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I remember the first time I'd seen the Kirov perform an all-Balanchine program, at the Met in 1999 (not long after it entered the Kirov repertory in 1998), I'd been deeply disappointed. Musically, stylistially and dramatically, they just didn't seem to get Serenade, and the vaunted corps seemed comfortable only when it could translate Balanchine's ever-shifting formations into something more familiar — bevies of swans, sylphs or wilis, perhaps — but hardly the alacritous, mysterious ladies in blue for which I'd hoped. (It didn't help that the Kirov seemed oddly cramped in fitting Serenade on the Met's massive stage. I'll never forget Maya Dumchenko slamming head-on into another soloist in the Elegie; was there not enough room?) While, in 2002, the company did a bang-up job with Emeralds and Diamonds in Jewels, Rubies, except for the wonderfully jazzy Diana Vishneva, was more problematic; Russians can dance the heck out of a mazurka or czardas, but they do jazziness like the apocryphal cow on ice.

I'm going to miss the Kirov's magnificent orchestra. Conducted here by Mikhail Agrest, those piercing, descending notes of Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings" never sounded richer, or more poignant. After the curtain rose on the ensemble pose, I had some trepidation. Would Serenade become a dry demonstration of the Kirov dancer's excellent port de bras, the steps done to empty perfection? Well, no. The opening moments, with every dancer curving her arm from that familiar outstretching, overhead pose to the sadder, introspective curl across her face, had a resigned poignancy, and any worries I might've had about the dancers "getting it" were blown away as soon as they all flew into breathless motion. The skirts of Karinska's dresses billowed as beautifully as ever, and the dancers' uniformity of style and almost-ostentatious correctness of placement only reinforced and multiplied the power of each grouping, formation and phrase. They don't move with quite the freedom and unbounded energy evident, even now, in City Ballet's dancing, but they have certainly learned how to dance on top of the beat, and with power and commitment pulsing beneath their hypnotic correctness. Unlike in 1999, the dancers' energy wasn't shackled, but beautifully channeled; beneath the lovely curves of their arms and backs, these dancers practically thrummed with power.

Most unshackled of all was Alina Somova's Waltz Girl. After being turned off by her gauche and vulgar reduction of her first Bayadere into little more than an excuse to show off her extensions and other technical tricks, I found myself completely overwhelmed by her performances in the season's second week; she was just plain brilliant in her second Bayadere, and in Etudes. I don't often speak for Balanchine, but I feel safe in saying he'd have loved Somova's coltish energy, her artless, almost instinctual technical brilliance (where did all that affectation vanish to?), and, perhaps most of all, her sheer hunger and voracity in movement. She dances like a starving woman at a buffet — a bit like the young Darci Kistler — and if she's sometimes coarse and vulgar (qualities which stand out like a sore thumb against the Kirov's usual propriety), well, Balanchine was famously fond of the occasional vulgarity, and would sometimes exhort his dancers to be more vulgar. He didn't have much use for shrinking violets. I don't know whether Balanchine would've forgiven Somova her peroxide-blonde hair, her rings and those trailer-trash nail extensions, but I did.

I found particularly entrancing her waltz with Danila Korsuntsev — I loved the energy of her legs, swinging freely into sharply angled arabesques as he swung her around, those big skirts billowing and following her like a third dancer. Somova's extensions are so naturally high, it seems her natural shape is a diamond or chevron. However actute and extreme her line might seem, for her it's quite natural: it's her world, and welcome to it. At the end of the Russian dance, when the corps reassembles for the restatement of the opening theme, Somova's echoing of that opening hand gesture, while held in Korsuntsev's arms, really took my breath away. You might not like her feet or arms, but there's no disputing that she has ferocious turnout, and the grand progression of her developpé echoed and augmented her arm as it reached skyward before folding back on her averted face. In the Elegie, Somova rather plunged herself into the implied drama, especially as Alexander Sergeev flipped her almost-supine body before lowering her to the stage; perhaps it was a bit naive how Somova echoed Tchaikovsky's chords with her outflung arms, but left no doubt she was feeling the music, and the moment. (Saturday night, Kondaurova made a point of carefully holding arms in a perfect fifth above her head, even as she was spun and lowered; I adore her, but she's not a "swept-away-by-the-music" kind of girl.)

