The Kirov's dancers may be desperate to get their bodies around some 21st-century choreography, but for their fans, there's something endlessly beguiling about the history lessons they continue to deliver.
Fokine's Schéhérazade is a ballet they did not acquire until 1994, 84 years after its intemperate colour palette and fake oriental sex first dazzled the west. Yet seeing this work in the same repertory as that other hokey masterpiece, Le Corsaire, you see why the Kirov are the only company who can dance Schéhérazade without going limp with embarrassment.
Fokine was regarded by everyone, especially himself, as a trailblazer, and yet his 1910 ballet shows marked similarities to Petipa's mid-19th-century classic in its decorative excess, careening action and fascination with the exotic.
The Russians have been taught from birth how to carry off a spectacle like this, so even though Diana Vishneva as Zobeide goes a little heavy on trashy harem glamour and Faroukh Ruzimatov as the Golden Slave goes beyond camp into a fantastical category of his own, the ballet's romping nonsense retains some of the power that made it one of Diaghilev's biggest hits.
The Kirov's Firebird is also unlike any western production of that ballet, not just because they perform it with Golovin and Bakst's original designs and some differences in staging, but also because they tell the story with such fairytale verve. Stylistically, Irma Nioradze's Firebird is a little hysterical, but Ilya Kuznetsov comes into his own as the ardent Ivan, and the princesses are far more animated than the usual anonymously girlish group.
The Kirov have been dancing Fokine's Chopiniana (Les Sylphides in the west) for longer than the other two ballets in this programme - and they do it as beautifully as always. Janna Ayupova brings her exemplary mix of gaiety and delicacy to the Mazurka, and I was intrigued by Daria Pavlenko, whose plainer style lends an unusual stillness and inwardness to the Prelude. She's a living reminder that Fokine, like much of early 20th-century St Petersburg, was enthralled by the rapturous, radical simplicity of Isadora Duncan,
This all-Fokine programme marks the end of yet another magnificent season from the Kirov. And here's an idea for their return. If the company can't afford new productions, why not launch a fashion for early Soviet choreography? How about reviving The Red Poppy, Coast of Hope or a couple of tractor ballets? It could be the next thing in retro ballet chic.
Until tomorrow. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
