Word: raymonda
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...turns 21 this week, has spent most of his time recently serving as supersubstitute to a trio of ailing defectors from Russia's Kirov Ballet: Mikhail Baryshnikov, who injured an ankle before his Toronto performance in La Sylphide; Rudolf Nureyev, who missed his Los Angeles production of Raymonda because of pneumonia; and Valery Panov, who pulled a calf muscle while performing his new ballet Heart of the Mountains in San Francisco. "I know 5 -and everyone says-I'm as good as the three of them," boasts Bui jones, whose confidence suggests early Muhammad...
...Gregory has indeed complained about what she (and others) consider to be poor treatment of home-grown talent. She has worried publicly that "Americans don't appreciate their own." But lately, Gregory has had little to kick about: A.B.T. mounted a new production of the full-length ballet Raymonda especially for her, gave her contractual rights to choose her roles, and scaled her pay up to levels comparable with those of guest performers, who sometimes get more than $2,000 a night. By all accounts, she really did leave A.B.T. for personal reasons. Upset for months about the breakup...
...lavish A.B.T. production is the first complete American version of this three-act ballet in nearly 30 years. In one sense, the neglect is hard to explain, since Raymonda is one of five surviving full-length works (including Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake) of the 60 or so ballets created by the great Marius Petipa principally for St. Petersburg's Maryinsky Theater. The choreography ranks with Petipa's most inventive, and the score by Alexander Glazunov is both limpid and melodious...
...best described as a severe credibility gap. Briefly put, it tells of a countess in medieval Hungary who is torn between love for her betrothed, a dashing crusader named Jean de Brienne, and an earthier affection for a fiery Saracen knight, Abdul-Rakhman. Nureyev, who frequently danced in Raymonda when he was with Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, has staged the work for A.B.T. with such taste and delicacy that it is hard to tell where his choreography begins and Petipa's ends. In a valiant effort to make psychological sense of the plot, he has turned the scenes...
...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...