There are few dancers who lay it all on the line like Natalia Osipova. The emotional lives of Osipova’s characters can’t be contained. They burst forth in her facial expressions and a tensile force that warps her classical posture as her shoulders cave in yearning or despair. It is exhilarating to watch.
Early in John Cranko’s Onegin, his 1965 telling of the Pushkin verse-novel Eugene Onegin, Tatiana’s unrequited love for the titular antihero leads to a fantasy pas de deux. Osipova is lovestruck with feverish, stomach-knotting obsession, fearless and unfiltered, urgent and impatient. She throws herself at Onegin, played by Reece Clarke, who, in his debut in the role, does a good job of catching her and holding her aloft in ecstatic overhead lifts.
All this comes in contrast to the pretty picture of Tatiana’s sister Olga (Francesca Hayward) and her own love for poet Lensky (Matthew Ball), Hayward dancing on air with sweet radiance. But Cranko, such an intelligent choreographer, is attuned to love’s many frequencies in this taut, plot-driven ballet that traces Tatiana’s growing maturity alongside the shattering of Onegin’s ego and self-delusion. The focus is kept squarely on the main protagonists while the broader company is used sparingly, necessarily – although they make the most of their moments: the big-leaping entrance of the countryfolk in act one is charged with great excitement.
Cranko manages to show bookish Tatiana’s inner life running in parallel with the frolics of the simple country scene. And while Osipova is a dancer of grand gesture, she’s all over the details, too: folding the page of her book to keep her place, her face dancing in response to the unseen printed words.
Clarke, only recently promoted to first soloist, arrives with a stern stiffness of bearing appropriate for the aloof outsider, although it possibly impedes his dancing. He’s a young dancer of great promise, and presence, but the emotional complexity is a big ask. It’s all a matter of experience. In this, he can look to the likes of Gary Avis playing Prince Gremin, Tatiana’s eventual husband, whose every tiny gesture speaks volumes. And, of course, to Osipova, who takes Tatiana to thrilling emotional heights.
• At Royal Opera House, London, until 29 February.
