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Maya Plisetskaya GalaFebruary 2006 London, Covent Garden by Ginpit |
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As posted on our Postings pages... As a production it was, I fear, a non-starter. The dispiriting opening light-show (both banal and vulgar) would have failed GCSE media studies, and there was an embarrassing stop-start quality to the whole evening. Then when you come to ask yourself what picture anyone who knew nothing about Plisetskaya would carry away, the answer seems to be a pretty rudimentary and confused one. For instance, the archival clips (mostly shot from below and emphasising that stupendous leap), interspersed in old Sovdoc style with unrelated audience shots, were far too bitty and badly reproduced to do more than hint at the greatness of the dancer's achievements, though even a newcomer to dance might realise that in this globalised age nobody does big and bold quite like that any more. Did the danced extracts tell us much about the birthday girl, then? Some of the choices were distinctly odd. Why such a regular staple as the Manon pdd, for instance? Why Giselle, especially this extract, for which the wilis are a vital moderating frame? Why Scheherazade, if this headstrong old warhorse is to be trotted out in such a routine fashion (when did Liepa and Ruzimatov last believe in it?)?
If the intention was to show the finest contemporary dancing, however, then Rojo and Martin were the first to raise the temperature to gala-level. Lopatkina and Zakharova are of course among the very finest present-day Russian dancers, and they too gave much pleasure (especially the latter, in the seemingly Forsyth-influenced Ratmansky~ I wish the pieces had been dated). But the really exciting gala dancing came from Steven McRae (surely our next Blue Boy~ and perhaps Blue Bird, too?), very closely followed by Sarah Lamb (egged on by Samodurov, although someone should have given them better tambourines). Their performances seemed to say, 'I have never done this before, not quite in this way, and I am going deliriously O.T.T., in honour of Terpsichore~ and You.'
 © Ensemble Productions
And so, later, to the final, sweetly quiet triumph, the return of Carmen to the stage where it had been disparaged and which she had allegedly vowed never to grace again. It was, in truth, no better choreography than it had been all those years ago (we saw a bit of it in one of the earlier clips). But Maya's spirit prevailed as she took possession of an empty stage, rotating, with those noble ports de bras, as in slow motion~ what need assembled colleagues, or thrown flowers?
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