Word: ballets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet is roaring across America for the first time in eight years, the grandest event on the 1987 dance calendar. Indeed, with the spirit of glasnost flourishing and international artistic exchange becoming commonplace, it may be several years before the arrival of a foreign troupe causes such excitement. The performances on the four-city circuit (New York, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles) are practically sold out. At the Metropolitan Opera House the crowds have patiently worked their way through strict security checks. Arguments among balletomanes about whether the company lives up to its legend are steamier than...
...visit returned, including two senior ballerinas, Natalya Bessmertnova (Grigorovich's wife, who was sidelined almost at once by a leg injury) and Lyudmila Semenyaka. Equally important, after 23 years at the helm, Grigorovich is presenting his finished vision of what the world's largest and most celebrated ballet company ought...
...cliche goes that the Bolshoi aims for outsize spectacle and athletic feats. If some vulgarity creeps in -- well, that's show biz. If you want pure artistry, go to Leningrad and see the Kirov. If you want to explore classicism stretched into infinity, catch the New York City Ballet. What the Bolshoi does best now is Grigorovich's signature ballets, the socialist-realist works like Spartacus and The Golden Age that dramatize episodes in class warfare. The dancers command extraordinary energy and seem in total, avid sympathy with the choreographer. Unfortunately, American audiences may find these mighty pageants simplistic...
Still, New York audiences took one new ballerina to their hearts, and they were right. Though not a technical whiz, Nina Ananiashvili, 24, has a lovely, sensuous line, strong feet and a crisp attack. She is also, ineffably, an old- fashioned girl whose spirit summons the perfumed kingdoms of ballet. The most important advantage she has happens to be young Liepa, 25, her frequent partner. Fair as she is dark, he is attentive, handsome and gallant. By keeping things simple and performing on a common impulse, the pair gave several performances that were more satisfying than their showier elders...
...lies not in the shambles of his private life but in the deterioration of his creative side. On the podium, with his exaggerated gestures and lugubrious tempos, he has become a parody of himself. As a composer, he has squandered the brilliant promise of West Side Story and the ballet Fancy Free on the embarrassing bathos of the 1971 theater piece Mass and his 1983 opera A Quiet Place. The unsavory life of the man chronicled in Peyser's portrait of the artist is almost irrelevant to the greater tragedy of the composer. Wealthy, acclaimed, esteemed, he and his reputation...