swan Lake at the London Coliseum in August, I’ll be there, I suggest you should be, too.
Swan Lake by the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre, Theatre Des Champs Elysees, Paris (spbt.ru)
