Metropolitan Classical Ballet New & Reviews

Posted on Wed, Apr. 20, 2005

Bolshoi at the Bass
Troupe invokes Russian masters

By Wayne Lee Gay

Star-Telegram Classical Music Critic

Bass Performance Hall became Bolshoi West for a few hours Monday evening when the Arlington-based Metropolitan Classical Ballet brought its Russian-rich company downtown for an evening of excerpts, short pieces and divertissements.

Seldom-seen works from the Russian repertoire are a staple of this company; on this program, company co-artistic director Alexander Vetrov, a star of the Bolshoi Ballet, staged Act II of Marius Petipa's Raymonda of 1889. Vetrov himself took the principal role of the Saracen knight Abderakhman, with Russian Daniil Gaifullin as the hero/knight Jean de Brienne and Russian Olga Pavlova as the heroine, Raymonda. Bolshoi Ballet.

Individual dancing was nothing short of spectacular. Despite occasional rough edges in the ensemble, the overall effect was breathtaking. Conductor Ron Spigelman guided the accompanying Texas Chamber Orchestra skillfully through Alexander Glazunov's unabashedly romantic score.

After intermission, co-artistic director Paul Mejia's Inspiration, set to J.K. Mertz's guitar transcription of Schubert's beloved Standchen ("Serenade"), provided a break from the Russian repertoire while displaying another significant part of Metropolitan Classical Ballet's mission: preserving and presenting Mejia's choreography, which is a direct, unique and important offshoot of the Balanchine tradition. Vetrov and Pavlova returned to the stage for this single-movement pas de deux, with its entrancingly fluid physicality.

The feast of Russian dance resumed with the surviving segment of Petipa's The Talisman of 1889, danced with brilliance and bravura by Buryatiya-born Marina Goshko and Russian Anatoly Emelianov. Russian Andre Prikhodko followed with a lightning-quick solo, Gopak. Pavlova and her husband, Yevgeni Anfinogenov, presented Leonid Yakobson's humorous and virtuosic setting of Waltzes from Richard Strauss' opera Der Rosenkavalier.

The evening closed with one more showpiece from Petipa, the Grand Pas from Don Quixote, with Gaifullin and his wife, American Stephanie Murrish, in the athletic principal roles.

GRADE: A

-- Wayne Lee Gay