Word: pas
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...also a tender portrayal of the Swan Queen, and the audience gave her nearly 20 minutes of cheers and bravas. For those in search of novelty, there was a first look at a potentially exciting new partnership. Gelsey Kirkland was dancing, for the first time ever, in a showy pas de deux from Le Corsaire, with that ubiquitous guest artist Rudolf Nureyev. All smoldering fire, Nureyev and the ethereal Gelsey, a lass with a very delicate air indeed, looked well together, and the audience loved them...
Swirling Sequence. At the gala, he appeared twice, the first time in the Don Quixote pas de deux with Noella Pontois, a soubrette-style dancer from the Paris Opéra Ballet. After one swirling sequence of pantherlike turns, he landed - not just on one knee as most dancers would, but on one knee with the other leg fully extended. It was a daring variant on a familiar bit of acrobatics, since Baryshnikov is quite likely to break an ankle if his timing is a split second...
...what dancing there is! Just as there is grand opera, there is also grand ballet-unfettered by logic, celebrating showmanship and dazzle for their own sake. There were a few opening-night technical mishaps, but Nureyev's Raymonda is so studded with spectacular solos, pas de deux, pas de trois, pas de quatres, stylistic evocations of folk dance and rousing ensemble displays that it is rather like a 19-course meal devised by an overeager master chef. There are almost too many delights to absorb. One of them, certainly, is a revitalized Erik Bruhn, who brings to the secondary...
...vital and sexual. Absent is the usual dance contest between Daphnis and the cowherd Dorkon, danced by Reid Anderson, for the reward of Chloë's kiss. The veil dance of Lykanion, the Grecian Salome, is gone too. Instead, German-born Ballerina Birgit Keil slithers into a hot pas de deux with Cragun, whose ardent body is counterpointed by his gentle face. Through her mellifluous movement, Haydée conveys a Chloë too ripe to be altogether innocent...
...placing great burdens on himself. Considering the obvious problems of adjusting to a new country, a new style of life, he probably should not have undertaken his month-long tour of Australia with Makarova last January. He badly sprained a tendon in his ankle while dancing the Don Quixote pas de deux in Sydney. He was able to finish the performance, but fainted after two curtain calls. The accident put him in bed and on crutches for weeks and still causes pain...