Natalia Osipova: Pure Dance at Sadler’s Wells

Natalia Osipova: Pure Dance at Sadler’s Wells, September 13

Natalia Osipova (photo: Rick Guest)

Natalia Osipova is one of the great exponents of classical ballet because of both her fearless technique and her interpretive sensibility. That she is interested in exploring other forms of dance is no surprise, but her choice of choreographers for Pure Dance, a Sadler’s Wells co-production with New York City Centre, doesn’t always work in her favour. In an interview with Sarah Crompton she says, “…I have chosen the choreographers and partners I wanted to work with and through them I express myself.” It is on this question of expression that Pure Dance hinges. A great classical ballet like Giselle or Swan Lake — or a more contemporary masterpiece like John Cranko’s Onegin — requires the faithful expression of its choreography rather than the self expression of its prima ballerina. An interpreter like Osipova can step inside such choreography and express it on an emotional, spiritual and physical level because all these levels exist within it and within her. The irony of Pure Dance is that in a program she has designed to explore new avenues of expression we can’t always find her.

The meditative duet from Antony Tudor’s The Leaves are Fading is not an ideal opener; divorced from its choreographic and scenic context it appears out of nowhere, but Tudor’s understanding of classical technique and gesture gives Osipova something to which she can give life. Everything necessary to the work is contained within it and although neither Osipova nor her partner David Hallberg seem entirely at ease at the beginning, their interpretation grows with the notion of memory that Tudor evokes with such refinement to Antonin Dvořák’s chamber string music. There is an autumnal sense in the work that is not only associated with falling leaves but with memories of falling in love; the recurring theme in the choreography is falling away and being swept up and here Osipova and Hallberg express the delicacy and poignancy of the emotion without having to add anything extraneous.

The contrast with Iván Pérez’s Flutter, choreographed on Nico Muhly’s Mothertongue, is marked. The manner in which Osipova and partner Jonathan Goddard repeat their opening sequence of capering down stage like two commedia dell’ artefigures from darkness into Nigel Edwards’ light and withdraw again is a metaphor for the emergence and disappearance of expression. There is fine partnering between the two, but Goddard’s technical affinity with the choreography upstages Osipova who is left to emote on its surface in the absence of an appropriate vehicle for her.

In Roy Assaf’s Six Years Later Osipova shares the stage with Jason Kittelberger, with whom she appeared two years ago in her first Sadler’s Wells production. This is a more successful balance between the two in what is essentially a choreographed dialogue between two old friends with qualities that recur in much Israeli choreography of tenderness juxtaposed with violence. The dynamics of the relationship are suggested by a progression from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to Marmalade’s Reflections of my life where it is cut off in mid flight with an abrupt blackout. The choreography focuses on what lies between the two rather than on what each brings to the dialogue; six years before might have been more interesting.

As soon as Osipova and Hallberg begin to dance Alexei Ratmansky’s Valse Triste there is a welcome sense of connection between performers, choreography and music that lights up the stage. Ratmansky knows the qualities of both dancers and how to bring them out. There is also a Russian connection; as Osipova explains to Crompton, “When the three of us are standing together we feel like close souls.” Here, as in Tudor’s work, all expression is contained within the choreography and both dancers come alive in getting inside it.

The program also includes two solos, In Absentia for Hallberg by Kim Brandstrup, and Ave Maria for Osipova by Yuka Oishi. Brandstrup uses Bach’s haunting Chaconne in D minor for solo violin as the basis of a performative rehearsal, as if the music is circulating in Hallberg’s head while he sits listening or gets up to go over the steps he has just learned. It’s an intimate portrait that is given another dimension by Jean Kalman’s lighting. In Oishi’s Ave Maria Franz Schubert’s music, Adam Carrée’s lighting and Stewart J. Charlesworth’s white dress frame Osipova in playful innocence while Oishi’s lightning quick classical steps pay tribute to her devilish technique. Osipova is clearly having fun but it’s a confectionary portrait that starkly underlines the difference between self-expression and expressive choreography.

