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At its opening, Dmitri Gudanov appears kneeling in Hamlet agony opening his mind to anguished soliloquy; his arms form gaping jaws (a recurring motif in arms and legs throughout the work) unleashing such thoughts and torments as befell Shakespeare’s Prince. Thereafter four couples seem to enact the landscape of his mind, passing across the stage as hieroglyphics, as moving shapes that mould and un-mould into fascinating logic. Wheeldon plays with the juxtaposition of symmetry and a-symmetry, of perpendicular lines that cross and in their crossing speak with haunting beauty. One such moment, just as Ruslan Skvortsov and Svetlana Lunkina have finished their duet by curling over into the shape of a heart, two couples join them and they stand centre stage, each facing the other; the couples hold their arms, in unison, outstretched and then – ever so slowly – one will raise them, and the other will drop them, into “X” formation. Of course we see three moving kisses, but in the passing of the arms – and their briefest union - we also contemplate the transience of life and love. In the final moments, the four couples form a frieze, a kind of human cat’s cradle, which Gudanov shatters. From then, thoughts turn to death and the nine dancers plunge to the back of the stage to end it all.

With these images under Mary Louise Geiger shadowy lighting and in Arvo Part’s doom-laden score (with its constant references to the Dies Irae) – there is no light, nor should we seek to find it. I also do not think that the Bolshoi dancers – with the exception of the beautiful Anastasia Yatsenko (who will be guesting with Wheeldon’s new company) – are yet entirely under the skin of his movement style, nor yet comfortable with the work, but in time this will grow. The remarkable thing is perhaps less the work itself, and more that the work should exist at all: that Bolshoi dancers have opened themselves out to this kind of anti-Bolshoi work. How this develops over time, will be fascinating to watch.
 

I do not think that Bolshoi dancers are also yet comfortable with the rigours of Twyla Tharp – sometimes choosing to lyricize a movement, where sharp attack is required. In The Upper Room concluded the evening and this work inspires some to awe and others to tedium: I regret I belong in the latter category. For me it is no better than a 1980’s aerobics video and this (with their eyes fixed firmly on the audience) is how most of the dancers seem to perform it. The exceptions – and those who have truly mastered its sassy pop-tastic manner – are Natalia Osipova, Andrei Merkuriev and Ekaterina Shipulina, whose blossoming into true artistry has impressed me considerably this season.

The company was on much firmer ground with Messerer’s Class Concert whose revival must surely be seen as a statement. Though it was performed on Western tours (at the request of impresarios) it was banned from Moscow during the Grigorovich years, and Misha Messerer’s impeccable revival tells us about where the company is now and what it is not. As each dancer appears and seems to challenge the next to bigger and better, we see the company opening out and revealing its glorious treasures. It seems churlish to single out dancers in a work such as this, but Vasiliev continues to amaze with his elevation and glorious stage command.