A superstar barely allowed to shine
Svetlana Zakharova: Amore
Every so often, a Russian ballet superstar descends on London with a similarly impressive cohort and a specially created programme. Every time, you hope against hope that the choreography will match up to their talents. More often than not, disappointment awaits.
Amore, the new triple bill centred around the Bolshoi’s astonishing Svetlana Zakharova, is a case in point. It tries hard to send her and her fellow Bolshoi luminaries in different directions: first, neoclassical, then more contemporary, then… well, we’ll get to that later. But by the end of the evening you’re wishing you’d just seen them all in, say, Swan Lake instead.
Set to Tchaikovsky’s Dante-inspired fantasia of the same name, Yuri Possokhov’s Francesca da Rimini tells the story of the woman who was famously married off to Giovanni “the Lame”, only to fall for and have a protracted affair with his hunkier younger brother, Paolo. On finally finding them in flagrante, Giovanni killed them both, but the lovers were subsequently immortalised by their contemporary, Dante, in his Inferno.
The piece focuses on the love triangle, though with the added bulk of three Guardians of the Inferno and five Court Ladies. As ever, it is impossible not to be impressed by the length, strength and “line” of Zakharova’s 5ft 9in frame, by the ease, control and attack with which the 38-year-old continues to use it – but the choreography is generally more passable than interesting, and there’s a surprising lack of spark between Zakharova and Denis Rodkin. Oddly, there’s more sexual tension between her and Mikhail Lobukhin’s Giovanni, who makes such a drop-deadspectacular entrance at the climax that it’s disconcerting to be reminded by the programme notes that he’s supposed to be an ageing hunchback. Maria Tregubova has had fun with the sculpture-filled set, even if it does have a dash of a British Museum poster about it.
Next up is an abstract, moodily produced, more pared-down threehander, Rain Before it Falls. Created by Patrick de Bana, who duets with Zakharova for much of it, this teases out a more febrile, edgy performance style from her, and achieves the one-on-one emotional intensity that the first piece craves but misses. That said, if only De Bana had kept the piece in its original, two-hander form: for much of it, a third (excellent) dancer, Denis Savin, is perched redundantly and distractingly on the stage’s edge.
However, it is with the third work, Marguerite Donlon’s Strokes Through the Tail, that the evening slips into the abyss. As a bizarre kind of overture, the opening movement of Mozart’s Symphony no 40 is deployed as a backdrop to a tapestry of black-andwhite photographs of Zakharova et al in rehearsal. This feels more like a-word-from-our-sponsors than art – the last projection you see here is the logo of one of the companies behind the evening.
Thereafter, to the rest of that same symphonic masterpiece, Zakharova and her five-strong entourage do their best in what wants to be a playfully gender-bending subversion of balletic norms, but wind up a poor man’s answer to those beloved, all-male fauxballerinas, the Trocks.
Or, put another way, you’re left with the grim spectacle of wonderful dancers selling themselves far from cheap – £85-£110 for a seat in the stalls – but also embarrassingly short.