St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre: Swan Lake at The Coliseum

St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre, Swan Lake, The Coliseum, London, August 23

Irena Kolesnikova in St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre’s Swan Lake (photo: Vladimir Zenzinov)

George Balanchine was a great admirer of the music of Tchaikovsky; both were Petersburgers and Balanchine felt that to understand Tchaikovsky’s music you had to know St. Petersburg. In introducing the St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre to its London audience, founding director Konstantin Tachkin has included in its program not only information on Tchaikovsky and the company but on the city from which the music arose, its Imperial history, its architecture and its rich ballet heritage. It is the home of the Vaganova Ballet Academy, once known as the Imperial Ballet School, that has trained some of the great Russian dancers of the last century (including Balanchine) and where St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre’s principal Irena Kolesnikova graduated in 1998. By association with the history of St. Petersburg Tachkin lays out the expectation that what we are about to see has all the marks of authenticity but Swan Lake is built up of layers of cultural refinement gathered from many countries and traditions and its lasting appeal is based not only on its score but on its inspired choreographic language and stirring mythology. Classical ballet is essentially ephemeral; a production of Swan Lake relies each time on live performance for its inspiration and genius to be embodied and appreciated. If this doesn’t happen the ballet becomes a product, an approximation that resembles the original in its structure but fails to ignite an emotional response to its essential character. For all the expectation of authenticity, St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre’s touring production of Swan Lake fails to convince in performance.

The essence of Swan Lake — redemption through love — is released in the music but it must also materialize on stage. In a narrative ballet the story is linked through mime whose meaning arises from the relationship between an established theatrical lexicon and the intention of the person using it. If the lexicon is clear but the intention is lacking, the meaning is lost. One example is when the Princess (Inna Svechnikova) arrives in Act 1; she is supposed to indicate to her son, Prince Siegfried (Bolshoi Ballet’s Denis Rodkin) that as he’s about to reach the age of 21 it’s time to think of getting married. In fact she’s arranged a ball at the palace the next day to invite a few eligible princesses for Siegfried to choose from. But by the time the Princess has left, we are none the wiser as to what she might have expressed as her mime is delivered in an inarticulate display of ornamented gesture; only a knowledge of the plot fills the narrative gap. Another example is the divorce of Rodkin’s mimed gestures toward Odette and Odile from any indication of his feelings for her. This uncertainty of any manifest intention renders St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre’s production a cardboard cutout of the original ballet. One gesture that has no trouble in communicating its intent is Odile’s contemptuous grimace as she throws her bouquet of flowers over the remorseful Siegfried.

Although Kolesnikova triumphs in this moment, she is not averse elsewhere to another form of obfuscation in her mime, that of hyperbole. Her swan-like gestures err on the side of melodrama to the extent that her interpretation of the duplicitous Odile seeps prematurely into the earlier appearances of the lyrical Odette.

When so much depends in a company of 44 dancers on the presence of its principal ballerina and her Bolshoi and Mariinsky guests, the focus of our attention is inevitably drawn to them and away from the story; as the ballet becomes a vehicle for the quality of stardom so the significance of the story is diminished. In Kolesnikova’s 32 fouettés — taken at a tempestuous tempo by conductor Vadim Nikitin — we are watching not the rapturous culmination of her deception over Siegfried but a resolute display of her technical achievement. The one figure in the production who matches his extrovert behaviour with commensurate physical prowess and gesture is Sergei Fedorkov’s court jester.

As Alexei Ratmansky’s recent reconstructions of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake reveal, there is a subtle balance between music, mime and choreography that makes the story comes to life through the integration of all its elements. Of course there are principal roles in the original narrative but they support the story through mime and dance that are intimately related. What Ratmansky has also unwittingly revealed is the misunderstanding in current productions of the classics where an over-reliance on technical display and self-expression removes from the narrative the logic — and the magic — of its creators.