Twelve months ago, when the Kirov first danced their spectacularly reconstructed Sleeping Beauty in London, the company's nerves were on edge. The production had just floundered in America, where audiences found its historic staging irksomely slow, while Russian critics had vilified it as inauthentic or, contrarily, old hat. The British public, however, fell in love. The crowded cast and fantastical costumes of this 1890-style Beauty, its sweetly sociable storytelling and extravagant etiquette, evoked an era when ballets were lavish, leisurely and fun. It may not have been a pedantic replica of the original version but it still felt as though the breath of live history was tickling the backs of our necks.
Not surprisingly, the Kirov have chosen Beauty to kick off their return season and, not surprisingly, the tickets have been selling fast. Not only is there enough detail in this show to satisfy repeated viewings but there is a new Aurora to see in Natalia Sologub, widely tipped to become the company's next major ballerina.
In some ways this Beauty resists being a star vehicle. Its soloists and principals do get to perform some of the most exquisitely challenging classical dance ever written, with Veronika Part, for instance, dancing the Lilac Fairy with a sumptuous, melodic prettiness. Yet individuals register less prominently than in modern productions where the scale is less symphonic, the stage less populated and the scene less social. Beauty in its original staging is more of a company ballet, allowing the eloquent pantomime of the Kirov's character dancers to ripple round the stage like elegant conversation, and its corps de ballet (always a world-class act) to etch the lines of Petipa's palatial choreography with magnificent accuracy and aplomb.
Sologub's Aurora did, of course, take centre stage. A dancer of high-strung, leggy virtuosity, she is capable of effects both delicately musical and grandly spacious. Yet for all her prodigious technique, her youth and inexperience combined to blur the focus of her performance and disrupt its flow with harsh mannerisms. Unfortunately, her smiley Prince, Andrian Fadeyev, had no compensating spark. This is a production that is almost performance-proof, though. What we register, ultimately, is less the calibre of dancers than the sublime theatrical chemistry that produced one of the great dance pageants of history.
In rep until June 27. Box office: 020-7304 4000. A version of this review appeared in later editions of yesterday's paper.
