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Spit-curls, tambourines and many, many fans: it’s Ballet-Spain, Bolshoi style! This was my first ever Bolshoi Don Q and it did not disappoint. For once the group dances shone with life and energy, due in part to the lightning-fast tempi used by Pavel Klinichev which contributed enormously to the excitement. The various solo Spanish dances added much ‘local colour’ and were danced with glorious gusto. The programme note about Gorsky making a story for every corps dancer was evident in the action which framed the stage: there was always something to watch and I wish I could have seen more performances.

Much of the mime and action is different from Western productions (Kitri has a mother! That makes one less single parent in the ballet world), and the order of scenes is shuffled slightly. This makes the narrative slightly more logical, but I do prefer Act II to end with the Dryads scene. I also found the roles of Sancho Panza and Gamache to be rather overdone, what with one’s skirt-grabbing and belly-rubbing and the other’s fopping around. Having said that, Alexander Petukhov and Denis Savin did it all very well.

Visually, although some of the sets need sprucing up, the atmosphere of Spain was certainly put across and it was so great to see such warm, full lighting! I thought the sudden flooding of scenes in bright light was very striking, particularly in the Dryads scene. (Someone somewhere someday will come up with a convincing windmill scene.)

Natalia Osipova’s Kitri was vigorous yet charming and vulnerable. She never failed to draw my eye to her (watch for the lover's quarrel in the tavern scene!). If at times she sacrificed line for speed (she has a tendency to fling herself) she more than made up for it with the pure excitement that she poured into her dancing. The sheer amount of space that she covers and joy that she radiates is amazing – I felt quite literally blown away. Put simply, apply every fire-related description that you can think of (fiery, fire-cracker, set the stage alight, etc.). As Dulcinea her dancing sang but retained much of Kitri’s energy, making Don Quixote’s confusion of the two characters plausible. (Alexei Loparevich as Don Quixote lost his mind convincingly.)

Ivan Vasiliev (and Osipova) made much of the comedy funnier than I have seen before, showing that playing for laughs can work if done well. His trick jumps were really quite spectacular (if a little overused by the end) and his partnering was solid – both of the one-handed lifts in Act I came off very, very well. His Basil was really a lot more fun than many others that I’ve seen.

All of the soloists were fine. Olga Stebletsova and Anna Rebetskaya were Kitri’s friends (with names: hurrah!), and they were very impressive, with some nice comedy as well. Anastasia Yatsenko made an extremely lively Street Dancer to Artem Shpilevsky’s Espada, who did what he could with his overly pose-y choreography. In the Dryads scene Ekaterina Shipulina’s Dryad Queen danced with great fluidity and an appropriately gracious air, while Nina Kaptsova danced an unusually strong Cupid. The Grand Pas soloists were Ekaterina Krysanova (in Osipova’s former role) leaping with great abandon and Nelli Kobakhidze, who showed that just one sky-high extension from nowhere can be truly astounding, and then was immediately upstaged by Osipova’s formidable fouettés.

The wonderful Bolshoi orchestra continues to impress.

All in all it was a performance in which everything came off just about perfectly, one of those that you think you will never see. It was a rarely exciting evening of ballet.

I envy anyone who has tickets for Saturday afternoon.