The Bolshoi Ballet, Bolshoi Theatre New Stage, Moscow – October 24-27, 2008

Ekaterina Maximova and Vladimir Vasiliev Celebrations

Marc Haegeman

At the end of October, the Bolshoi Theatre organised a five-day festival to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the creative work of Ekaterina Maximova and Vladimir Vasiliev. Both graduated in 1958 from the Moscow Ballet School, soon to transform by their unique artistry our perception of what classical dancers are and what they can achieve. Along the way the pair became Russia’s most beloved dance couple. After three decades with the Bolshoi Ballet and as guests with various companies in Western Europe, Katya and Volodya remain active as ever, she primarily as ballet mistress and répétiteur at the Bolshoi, he as choreographer, producer, painter, and occasional poet. Performances of four of their most memorable creations – Don Quixote, Giselle, The Nutcracker and Vasiliev’s own Aniuta – were completed by an expensive Gala evening with foreign guest artists joining the Bolshoi’s own dancers.
The Bolshoi decided to mark the festival with appearances by pupils of Maximova and – perhaps less appropriately so – with several debuts in the full-length ballets. A short film clip of the couple in some truly mind-blowing moments of dancing was shown as a teasing opener to the festival, and this footage set the standard from the start. Yet I suspect very few in the theatre packed with guests and friends of the feted pair expected that standard to be met on stage in the coming days. It was the genius of Katya and Volodya they had come to pay tribute to and if the festival was to confirm the conviction that their talent has never been equalled, that was just fine with them.
The opening Don Quixote, in the excellent production by Alexei Fadeyechev, was danced by Maximova’s pupil Galina Stepanenko and the young Ivan Vasiliev. Although encounters on stage of partners with a huge age difference can prove beneficial to both artists, this pairing of Stepanenko, who is in her early forties, with Vasiliev, who is just 20, resulted in a rather low-key show riddled by a lack of chemistry between the leads.
The performance of Yuri Grigorovich’s revered but now stale Nutcracker featured the debut of the promising Artyom Ovcharenko. A slender, long-legged youngster, Ovcharenko graduated into the Bolshoi company in 2007, has struck gold in competitions and has been taken under the generous wings of Nikolai Tsiskaridze. He is definitely a name to look out for. Anastasia Goriacheva as Masha added lots of charm to her role and splendid dancing.
Giselle, in the production by Vasiliev with colourful costumes by Givenchy, marked the debut of another Maximova pupil, Anna Nikulina. She is a small and fine soloist, but a meaty role like Giselle seems beyond her reach at present. Generally, Nikulina acted better than she danced, yet it has to be said that she didn’t receive much help from her Albrecht, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, who preferred to play to the gallery instead. Ekaterina Shipulina shone as Myrtha, and hearing the octogenarian Alexander Kopylov obtaining so many details from Adolphe Adam’s score was a delight.
Aniuta was by far the most successful part of the festival. It remains one of Vasiliev’s most winning creations and this evening it was carried by a moving performance from the choreographer himself in the role of the hapless Pyotr Leontyevitch and supported by a thoroughly inspired cast, including Marianna Ryzhkina, excellent in the title role created on Maximova, and Gennady Yanin, irresistible as Modest Alexeyevich.
The Gala evening brought a generous selection of choreography by Vasiliev and pieces rendered immortal by Maximova and Vasiliev. Some of them were interesting rarities, such as Dmitry Briantsev’s The Hussar’s Ballad, which Maximova danced in the 1980s, or T. Schilling’s hilarious Match which showed a couple confronting each other on a tennis court with increasingly grotesque results. Foreign guests included Myriam Ould-Braham, Alessio Carbone and Emmanuel Thibault from the Paris Opéra Ballet, Giuseppe Picone from the Rome Opera Ballet and Uliana Lopatkina from the Maryinsky. Several of the performances were obviously still under the charm of discovery, yet I suppose this cannot be avoided within the context of events such as these. Svetlana Zakharova and Andrei Uvarov in the adagio from Vasiliev’s Macbeth, Denis Medvedev in Kasyan Goleizovsky’s Narcisse, Anastasia Goriacheva in Goleizovsky’s Mazurka, and Natalia Osipova and Ruslan Skvortsov in Match provided the audience with some of the most memorable moments. Maximova and Vasiliev joined the dancers on stage during the finale amidst standing ovations and tons of flowers.

Photograph: Centre, Ekaterina Maximova and Vladimir Vasiliev acknowledging their ovation onstage at the Bolshoi New Theatre. Photograph by Marc Haegeman at the Bolshoi Theatre.