From Leningrad with Love

By Martha Duffy

From the opening curtain on, exoticism was in the air. Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, embarking on a four-city, eight-week U.S. tour, chose to lead off its engagement at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House last week with Le Corsaire, a full-length ballet that very few Americans have ever seen. The kind of diversion that appealed to 19th century audiences in Paris or St. Petersburg, Le Corsaire now seems a genuine novelty, and, like the Kirov itself, it signaled that something fresh and curious can still be found in the post- glasnost era of big tours and cultural exchanges.

The first tableau showed a little owl-and-pussycat boat foundering in a tempest of billowing waves and lyrical lightning. For the next scenes, set in the land of some randy, warlike Pasha, the Soviets seemed to have unwound their every bolt of gaudy cloth. No fewer than five composers are credited with contributing to the noisy score; the choreography, some of it by Marius Petipa, is strictly cut and paste; the plot went down with the ship. But Le Corsaire provides the occasion for some florid dancing, especially in the hands of bravura technicians like Tatyana Terekhova and Farukh Ruzimatov or a poet on point like Altynai Asylmuratova, the company's reigning ballerina.

The Kirov, the revered Soviet classical company that nurtured George Balanchine, Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova, came stocked with an impressive repertory. It has been 25 years since it played New York City, and in that time Manhattan has become entrenched as the dance capital of the world. Local fans are well informed and tough. Balanchine, who died in 1983, is still very much the presiding genius, and the purity and speed of his choreography set the pace. In addition to the perennial Giselle and some short pieces, Kirov artistic director Oleg Vinogradov brought his new production of The Sleeping Beauty and -- displaying either guts or foolhardiness -- two Balanchine ballets.

The Kirov does not take a diversion like Le Corsaire very seriously. In the case of a masterpiece like Sleeping Beauty, Vinogradov sticks to tradition. The sets and costumes are pastel and pretty. What stands out beyond the spectacle or even the dancing is the warmth of the manners the characters show to one another. The Russians know how to animate never-never land.

How good are the Kirov dancers? There is little question that Americans are technically superior -- faster, stronger, more rigorously trained. Some credit must go to Russian immigrants. Balanchine revolutionized ballet by demanding that a performer move swiftly through positions rather than prepare for them and then hold the pose. Baryshnikov, as artistic director of the American Ballet Theater, adapted Balanchine's methods to the old story ballets.

Beyond technique lies the elusive area of style. Kirov dancers seem to know viscerally how to put across the drama in the music. A ballerina may fall off point more than her American counterpart, and her fouettes may veer out of control. But apparently this bothers neither her nor her bosses. The dancers display an endearing, innocent pleasure in the least of their achievements; a chaste young demi-soloist, having completed her variation, will milk the audience for applause -- and get it. At the New York City Ballet such deportment would be considered inexcusably vulgar.

Differences between the two approaches show up starkly in the Kirov's foray into Balanchine: Scotch Symphony, set to Mendelssohn, and Theme and Variations, with its vibrant Tchaikovsky score. City Ballet's Suzanne Farrell and Francia Russell, a former soloist who is now co-artistic director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, went to Leningrad to teach the works to the Kirov. Russell, who prepared Theme, had the harder assignment because the choreography is difficult for even Balanchine dancers. Both women learned that the no-nonsense rules they live by do not apply at the Kirov. By American standards, classes were poky. Dancers might rehearse one day and never be seen again. The principals arrived with their personal coaches, rather like gymnasts in competition, and saw no reason not to slow down the music or change the steps.

Seen during the Canadian part of the current tour, Scotch Symphony, Balanchine's musings on La Sylphide, worked best with Yelena Pankova, 25, as the sylph. A springy dancer blessed with a high, light jump, she seemed to grasp the choreographer's oft repeated injunction: respond to the music and "don't think -- do" the steps. Senior ballerina Galina Mezentseva tried to make a romantic story out of this plotless work and as a result looked coy.

Theme and Variations featured Larisa Lezhnina, 20, a richly talented Kirov prospect. But her consort, Ruzimatov, literally got in her way. Defeated by the partnering in the pas de deux, in which the woman must execute many steps while appearing to move languorously, he acted like a man caught in a turnstile. In one Montreal performance, Lezhnina was forced to retract her extended leg to let him get by.

But in its own way, the Kirov paid rich tribute to the choreographer who danced on its stage as a youngster. The set suggests the theater itself, its balconies aglow in mellow light. The marvelous, downy tutus use the colors of the Kirov curtain. When danced by Asylmuratova, one of the handful of great ballerinas today, a magical fusion of dance tradition and Balanchine's revolution occurs. She may lack the technical wizardry of City Ballet's Kyra Nichols or Merrill Ashley, but she is the most musical of dancers, delightedly bathing in the score, modestly using her bewitching personal beauty to enhance the glamour of what is, in fact, a triumphant moment in ballet history.