Word: baryshnikov
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...bravura triumph for Baryshnikov and Kirkland
Whatever his private anguish at having left the Soviet Union may be, Mikhail Baryshnikov's professional motto must be "Don't look back." Last week, in an American Ballet Theater premiere at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center, he took Don Quixote, a favorite Russian ballet little known in this country, and turned it into-a classical vaudeville? A romantic comedy? A Broadway musical en pointe? The new Don Q is in part all of these, a marvel of speed, timing and razzle-dazzle. The setting is Spanish and the tradition Russian, but the flavor is distinctly American...
...subtitle, Kitri's Wedding, more accurately describes both the Russian and the Baryshnikov versions. It is based on an episode in the Cervantes novel in which an innkeeper's daughter, Kitri (danced by Gelsey Kirkland), manages to marry her true love, Basil the Barber (Baryshnikov), in defiance of her father, who has a richer son-in-law in mind. The visionary Don Quixote (Alexander Minz) and his faithful Sancho Panza (Enrique Martinez) are on the periphery of the raucous doings but play no real part...
...familiar wedding pas de deux. Many of the steps come from the century-old Marius Petipa choreography (as revised by Alexander Gorsky). It is in the brashness, polish and satirical twists that Don Q seems transplanted. As Jerome Robbins broke up the anonymity of the old musical chorus line, Baryshnikov has livened up the role played by the corps de ballet, giving many of the 50-odd dancers at least some individuality. Several brief solos, small ensembles or fleeting bits of stage business make for nearly nonstop action. For the A.B.T. corps it must be an exhilarating ballet to dance...
...ballet should belong to Kitri- and eventually it will as it enters the A.B.T. repertory and other men take Basil's part. Right now Baryshnikov's dynamism puts things off balance, much as Marlon Brando's Broadway perfo mance in A Streetcar Named Desire obscured the fact that the play was really about Blanche DuBois. Baryshnikov is the Figaro of Spanish barbers. He flirts recklessly, he fumes, he pouts. He does a wonderful bit with two mugs, leaping and drinking out of both at once. He has a hilarious, hollow-eyed mad scene in which he stabs...