Boisterous night with the Bolshoi
Don Quixote Bolshoi, Covent Garden
It would be reasonable to describe the plot of Don Quixote as nonsense, except that to do so would imply that there was really any plot at all. Based on a tiny sliver of action from Cervantes’s picaresque masterpiece, it offers little in the way of narrative beyond: boy falls for girl, a rickety old knight errant has a striking dream, they all live happily ever after. Ludwig Minkus’s score is very much from the second drawer, too.
However, as a succession of sublimely choreographed and technically challenging set pieces, as a bravura showpiece for a first-rate ballet company, Marius Petipa’s 1869 confection is almost without equal, and it is the sort of knockabout, highenergy caper whose spirit the Bolshoi (which gave the very first performance, in 1869) has coursing through its veins. Small wonder that the celebrated Muscovite company used it to launch this year’s Covent Garden summer residency on Monday night – or, indeed, that the company ripped through it with such brio.
For, here returning to London after a three-year absence – and a full 60 years after its debut London sojourn – the Bolshoi appears to have put its recent, troubled history (the factionalism, the scandals, that ghastly acid attack) behind it, and under new ballet director Makhar Vaziev and newish general director Vladimir Urin, it is looking very sharp indeed. Taking the lead on Monday were Olga Smirnova and Denis Rodkin, stellar talents both. The 24-year-old Smirnova danced the lovestruck innkeepers’s daughter Kitri magnificently. The almost preternatural speed and precision of every turn (so beautifully articulated by those sway-back legs of hers), the extreme arch of every back-bend, that effortless, expansive, soaring jump – all were as marvellous as previously, and sparks constantly flew between her and Denis Rodkin’s identically enamoured barber. He, however, was the revelation of the evening. Making his London debut with the Bolshoi, the Flash Gordon lookalike delivered a performance of such powerhouse masculinity, musicality and technical pizzazz that one suspects a large portion of the Covent Garden audience were left in desperate need of a cold shower. He is a 24-carat star, as is first soloist Anna Tikhomirova, a hyper-poised, quicksilver delight as both the Street Dancer and later in the climactic Grand Pas. In fact, no soloist put a foot wrong all evening – while the corps were marvellously boisterous in the Act I town square, and lyricism itself in the Act II vision scene. No matter how blisteringly fast Pavel Sorkin and the Bolshoi orchestra took the score, they were up to the challenge. As for Alexei Fadeyechev’s production, this is essentially old steps, stripped of recent embellishments, and presented in new surroundings. In all, this was an evening in which fun, energy and exuberance fizzed from the stage, and irresistibly so.