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The Mariinsky Ballet: Anna Karenina, London, August 2017


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  • John Mallinson changed the title to The Mariinsky Ballet: Anna Karenina, London, August 2017

I was there too - so here are some more photos:


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Konstantin Zverev, Diana Vishneva (and artists of the company)
©  Dave Morgan. Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr

 

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Konstantin Zverev, Diana Vishneva
© Dave Morgan. Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr

 

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Diana Vishneva
© Dave Morgan. Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr


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Set from DanceTabs: Mariinsky Ballet - Anna Karenina
Courtesy of DanceTabs / Flickr

 

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I think the best of this season is still to come, last night it was a pleasure to see Ratmansky's modern choreography and to see the dancers able to show their emotional side, although basically there are only 3 main characters, there were tantalising glimpses of dancers like Svetlana Ivanova and Ekaterina Chebykina also, Diana Vishneva and Konstantin Zverev were very moving and dramatic in the leads, there was a cast change announcement and not sure who it was, so will just mention those two. I saw this last time and it looks better on second viewing, looking forward to tonight, never seen Viktoria Tereshkina in a dramatic role, and of course she partners Xander Parish! The production is very episodic and has good scenic designs and the music is quite spooky and ethereal, the ballet is actually too short!  It still started 10 minutes late (could someone explain why this happens every night?) but finished at 9.35pm. Asa Cornish played Anna's son and was sweet!

 

Edited to say this isn't about Swan Lake, sorry, needs moving!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Beryl H
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3 hours ago, Beryl H said:

It still started 10 minutes late (could someone explain why this happens every night?) but finished at 9.35pm.

 

Actually it finished at 9:25, which is what it said on the cast sheets, unless you're counting prolonged solo calls front-of-curtain which may have occurred after I escaped.  It was 9:28 when I checked my watch as I got to the exit, as I remarked upon the prompt finish with an usher!  What a refreshing change...

 

I would venture to suggest it felt rather long for such a short ballet, however...

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I enjoyed the second Act more and Diana was wonderful in the role but overall I think this is really a one Act dramatic ballet as the other characters are just not delineated enough to draw you in for two Acts but a great role for a main ballerina. Also although the music sorted of suited the mood of the piece I did find it rather strident at times but there were some interesting bits of choreography mainly in the second Act. Can't say it would be a favourite of mine but at some point will see again because sometimes a ballet can grow on you with more viewing!! 

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I had really been looking forward to this - first visit to the Mariinsky this season (I had missed Don Q and Swan Lake due to both cost reasons coupled with jester aversion / Don Q sufficiency!) - and despite having been warned off by a ballet regular. Unfortunately, down to cockiness on my part, thinking of course I know Anna Karenina, I spent much of the first half desperately trying to remember: the book (read many years ago); the BBC series with Nicola Pagett; and the Sophie Merceau and Keira Knightley films. All to no avail - so I didn't have much of a clue what was going on apart from with the central trio - a lesson to remember to do my homework!  Having said that, and having decided to therefore concentrate on the main three roles, I did warm to this ballet more in the second half. For inexplicable reasons, I have never been a huge fan of Vishneva but her performance as Anna definitely reached right to the back of the amphi and she looked stunning in the costumes. 

 

It felt as though many in the audience felt similarly as applause was quite muted after the first half but had definitely warmed up by the end.

 

Overall I found it quite an odd experience - I enjoyed the dancing and seeing Vishneva, but was not moved by it at all. The music didn't help for me - certainly no earworms this morning (perhaps because I can't dislodge the last few minutes of Woolf Works now I've got it recorded). Very glad I saw it but no desire to see it again.

 

Now looking forward to the triple bill and seeing some more of these dancers.

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I was at the performance last night (with Viktoria Tereshkina and Xander Parish in the lead roles). Have to say, I was one that had no problem with the music; for me, it was in sync with the drama and i've certainly heard worse scores. Whilst I would love to have seen Vishneva (one of my fave dancers - note to self, should have booked both performances) having Tereshkina was still a pleasure. Parish danced well, but she danced superbly, but then, doesn't she always. Loved the costumes, the projected scenery was convenient in that it let the dancers get on with it, and enjoyed the choreography. So for me, it was a good night

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What a difference a night/cast can make.

