Bolshoi Ballet – Nutcracker live-streamed 12/19

 

Art is Great.

Yuri Grigorovich is Great.

The Bolshoi is Simply Beyond Great.

  

Haglund just saw his best ever Nutcracker.  Hands down, the best he’s ever seen.  Lord, does Grigorovich know how to Bring It.

 

The only disappointment was that certain Haglund’eelers couldn’t drag their you-know-whats out of the sack on a Sunday morning to get to this 11 AM showing which was LIVE-STREAMED from Moscow.

 

This showing was part of Emerging Pictures’ Ballet in Cinema series, which will next produce a Live Stream performance of The Royal Ballet’s Giselle on January 19th.

 

First, the renovated Bolshoi Theater is incredibly beautiful.  The stage is easily the size of Staten Island.  Twenty-four flowers in Waltz of the Flowers looked like it could have been half of a cast.

 

In this production, Grigorovich’s Drosselmeyer is a full-dancing principal character, today performed by Denis Savin.  He was marvelous in the way that he segued from the character acting into extraordinary technique.  It was all very seamless and kind of made you nervous about what this character might do next.  Spooky, charming, and one heck of a dancer. 

 

After the Christmas tree grows gigantic with flashing lights, it then changes into a stunning snow-covered tree and remains in the background for the rest of the ballet.

 

The entire company appeared stoked (with energy) for the performance.  There really was only one mishap when Victoria Osipova as one of the Indian Dolls unintentionally sat down on the stage.  She and her partner, Ruslan Pronin, seemed to be uncertain about each other from the start.  Daria Khokhlova and Vadim Kurochkin were the French Dolls who danced an inventive pas de trois with a cute rocking-lamb that they pulled along on a pair of long ribbons.  The Spanish Dolls, Anna Okuneva and Andrei Bolotin, delivered some outstanding pyro-technical stuff:  she breezed through a combination of fouette, double fouette, tour en l’air with feet crossed, single pirouette from fifth.  Try it. 

 

The mice in this production are an advanced strain that return during Act II to harass the principals.  Pavel Dmitrichenko was an exceptionally menacing Mouse King.

 

The little children are portrayed by the smaller corps women with the little “boys” in convincing short wigs.  Fritz was danced by Anna Proskurnina, who occasionally took a step or two in a way that was a dead giveaway that she was really a ballerina.

 

Artem Ovcharenko and Nina Kaptsova were The Nutcracker and Marie, respectively.  Outstanding and perfectly cast in every way.  Grigorovich likes to employ that step where the male principal tour jetes and then passe developpes to the back – with good reason – it’s spectacular when the dancer keeps the energy flowing backward as he executes it.  Ovcharenko caught the step beautifully today.  His legs are extraordinarily long, his feet acutely arched, and he caught the balance on the developpe like a surfer catching a big wave.  Kaptsova gave a nearly flawless technical performance.  The cameras did not provide many close-ups of her face, so it wasn’t easy to see what was going on there.  But her movement was sublime.  Haglund was disappointed with Kaptsova in a Spartacus DVD he once saw because she didn’t measure up to Bessmertnova.  But today, she was pitch perfect as Marie.

The classic corps in the Snow and Flowers scenes were exquisite.  The cameras gave us a few glimpses of the stage from approximately the first or second balcony and the formations were just stunningly beautiful. 

 

Grigorovich’s PdD for the Nutcracker and Marie includes the same huge Bolshoi lift that we will see in the upcoming ABT Nutcracker.  It’s certainly wonderful if Ratmansky wants to include it as a tribute to the great, great Grigorovich, and the audience will appreciate that.  After all, we hardly ever get to see these spectacular lifts.   However, the lift, as we saw today, is done by the Bolshoi in ONE piece – not pause, get set for five minutes, and then hoist the ballerina up as was done by two sets of ABT principals in last Wednesday’s rehearsal.  If we’re going to honor Grigorovich by including his lift in our new Nutcracker, let’s do it right, Folks.  In ONE piece, People.  Mukhamedov could have done it with one hand.

 

The Bolshoi Orchestra wasn’t about to be outshone by the extraordinary dancers on the stage.  The music was magnificent, rich, and evenly miked so that we heard everything.  We had, in fact, a seat so good that you couldn’t have bought it in the theater.  What a treat!

 

Haglund must bestow upon the Bolshoi and Yuri Grigorovich this Waltz of the Flowers First Position Pump Bump Award for a splendid Nutcracker performance today:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Katya]

Just small mistake-Nutcracker-Prince was danced by Artiom Ovcharenko.,

[Haglund]

Thanks much Katya! I've made the correction. Were you there? Did you like the performance or perhaps not?

[Marie]

So funny--I had my husband watch some Bolshoi clips of the Nutcracker and explained; "this is why the Bolshoi is the greatest company in the world."

[Haglund]

Hi Marie. Merry Christmas to you.

I forgot to mention that the live-stream included an interview with Yuri Grigorovich. Very sharp and articulate man. He's about to turn 84 years old and he has more energy and spring in his step than people half his age.