ALTHOUGH The Nutcracker ballet embodies the spirit of Christmas, a mid-February showing at the Theatre Royal Bath is no less magical.
The Moscow City Ballet is on a UK tour, sharing the national heritage of Russian dance with a new era of ballet audiences.
On Monday night Bath's theatre played host to a performance of The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
The well-known story about the Christmas Eve imaginings of Clara, the Mouse King, the Nutcracker and the Doll take place over two acts.
We meet Clara, ballerina Valeria Bystrova, who exhibits masterful physical control of her body and gave a good performance, but made the audience feel frightened for her, and for good reason. She was extremely thin, appeared brittle, and looked as if she would snap in two at any moment.
advertisement
Thankfully she was not one of many. The other dancers executed beautiful movement with healthier bodies. Oriental Orchid Anastasia Shiladzhyan flowed like liquid and Talgat Kozhabaev, who played the Prince, seemed able to command a cushion of air beneath his feet. So graceful was his dancing, his solo performance on stage toward the end of the ballet drew admiration from the whole audience.
The cheeky duo who accompanied the Chinese Cherry dancer bounced high into the air over and over again, using a seemingly relentless source of jumping power stored in their legs. Their playful nature and astonishing acrobatics earned them an unprompted round of applause.
The dancers and artistic director Victor Smirnov-Golovanov accepted the gratitude of the audience for up to 10 minutes following the conclusion of the ballet. They deserved their lengthy applause.
The Moscow City Ballet is performing in Bath until tomorrow, showing The Nutcracker and Cinderella.
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
Print
Email this
