Mariinsky Gala
Divertissement / In the Night / Theme & Variations
Festspielhaus Baden-Baden
28 December 2009

Careful with galas: their fragile mish-mash of styles and performers shouldn’t be upset by too many novelties, and yet they have to be varied enough from year to year to keep the audience coming. The Mariinsky has found a formula in Baden-Baden, and it’s sticking to it: two one-act ballets, a divertissement full of sure hits, and the same array of star dancers on stage, from Ulyana Lopatkina to the company’s latest recruit, Denis Matvienko. Jerome Robbins’s In the Night and Balanchine’s Theme and Variations provided the needed contrast this Christmas, while the mandatory string of pas de deux, brightened up by humorous touches, opened the performance.

Starting an evening off with Auber’s Grand Pas in front of a cold audience certainly is a thankless task. Evgenia Obraztsova (replacing Alina Somova) and Maxim Zyuzin presented us with a rarity – a classically pure Grand Pas Classique. Obraztsova is a strange choice for this piece, all softness and refinement when the Mariinsky Orchestra’s take on Rossini seemed to call for whiz-bang technique and conquering demeanor. She has developed the authority to pull it through, with extremely assured fouettés in the coda, but the many details of her dancing seem lost in this pure gala piece. She and Zyuzin, who handled the virtuoso parts well, still brought welcome harmony to this Grand Pas Classique, their extensions mercifully in line, confident and beautifully Russian. (…)

» Read the full review in Ballet.co Magazine

» Ballet.co Gallery of the Gala (photos © Natasha Razina & Marcus Gernsbeck)



Program

I – Divertissement
Grand Pas Classique - Evgenia Obraztsova, Maxim Zyuzin
La Vivandière (Markitenka) pas de six - Elena Evseeva, Filip Stepin + Evgenia Dolmatova, Anna Lavrinenko, Yulianna Chereshkevitch, Oxsana Skoryk
Scheherazade Adagio – Ekaterina Kondaurova, Yevgeny Ivanchenko
Tarantella (Balanchine) – Nadezhda Gonchar, Leonid Sarafanov
Spuck’s Grand Pas de Deux – Ulyana Lopatkina, Danila Korsuntsev
Don Quixote pas de deux – Anastasia & Denis Matvienko + Variation: Yana Selina

II – In The Night (Jerome Robbins)
Anastasia & Denis Matvienko
Ekaterina Kondaurova, Yevgeny Ivanchenko
Ulyana Lopatkina, Danila Korsuntsev

III – Theme & Variations (Balanchine)
Viktoria Tereshkina, Vladimir Shklyarov
Yana Selina, Anna Lavrinenko, Valerya Martinyuk, Maria Shirinkina
Konstantin Zverev, Fyodor Murashov, Alexei Nedviga, Alexei Timofeyev

Ulyana Lopatkina & Danila Korsuntsev in Spuck's Grand Pas de Deux © Marcus Gernsbeck