The lovely Ekaterina Osmolkina couldn't be more different than Somova; in her delicacy, refinement and understated perfection, Osmolkina's the embodiment of the Kirov/Mariinsky tradition: everything that Somova's not. Osmolkina's fabulous lightness and ballon, and her casually brilliant pirouettes, let her breeze through the Russian Girl's grande and petite allegros. I might've liked more sharpness in her attack, but that's not Osmolkina's style; even in a warhorse like Diana and Acteon she'd never sell her prowess, just present it as part of a bouquet we're free to admire, or not, should we be so lacking in discernment. She invites us to notice; but never insists. As Russian girls go, this one was old-school Mariinsky indeed. It's hard to praise enough Ekatarina Kondaurova's Dark Angel figure (and wasn't it sweet that the program listed these traditional names for the women's roles?). A tall, powerfully built redhead, she moves with a sculptural strength that comes most strongly through the wingspan of her long arms and beautiful shoulders. (Not that her legs aren't also beautiful tools; it's that Kondaurava's language emerges most strongly from her stunning upper body.) There were some tense moments at her appearance in the Elegie, as the otherwise-graceful Sergeev, while kneeling at her feet and turning her leg through those magisterial promenades in arabesque, got so entangled in her skirts that he looked about to strangle himelf, and, worse, push Kondaurova off her leg. Fortunately, she managed to keep her balance, saving him from what might've been an messy, onstage fate (or perhaps she'd wanted to kill him herself after the curtain). Later, when Sergeev stood above Somova's body, holding her upraised arm against his chest, he struck a beautiful contrapposto pose which might've been sculpted by Michaelangelo. Entirely unexpected, his pose was probably less the result of coaching for this than of decades of training which make the body naturally seek such classical harmony. Standing thus might seem ostentatious in an American-trained dancer; in a Kirov dancer it was just right, and inevitably so.

As staged by Francia Russell and Karin von Aroldingen, via the Balanchine Trust, this Serenade leaves the dancers' hair up in the Elegie, rather than having their unpinned tresses flow freely, as Balanchine implemented in the early Seventies. I'm neutral on the issue of which is better. I like the clarity of the "hair-up" version, but I also appreciate the Romantic sensuality Balanchine found in clouds of free-flying hair. Perhaps, after having the girls in the mysterious opening of Suite No. 3 let their hair down, he decided he liked the effect so much he'd use it in Serenade, too. Regardless; I found the Kirov's Elegie to be quite moving, although, as with the Russian girl, I missed a bit more attack as the girls would hurl themselves at Sergeev.

Overall, though, my reaction to this Serenade was much the same as to the Kirov's opening-night Raymonda: "Wow."

To a chorus of sighs and moans, it was announced that Diana Vishneva would be replaced by Olesia Novikova in Rubies. It was a very sweet and charming ballet the Kirov presented, but hardly the Rubies I know. Endearing and perky, Novikova looked playfully athletic and adolescent, while Andrian Fadeev was clean and powerful in both his leaps and partnering of Novikova in the ever-cantilevered pas de deux. Kondaurova, in the big-girl role, fairly loomed over the ballet like a commanding goddess. She was quite wonderful — Lilac Fairy and Myrtha all wrapped in one. (She did push a bit too hard in the last of her big, unsupported penchées, but easily turned her falling out of it into a "I-meant-to-do-that" run into the wings.) The ensemble danced with wonderful clarity — the men in their big, booming sissones and leaps chasing Fadeev about in his playful, airborne solo, and the women in clear, shiny vermillion ranks. I saw none of the lack of ease in the jazzier bits which depressed me so back in 2002; it's not because the dancers were better at it, but that they coped with the jazziness by, well, ignoring it. I suppose the Kirov training leaves little room for the little syncopations, off-balance and off-kilter thrustings of hips, torso, erotically pointed feet and general juiciness, or, dare I say it again, vulgarity with which Balanchine originally imbued Rubies. Or maybe Russians just can't do jazz. Or maybe nobody told these girls that when they stand there with one foot flat and the other pointed like a hooker beneath a streetlight, it's supposed to look sexy? Whatever. This is perhaps the most virginal, sexless Rubies I've ever seen. Indeed, the Kirov's recast it as a through-the-looking-glass version of, say, Sleeping Beauty's vision scene, or the second act of Giselle, both of which feature a more-or-less romantically involved couple interacting at the behest of a commanding, regal woman. This was at its clearest at the ballet's conclusion, where Novikova and Fadeev hurled themselves to their knees before the towering arms of the standing Kondaurova. It was athletic, exciting, high-energy and a miracle of order created out of high-speed chaos; it was rousing fun, but it wasn't Rubies.

