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Starting an evening off with Auber's Grand Pas in front of a cold audience certainly is a thankless task. Evgenia Obraztsova (replacing Alina Somova) and Maxim Zyuzin presented us with a rarity – a classically pure Grand Pas Classique. Obraztsova is a strange choice for this piece, all softness and refinement when the Mariinsky Orchestra's take on Rossini seemed to call for whiz-bang technique and conquering demeanor. She has developed the authority to pull it through, with extremely assured fouettés in the coda, but the many details of her dancing seem lost in this pure gala piece. She and Zyuzin, who handled the virtuoso parts well, still brought welcome harmony to this Grand Pas Classique, their extensions mercifully in line, confident and beautifully Russian.

Markitenka Pas de Six/La Vivandière was an unfortunate choice for the evening, despite the rare occasion to see a piece so gloriously danced by the company in the past. Today's dancers cannot quite compare in this repertoire with an Alla Sizova, although Elena Evseeva, sprightly and sure-footed, made a charming attempt at her role. After Laurencia Pas d'Action last year, she can be commanded for learning and performing such singular gala pieces. Filipp Stepin is assured in his solos, but don't ask him to partner - he was just not on the same wavelength as any of his five ladies. Evgenia Dolmatova, Anna Lavrinenko, Yulianna Chereshkevitch and Oxsana Skoryk are individually excellent, but coordination (rehearsal time?) was lacking, and something of the original form and style of Markitenka seems to have been lost – the crispness of attack of the tighter, less hyper-extended dancers of yesterday, perhaps.

Remember when Edwin Denby thought Fokine's Scheherazade an "old girl" - in 1944? Well, its adagio certainly looked dead and buried in Baden-Baden. Ekaterina Kondaurova smouldered about the stage in the repetititive choreography, but she could have been hitting on the curtains with Yevgeny Ivanchenko, open-mouthed and hopelessly bland as the Slave. It is a shame, as Ekaterina Kondaurova is a proud, alluring Scheherazade, a natural for the ballet if it needs to stay in the repertoire - but the old girl needs an appropriate male dancer to convey at least some of the work's rather cliché sensuality.

Tarantella could have been subtitled "Leonid Sarafanov goes wild," and wild he went. This may not have been the Tarantella Balanchine intended (and I'm dubious about some parts being the original choreography), but Sarafanov proved himself a true showman, playing with steps, literally letting loose with an amazingly relaxed upper body throughout. The cheeky sailor's grin is quite hilarious on his baby face, and if he plays to the audience to the point of exaggeration, it certainly raised the gala's spirits. Nadezhda Gonchar couldn't sustain the rhythm - she is a lovely dancer, but out of her depth here, her arms and footwork too soft and never quite hitting the right notes. Balanchine's musical incisiveness was lost, but all she had to do, after all, was host the Sarafanov Show.

Ulyana Lopatkina only added Christian Spuck's 1969 Grand pas de deux to her repertoire recently, but its flaws can be blissfully forgotten with such a ballerina. This humorous short work plays with the clichés attached to classical pas de deux, reducing the leading lady to a purse-adoring queen who will keep her glasses on at all costs. Danila Korsuntsev doesn't quite have the irony on stage to be more than her faithful prince, despite a few well-timed jokes, but Lopatkina is on another level than most interpreters. The contrast between her natural spirituality, the stunning classical beauty of the poses alluding to Swan Lake or Giselle, and her degree of self-derision is absorbing. She playfully imitates the ballerinas of old times, offended when her partner upstages her or milking the applause, while she may be the only dancer today of truly legendary status herself – and I'm glad she is still making fun of herself. Spuck's piece may be all fluff, but Lopatkina crawling offstage or very seriously holding her glasses in a swan pose certainly is the ultimate busting of the ballet myths she has so contributed to.

In a true feat of programming, this parody of all of ballet's Grands Pas was followed by the ultimate Grand Pas – Don Quixote's Wedding Pas de Deux, with two specialists of the Gala genre, Anastasia & Denis Matvienko. If Natalia Osipova said in an interview that she could dance Don Quixote if you woke her up in the middle of the night, the Matvienkos are serious competition in terms of autopilot. The entire piece was utterly relaxing – no strain, no difficulty in sight, pure confidence from both dancers. They know each other so well that they seem to hear the music in the exact same way, and it's a true accomplishment when constant partner-swapping has become the norm. A faultless rendition of the old warhorse, with Yana Selina as an excellent bridesmaid.

In the Night

The Matvienkos also opened the second part of the evening, Jerome Robbins's In the Night. This frail, delicate work, set against a backdrop of stars, was welcome in a Gala otherwise designed to show off, and cast a different light on the three couples featured. The husband and wife brought their natural harmony to the first pas de deux, breathing and moving as one, and while Anastasia doesn't offer much facial expression, her long, soft lines (not unlike Somova's, though more stable) proved truly beautiful in their mysterious duo.

Ekaterina Kondaurova was still alone in the second pas de deux opposite Evgeny Ivanchenko, but she built on his absent presence with her own dramatic intensity. She is mesmerizing as a proud woman seemingly trapped in a marriage she doesn't care for, staring with repressed fire at the audience, almost reluctant to be partnered. The climatic upside down lift makes such sense that her trembling foot when she comes down is the true expression of her emprisonment – a strong, mature performance by the Mariinsky's Siren.

Lopatkina followed with a similar problem to solve – where Robbins's choreography is all about the dialogue of each couple, she was ill-served, with a rather bland Korsuntsev in the most passionate of the three pas de deux. The pride and restraint of the woman she impersonates, who seems to have been embarked against her will in a tumultuous affair, finds no echo on his side, and when she finally kneels before him, the moment makes no sense – what does she surrender to? Lopatkina commands the stage, but I longed for the intensity she might conjure with someone else. The dancers still benefited from Liudmila Sveshnikova's flowing interpretation of Chopin's Nocturnes, which received a well-deserved round of applause.

Theme & Variations

Theme & Variations, set to Tchaikovsky, could not be more different from Jerome Robbins's undercurrents of romance, and it had the principal dancers to back it up in Baden-Baden. Viktoria Tereshkina is perhaps the true 21st century miracle of the Mariinsky, a ballerina whose bold, authoritative technique is mitigated by pure Vaganova style and a form of austere lyricism. In Balanchine's imperial romp she is a true Tsarina, and she clearly doesn't need anyone – turns, balances, anything the choreographer throws at her she nails and adds delightful Russian details to, slowing down the end of her double tours, for instance, to focus the attention on her ports de bras, lingering in the air. Her arms are a wonder in the long pas de deux, and she has a fine partner in Vladimir Shklyarov, widely touted now as the best young dancer in the company. He was his enthusiastic, excellent self, but we didn't see that much of him in the ballet, and I kept missing the point of this imperial couple – where was Balanchine going with this pas de deux, less focused than others, less establishing of an identity for the two Principals? Other parts are so inventive that it shifts the focus back on the masterly patterns for the corps de ballet, thus providing a happy homage to the Mariinsky's traditional calling card, despite the many alignment problems that night. I wish new choreographers would give the company what Balanchine is providing here: a musical Fabergé egg, tailor-made for the glorious court behind the Tsars.