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Adam Cooper and Company... and Kirov Ballet Adam Cooper Company: August 2003 London, Royal Festival Hall London, Covent Garden © Jeffery Taylor Former dancer, Critic and an Arts feature writer for the |
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The Russian Ballet has been all over the West End like a heat rash. The Kirov opened the last week of their Covent Garden season with three one act works in a homage to the great turn of the century impresario, Serge Diaghilev. A short jeté across the river, classical ballet team Adam Cooper and Sarah Wildor sent him up rotten, assisted by Irek Mukhamedov, a genuine Russian ballet star, in Rodgers and Hart's musical, On Your Toes. The Festival Hall's bleak concert platform is notoriously merciless to theatrical productions, its oblong gash dissipating the focus provided by a traditional proscenium arch and designer Paul Farnsworth's purple sliding panels simply trickled away into the outer distance. Luckily we are left with sparkling, magnetic performances from husband and wife team, Cooper and Wildor, not to mention Mukhamedov. Cooper, who also choreographed the show which boasts as its finale Slaughter On Tenth Avenue, and Wildor have spent the majority of their lives in the silent world of the Royal Ballet's classical dance where dead pan faces on stage and reedy voices off are traditional. Not with these savvy young performers. A great deal of time and effort has been invested in developing the tools of their new trade. Cooper, who plays the song and dance hoofer, Junior, who has to choose between girl next door, Frankie (Anna-Jane Casey) and exotic Russian ballerina, Vera Baronova (Sarah Wildor), has a fine singing voice and both he and Wildor, in spite of the hideously imbalanced sound system, know how to project to the auditorium's back wall. Speech for Cooper has released a charm previously only glimpsed in the ballet, and his duet, The Heart is Quicker Than the Eye, with the older woman, Peggy (Kathryn Evans) is a fascinating study of a versatile vocal personality increasingly finding a way through the dancing. Neither does Wildor go for the cheap way out in her interpretation of Vera, the outrageous prima ballerina of the touring Ballets Russes. As a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet for over a decade Wildor is perfectly familiar with the breed and the clutch of vocal and physical clichés she has gathered is formidable. But instead of going for Lily Savage camp, Wildor gambles and plays it straight. And it pays off, she is funny, sexy and sympathetic and wears Farnsworth's stunning creations with jaw dropping effect. Mukhamedov, who tiresomely grows better looking with the passing years, needs to do very little to fill his role of sexy Russian male superstar with a fragile ego. He was born for the part and his explosive dancing in the cod ballet, Princess Zinobia, was breathtaking. Russell Dixon makes a satisfying meal of every distorted fake Russian vowel as Sergei Alexandrovich, the faux Diaghilev and head of the Ballets Russes, with a deep understanding of both the long pause and the snappy one liner. At three hours, the show is too long but you can sense the private thrill as Cooper and Wildor dance and act together creating their personal new way of thinking and moving. It is clear that this is the birth of a potent new force on the British musical scene. Or so I fervently hope. Natalia Sologub and Daniil Korsuntsev led the Kirov Ballet in Balanchine's Serenade last Monday, the first of three works evoking the spirit of Diaghilev but the Kirov dancers are overqualified for the mechanical whimsy of the piece. In Harald Lander's virtuosic Etudes, which starts as a basic ballet class exercise and reaches stratospheric levels of technical brilliance, under rehearsal restricted the dancer's abilities.  © John Ross
But strangest of all was a clearly very costly recreation of Nijinski's 1913 Rite of Spring. Nicholas Roerich's décor and costumes are stunning and the Maryinski Orchestra made Stravinsky's familiar score sound brand new. But Nijinski was a one off genius, a brilliant artist whose savage creativity kept him teetering on the edge of madness. The value of an American academic, Millicent Hodson, imposing her bookish notion of Nijinski's steps on to professional dancers on a public stage is quite beyond my understanding. The Kirov finished their stay with performances of Swan Lake and Le Corsaire. They will be sorely missed.
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