I suppose I've just praised the Kirov for finding its own way with Serenade, and criticized them for doing the same with Rubies, but I never was much for being consistent.

Finally came Ballet Imperial. Staged for the Kirov by Colleen Neary, it's pretty much indistinguishable now from Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 as performed by New York City Ballet. Whatever bits of mime which might've made it "Imperial" seem long-gone, as are real tutus, Imperial or otherwise. I was a little surprised to see the Kirov's costumes listed in the program as "after Karinska," and "executed by Tatiana Noginova." I'll avoid the obvious puns for which these credits are begging and simply observe that these designs are multiples of fail, and look nothing like anything ever fashioned by the House of Karinska. The rhinestone-trimmed bodices aren't particularly pretty, and they attach to long, shapeless skirts which are neither the real, old-fashioned tutus for which Ballet-Imperial traditionalists long, nor are they airy and flowing like the long dresses which Karinska created when the ballet became Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2. They're sort of indeterminate nothings, which still didn't prevent Noginova from dusting off her airbrush to create a particularly nasty two-tone blue job for the soloist. Spray painted highlights? Karinska wouldn't have been caught dead.

Overall, behind the playing of the delightful, grandmotherly pianist whose name I never quite got at the various announcements (she was omitted from the program for some reason), the conducting was, well, leisurely. I'd expected as much, but, still, when Igor Kolb was leisurely pulling his skeins of corps women hither and yon in the largo movement, it verged on continental drift. Not that any of this mattered when the divine Viktoria Tereshkina was onstage, or, rather, in command of the stage. Tereshkina's been one of the hits of this Kirov season, and her rendition of the ballerina's brutally difficult first solo was typical: she flashed that firm, toothy smile, and with no fuss or commotion, and just a hint of pride, she nailed, well, everything. I don't think I've ever seen those wicked pirouettes on demi-pointe stopped so cleanly in tendu: even the greatest dancers will show you, however slightly and unintentionally, that they're braking themselves by dragging that tenduing toe into the stage. Tereshkina just — stopped. Her pose in tendu seemed natural, perfect, inevitable yet entirely voluntary: an artistic choice, not a mechanical necessity. Elsewhere, Tereshkina fired off glittering arrow after arrow from her artistic quiver: brilliant, aggressive leaps; authoritative pointe-work; and, of course, her dazzling multiple fouettés (as always, single-single-double). In her adagios with Kolb, she affected just the right touch of drama, swooping and swooning in his arms with a hint of abandon while ceding nothing of her absolute control: as a ballerina, she's wonderfully canny and strong as diamonds.

For his part, Kolb kept his recent dramatic excesses in check, proving a strong, sensitive and unabashedly Romantic cavalier to Tereshkina, dancing with an amplitude and softness which did much to atone for his recent wacky demeanor in Chopiniana and Spectre. As the leaping, aerial soloist, Ekaterina Osmolkina was again in her element, leading about the equally high-flying Vladimir Shkylarov and Maxim Zyuzin with weightless ease, before joining them in a series of breathtakingly perfect inside pirouettes, doubles after perfect doubles. Again, as with her Russian Girl, I might've wanted more attack in places, but it's not her style, or, in general, the Kirov's. As always Yana Selina was a strong, competent demi, joined by the beautiful and understated Svetlana Ivanova.

For all its leisurely tempi, this Ballet Imperial was a grand, unfolding scroll of ever varying mood, introspective and slightly brooding in its adagios and lambent and brilliant its allegros, but never hinting of less than perfect control. A famous paean to the grandeur of the classical ballerina, Ballet Imperial could not have found a better interpreter than Tereshkina, and the tremendous Kirov ensemble.