 

I have myself felt at times quite ambivalent about the Mariinsky's current tour – but then I felt the same way about their previous one. I have attended a goodly number of performances but much of it has passed in a muted muster and tone. There are times when it has come awake. Batoeva - (for me the best of the Kitris thus far) - with those scintillating pique turns at a speed/precision that would make Osipova blush - and the dare-devil do of Shklyarov's Basil - the best too of that number (Kim can jump, yes, but he is consistently an oh, so muddy dancer) braving out and through the sincerity of his considerable wit and the flash of that Michael-Jackson-like smile.

 

Nothing though had come together in a unified whole quite like last night’s Anna Karenina, however. The previous night - at least from my perch standing atop of the Amphitheatre's world view - the ROH’s stage employ - as much as that of its audience - became restless at the prospect of Vishneva's Anna. Although this artist may be physically retiring from her career, here she plied - or perhaps better - stuck on - as she has done so frequently in her latter recesses of that journey - an artifice – albeit an attractive one - as if t'were a sticking plaster. 'It was' as my mother almost certainly would have said, 'nice - and all that therein is implied!' I remember once – during a season when I was a journeyman performer at the Stratford Festival in Canada - hearing company member, Maggie Smith (yet to be Damed) mumble: 'Does anyone actually WANT to be nice?' Well, yes, Maggie: Vishnea - and Zakharova do. They pose and glisten.  Beautifully.. They are a tribute to their dressmaker's art. There is, I know, a talent in that and they adorably fit its bill. 

 

Last night Viktoria Tereshkina went far beyond such posturing.  She digged deep into the diversity of Anna’s erupting elation and the depths of her coruscating despair in a way only ballet can allow.  She breathed it.  Whereas Zverev was competent in the heavy lifting department the evening before he was wan in terms of the manly variety that Parish so richly displayed in the seven PDDs entrusted to that character.  Let there be no doubt he deserves his 'leading principle' mantle and then some.  The detail of Islom Baimuradov's Karenin was exemplary in demonstrating the ravage of that character's disappointments without ever having to ever resort to 'McGregoresque' contortions. For each - as much as for the audience - their extremity was the point.  

 

Whereas the evening before audience members around me slouched away from Shchedrin’s dramatic score here they leaned forward.  Ratmansky richly answered the recitatives of his music's many theatrically characterful conversations.  It pranced amongst the nags, Vronsky's and others.  The entire company rode with stealth.  You could have heard a pin drop during that first act last night.  That was certainly not true on Thursday.  The loud cheers that the orchestra – indeed all - got last night were richly earned.  We suddenly saw those artists in a way we had not seen them before.  They had been kissed by Ratmansky's genius.   The Company was invested in it as one and allowed us – a collective Sleeping Beauty – to wake up in a shared new world.  Anna’s determined collapse under that train last night was heart rending.  The evening before it almost appeared as if it had been theatrically accidental. 

 

Vishneva got the big bouquets.  Tereshkina deserved them. 

 

Edited by Bruce Wall
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Both terrific nights of AK.  Vishneva being very much the Anna Karenina type, delivered a fantastic interpretation, with taste, beauty and emotional depth.  Tereshkina gave a slightly more subdued, internalised Anna.  I preferred the first night, but this is a matter of personal taste, not of the actual artistic merit and enjoyment.  Beautiful choreography and the score by the wonderful Rodion Schedrin was superb and emotionally expressive. 

 

Love reading the comments to this.  The two Annas, the two mirrors to see our own reflections.

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23 minutes ago, Bruce Wall said:

...Vishnea - and Zakharova do. They pose and glisten.  Beautifully.. They are a tribute to their dressmaker's art. There is, I know, a talent in that and they adorably fit its bill. 

 

 

A lovely review, thank you but, at the risk of reopening old wounds I'm not sure I'd class Zakharova with Vishneva!

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Unfortunately I only saw one AK this time around, Vishneva certainly caught the over-riding passion of Anna and I especially liked Svetlana Ivanova's poor rejected Kitty. 

