I must be forgiven for reminding you that “Gala” has been translated in an Italian dictionary as “a frill or tucker”. So I report that Sunday night’s gala at the Coliseum, in memory of the fine Bolshoi dancer Maris Liepa and in aid of the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation, which funds research into childhood cancer, offered plenty of frills and, such being the nature of the beast, a few tuckers. Basic, bare staging. English National Ballet’s orchestra under Alexander Polyanichko and some taped items. Dancers from Moscow, St Petersburg, Paris, London. The usual gala suspects, of course, for such evenings are unthinkable without the frills of the Don Quixote pas de deux, bright under the charm of Natalya Osipova and the soaring elegance of Leonid Sarafanov; a Dying Swan , whose demise I did not regret, from Svetlana Zakharova; a duet from Le Corsaire , given with bewitching grace by Marianela Nuñez in the arms of Thiago Soares; a fragment from The Pharoah’s Daughter with Maria Alexandrova enchanting, and Sergei Filin beating and turning like teacher’s pet and with a gaiety of spirit that was
irresistible. And there were such familiar items as the Letter Scene from Onegin , which suffered from a misunderstanding between Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg, their two-bodies-as-one rapport slightly frayed; the abrasive duet from Forsythe’s In the Middle (which I think of as Bad Manners for Beginners ), superbly displayed by Agnès Letestu and José Martinez; the Bronze Idol solo from La Bayadère , niftily done by Serge Polunin; and the duet between Herman and the Countess from Roland Petit’s Queen of Spades , with a grandly obsessed interpretation from Dmitry Gudanov as partner to Ilze Liepa in her created role as the Countess. The balcony duet from Leonid Lavrovsky’s Romeo looked pallid – difficult for Sarah Lamb and David Makhateli to blaze with youthful ardour when starting from cold – but it was a pleasure to see the return of Vladimir Derevianko, a remarkable danseur at the Bolshoi in the 1980s, albeit trapped in nonsense which had been nailed on to part of the Firebird score. Equally fine was another Bolshoi principal, Mark Peretokin, partnering Ilze Lipa in a dank moment purporting to be about Madame Bovary.
Two incidents curdled my oft-declared admiration for two ballerinas. Svetlana Zakharova appeared as what I supposed was Lady Macbeth suffering from an iffy plate of oysters. Barefoot, hair unbound, got up in a white shift, she involved herself with a little chair, and behaved very badly indeed for so glorious an artist, in a fight to the death with a witless solo by Mitoso Hiroyama. The audience was enraptured. So, too, when Tamara Rojo offered us an ancient meringue purporting to be the Esmeralda pas de deux (with Federico Bonelli). Вам нравится секс с молодой девушкой? Порно молодых легко отыскать здесь , перейдите и наслаждайтесь. Сайт порно.me лидирует по количеству видео в данной теме. It bore little relationship to a duet I have seen under the same name. Rojo, betambourined and with basilisk charm, balanced interminably and spun multiple and well-oiled fouettés . She was unrecognisable as the artist who has illuminated some of the most important ballets in the repertory. It was a circus display, and wholly unworthy of her.
Financial Times (FT.com)
By Clement Crisp
