On March 25, the National Opera of Ukraine stage presented Maya Plisetskaya, a lady myths are made of, a deity for many ballet devotees. This time, the famous actress came to Kyiv with the Imperial Russian Ballet to perform a joint program as part of the Third World Ballet Stars international dance festival.
The style of the soiree was classic: the more important the artist is, the longer pause he or she makes. This is why in the first half the audience, anticipating the appearance of the prima donna, contented themselves with watching the Imperial’s latest work: the one-act ballet Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune (choreographed by Dmitry Briantsev), with three chandeliers and lots of pyrotechnic smoke as scenery.
After the intermission, the audience was frozen in anticipation of when Ms. Plisetskaya would appear. The curtain went up. Faunus (performed by Konstantin Osin) was sleeping in a forest clearing among the stones. His afternoon nap was disturbed by some mythological goddesses. And now, accompanied by Claude Debussy’s music, a nymph, Maya Plisetskaya, wafted in, as if she had come down from an ancient Greek fresco. You could not look away from her supple and expressive arms. The audience seemed to have sunk in a trance for a few minutes. Vaslav Nijinsky’s famous routine assumed an entirely different accent thanks to the ballerina. But then the spell was broken, and the actress left the stage to cries of bravo.
Then the prima gives way to Gedeminas Taranda and Olga Pavlova. Their tango, An Unfinished Story, is a well-known and carefully orchestrated demonstration, a duet of passion. The choreographic compositions, modern and classical, changed with kaleidoscopic intensity. Artem Mikhailov showed a virtuoso performance of the hopak from the ballet Taras Bulba. Irina Surneva was very agile in an acrobatic composition. Character ballet dancer Vytautas Taranda also gave a breathtaking and grotesque performance. In the number “Acquaintance,” he was a shy and awkward bespectacled boy, slightly reminiscent of Woody Allen, while in Jacques Offenbach’s Can-Can Surprise he emerged as the lady in red (a tribute to Mikhailovsky’s ballet and the fallen angel Moiseyev). The audience applauded every number. Osin was even encouraged by applause when he fell doing a pas de deux from the ballet Don Quixote.
Finally, we again saw Her, Maya Plisetskaya. She made a few turns in the Italian Capriccio by Tchaikovsky, donning her famous Cardin trailed dress. And each of the Imperial Russian Ballet soloists performed a few pas from the previous numbers. Then came flowers and smiles, and the spectators hurried to the foyer, talking about what kind of concert it had been. All the numbers mentioned in the billboard seem to have been performed, but why did they leave the aftertaste of deceit? All in all, Ms. Plisetskaya was onstage for not more than five minutes. It is clear nobody expects today to see her trademark long step, the high light jump, and fast spinning, which used to astonish audiences, dancing the flamboyant Kitri (Don Quixote), the lyrical Aurore (The Sleeping Beauty), the expressive Egine (Spartacus), the self-assertive Carmen (Carmen Suite), and the vulnerable Nina Zarechnaya (The Seagull). It is Plisetskaya who was for several decades not only the leading ballerina of the then Soviet Union but also a trendsetter in modern world choreography. This is why it is a pity that this truly superb dancer now only exploits her name, being attached to a rather mediocre troupe with a pompous name of Imperial Russian Ballet. Now that Ms. Plisetskaya is on the Olympus of glory as the true empress of ballet, she seems to be unwilling to hand on her crown to her heirs. She seems to have failed to notice that she has begun to go down, not up, the ladder of success.
Many spectators brought to the concert their charming little girls, our future ballerinas, so that they could touch the great Maya and give her flowers. The parents did what they had set out to do. But did they feel better afterwards? I doubt it, and this is a pity indeed.
