The Bolshoi's Bounce

The world's indoor high-jump record is officially held by a Boston University freshman named John Thomas, who last month propelled himself 7 ft. 1 3/4 in. into space. Unofficially, it is held by the members of the Bolshoi Ballet, who last week bounded about the stage of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House like a herd of nail-tailed wallabies. In the second week of their eight-week U.S. visit, the Russian dancers proved that they can leap higher, farther and more daringly than anything north of Australia. More important, in some dazzling performances of Swan Lake, they gave Manhattan audiences their first look at the Soviet classical ballet linked to the lavish, lush dance style that is the source of the company's fame.

The Bolshoi's Swan Lake was strikingly different from the two versions--by the New York City Ballet and Britain's Royal Ballet--most frequently seen in the West. While the City Ballet version telescopes the action into a single act and provides brilliant virtuoso movements for the entire ballet corps, the Bolshoi keeps the original four acts and focuses on the soloists, with the corps often planted in mere statuesque rows and curves. The traditional Swan Lake ending, which is authentically portrayed by the Royal Ballet--the Princess changed back into a swan, forever lost to the world--is drastically altered in the Bolshoi version.

As the Russians do it, the evil bird-sorcerer is killed by the Prince, and the lovers walk happily into a rose-colored sky; the fight in which the Prince tears off one of his enemy's wings is a bit of Socialist realism totally out of place in the classical ballet, but it makes for some immensely exciting dance. The effect of these and other changes was to make the Russian Swan Lake a looser, more romantic interpretation than Western observers are accustomed to seeing. On the other hand, the Bolshoi Swan Lake provided the soloists with more elbowroom to stitch figures of gaudy and often moving brilliance.

Lyricism over Steel. Two successive performances of Swan Lake introduced Ballerinas Maya Plisetskaya and Nina Timofeyeva, two of the Bolshoi's first-line quartet of female dancers (of the first week's stars, Galina Ulanova no longer dances Swan Lake, and Raissa Struchkova is not doing so at the Met). Both ballerinas were superb in the double role of Odette-Odile--the Swan Princess and her evil counterpart. Plisetskaya danced her roles with a more contained fire, whipped her sprung-steel body through scissored leaps and glittering turns, gave the role of Odile a brittle profile that suggested the character's corrosive venom even through her most lyric nights.

Timofeyeva relied on a broader, more flowing style, achieved some of her most moving effects in the series of soaring Act II lifts and in the last-act duet in which she hovered back to consciousness on feet as tremulous as a butterfly's wing. And where Plisetskaya had omitted the famous 32 fouettes (snapped turns) in the "Black Swan Pas de Deux," Timofeyeva whipped them off with a bravura that brought the house alive with a roar.

There were other stars both evenings: Vladimir Levashev, who danced the role of the Evil Sorcerer with briny conviction and made his final, crippled death dance a wonderful virtuoso exercise; Nicolai Fadeyechev, who was superb as the Prince, particularly in his leaps in the Act III Black Swan variations; Georgi Soloviev as an acrobatic Jester (a happy Russian addition to the ballet). Occasionally ragged the first evening, the Bolshoi's Swan Lake was danced with fine precision at the second performance. The repetitive, copybook attitudes of the ballet corps occasionally clotted the action and wearied the eye. But for the most part, the old war horse of the classic ballet came alive with a freshness it rarely achieves. A big part of the reason: the Russians approach the old fairy tale with simple, direct, unsophisticated conviction that communicates a sense of joy to the audience.

Technique over Material. The Bolshoi's other second-week offering was a calculated crowd rouser--a program of highlights that gave the company's stars a chance to display whatever muscles they had failed to flex earlier. There were a few quiet numbers--a beautifully danced version of Fokine's Les Sylphides (called Chopiniana by the Russians), an embarrassingly mawkish pantomime called A Blind Woman, which Prima Ballerina Ulanova almost managed to make acceptable. But most of the evening was given over to acrobatics: spinning, headlong leaps into the arms of supporting male dancers; a vaulting lift in which Ballerina Struchkova balanced light as a gull on the arched chest of her partner; a delicate tracery of pirouettes executed at stunning speed by the Bolshoi's youngest ballerina, 19-year-old Ekaterina Maximova. Unfortunately, the dancers' technique was more impressive than their material: among the selections was a glass-beaded resurrection of Walpurgis Night, from Gounod's Faust, with the satyrs decked out in yellow wigs that made each a dead ringer for Harpo Marx.

The Bolshoi's second week was warmly applauded--and rightly so. If the company has not yet moved New Yorkers to frenzies, the reason may be that the Bolshoi has not yet offered a ballet with style as supple as its dancers' remarkable technique.

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