In the heyday of the Soviet Union the Bolshoi Ballet had a hotline to the Kremlin - which they were privileged to use when they required more funds. Even more importantly they had a hotline to the Soviet ethos which powered their artistic vision. When Yuri Grigorovich created his 1968 version of Spartacus the ballet was exuberantly in tune with official revolutionary poetics: a monumental work, whose story of an ardent slave pitted against a corrupt imperial power was cast in slabs of choreographic granite. Even in 1986 when I first saw the ballet, the dancers performed it as if they lived and died by it. Natalya Bessmertnova's Phrygia was an exquisite saint, Nina Semizorova's Aegina trailed sex like cheap perfume while Irek Mukhamedov performed Spartacus with a jaw dropping power that was as visionary as it was muscular.
In 1999 Spartacus looks like an old curiosity animated by cynical performers in fancy dress. The corps of slaves and Romans trudge the stage with their minds elsewhere, while none of the four principals put out that big-hearted emotion necessary to invest their roles with moral punch. Mark Peretokin's Crassus looks like a petulant youth rather than a legendary general and his passing resemblance to Eddie Izzard is most distracting because you realise that Izzard himself would be so much better at demonising that character's mix of cowardice and power lust.
Nadezhda Gracheva has a more commanding presence as Aegina but lacks erotic guile while Anna Antonicheva dances Phrygia with empty-eyed technical perfection. Dmitri Belogolovtsev as Spartacus is the high jumping, sleek-lined virtuoso we'd been led to expect, but as a hero he has less charisma than a messenger boy.
With its lead dancers cruising in low gear the ballet itself looks coarse and feeble. Grigorovich was a master at staging blockbuster images and Crassus' arrival at the head of the Roman army and Spartacus' crucifixion on a pyramid of spears still impress. But much of the choreography consists of wall to wall jumps, high kicks and processionals, and without big personalities to charge them up their massiveness looks clunky.
In the middle of an uncertain and unconvincing season most of us had expected the Bolshoi's signature ballet to give their image a lift. In fact, as the company cast around for a new identity, Spartacus tells us nothing of what they might be come and everything about what they no longer are.
