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The EMMY award-winning documentary 'The Bolshoi in Vegas' is a study in predictable disaster, but none the less agonising for that. It recounts the sad tale of the Bolshoi's 1996 American tour, organised by one Ed Martin, a man with more enthusiasm than common sense, a Methodist minister, convention center manager and lover of ice hockey, who had been captivated by the Bolshoi Ballet when working in Moscow. "I saw them eight times, ten times ... in some ways I felt that I was in the presence of God." His experience with touring companies had been limited to bringing a Moscow ice hockey squad to whup various local teams in Oklahoma. Although no Sol Hurok, he was moved to bring ballet to the American people fully expecting it to be welcomed for, as the Bolshoi's MD says, "Everyone knows three words in Russian: Vodka, Kalashnikov and Bolshoi." (But why, oh why, to Las Vegas?)

The tour was a disaster. Not just the usual irritations of costumes, scenery and instruments being delayed (and the discovery by customs of 120 bottles of vodka in one of the freight containers) but the failure to sell tickets Ð a few hundred patrons in a theatre seating 7,000 left deficits growing day by day. In the eyes of Mr Martin the company went from being divine creatures to "little shits" who wouldn't perform without being paid. He and his backers (who seemed to be naive, small-town rural folk, "horse-traders," none of whom knew anything about ballet) lost $1.8 million. The Bolshoi went home early, only paid their advance.

The painful story shows the farce played out from both American and Russian view-points and is inter-cut and contrasted with scenes from the Bolshoi's wildly successful 73-day first US tour in 1959 when Ulanova and Plisetskaya appeared to full houses, flowers were strewn in front of the dancers as they walked out and they received general adulation.
 

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"People claim that Russia has been damned for her sins, punished with poverty, disasters and terrible governments, but in reality it seems Russia is blessed, we get gifts from above. Ulyana Lopatkina is one of those gifts." This quotation from ballet critic Vadim Gajevski sets the tone for Macqueen's second film, 'The Kirov in Petersburg,' about Russian ballet at home, present and past. With unabashed irony the 'hero' and main protagonist of this film is Oleg Vinogradov, artistic director of the Kirov Ballet from 1977 until 1996 when he was ousted after being accused of demanding back-handers from foreign promoters. For dubious-sounding reasons, and in spite of a confession, the prosecution was dropped. He then, with Jeffrey Archer-like chutzpah, went on to create a kitsch ballet about his sufferings. This documentary was made after the scandal but before he had left the Kirov.

As in the first film the present state of the ballet is contrasted with Soviet times when, in many respects, the situation was much more supportive of both the company and its audience. In pre-Revolutionary days the nobility followed the Czar's love of ballet but ordinary people were excluded. Post Revolution it became available to all and, although 'socialist realism' was the officially approved genre of art, the authorities feared an excess of realism and supported ballet because of its 'safe' fantasy element, lack of potentially dangerous messages and capacity for distracting the populace (which willingly went along with this). Thus as Gajevski says "ballet was an art for poor people, an ideal art for a poor country." (This view contrasts starkly with the West's current attitude to ballet as being a minority pursuit for the well-to-do.)

But things have changed. Yelina Gordina, a teacher, talks of her earlier days when ordinary folk could take their children to the Mariinsky, subsidised and organised by the state farm, and compares that to the present (1996) when she can no longer afford such a visit. (Ironically she was filmed whilst on a group outing to the Kirov which was part of the regional governor's election campaign.)

This mixture of the political and personal, the present and past is what makes both of these documentaries so interesting. Both contain fascinating clips but neither have extensive dance footage: that is hardly the point.