 

Anna Karenina is a block buster book before the term was invented and I think most people know the story from other media (how I would love to have seen Sean Connery's Vronsky from the 1950/60's).  The book is a snapshot of certain class of people in a certain place at a certain time and I think Tolstoy was telling as something of the plight of women in general in that society.  Anna's affair is pivotal but the author clearly felt for Kitty and also Dolly, enduring one pregnancy after another.  Anna made a good advantageous marriage, but never expected to feel the emotions of a grand passion.  Ratmansky catches the period details and uses the dancers as a kind of chorus of moral outrage at times with Anna and Vronsky in the foreground in increasingly desperate couplings knowing their affair is doomed.

 

Diana Vishneva is a dancer that I always want to see but who occasionally disappoints and I think that is because of her very marked individuality that is sometimes at odds with the role she is dancing, but more frequently will add another dimension to a familiar ballet.  Very sad that we may be watching her last performances as she is winding down from the classical rep, though I hope she continues with her modern programmes.

 

A pity we only had the two performance of this as I would have liked to have seen Kondaurova as Anna as well.  Maybe next time.

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1 hour ago, Bruce Wall said:

What a difference a night/cast can make.

 

I have myself felt at times quite ambivalent about the Mariinsky's current tour – but then I felt the same way about their previous one. I have attended a goodly number of performances but much of it has passed in a muted muster and tone. There are times when it has come awake. Batoeva - (for me the best of the Kitris thus far) - with those scintillating pique turns at a speed/precision that would make Osipova blush - and the dare-devil do of Shklyarov's Basil - the best too of that number (Kim can jump, yes, but he is consistently an oh, so muddy dancer) braving out and through the sincerity of his considerable wit and the flash of that Michael-Jackson-like smile.

 

Nothing though had come together in a unified whole quite like last night’s Anna Karenina, however. The previous night - at least from my perch standing atop of the Amphitheatre's world view - the ROH’s stage employ - as much as that of its audience - became restless at the prospect of Vishneva's Anna. Although this artist may be physically retiring from her career, here she plied - or perhaps better - stuck on - as she has done so frequently in her latter recesses of that journey - an artifice – albeit an attractive one - as if t'were a sticking plaster. 'It was' as my mother almost certainly would have said, 'nice - and all that therein is implied!' I remember once – during a season when I was a journeyman performer at the Stratford Festival in Canada - hearing company member, Maggie Smith (yet to be Damed) mumble: 'Does anyone actually WANT to be nice?' Well, yes, Maggie: Vishnea - and Zakharova do. They pose and glisten.  Beautifully.. They are a tribute to their dressmaker's art. There is, I know, a talent in that and they adorably fit its bill. 

 

Last night Viktoria Tereshkina went far beyond such posturing.  She digged deep into the diversity of Anna’s erupting elation and the depths of her coruscating despair in a way only ballet can allow.  She breathed it.  Whereas Zverev was competent in the heavy lifting department the evening before he was wan in terms of the manly variety that Parish so richly displayed in the seven PDDs entrusted to that character.  Let there be no doubt he deserves his 'leading principle' mantle and then some.  The detail of Islom Baimuradov's Karenin was exemplary in demonstrating the ravage of that character's disappointments without ever having to ever resort to 'McGregoresque' contortions. For each - as much as for the audience - their extremity was the point.  

 

Whereas the evening before audience members around me slouched away from Shchedrin’s dramatic score here they leaned forward.  Ratmansky richly answered the recitatives of his music's many theatrically characterful conversations.  It pranced amongst the nags, Vronsky's and others.  The entire company rode with stealth.  You could have heard a pin drop during that first act last night.  That was certainly not true on Thursday.  The loud cheers that the orchestra – indeed all - got last night were richly earned.  We suddenly saw those artists in a way we had not seen them before.  They had been kissed by Ratmansky's genius.   The Company was invested in it as one and allowed us – a collective Sleeping Beauty – to wake up in a shared new world.  Anna’s determined collapse under that train last night was heart rending.  The evening before it almost appeared as if it had been theatrically accidental. 

 

Vishneva got the big bouquets.  Tereshkina deserved them. 

 

Ooh, what a wonderful review.  Thank-you for making me feel I was there.

 

I saw it last time they were here and enjoyed it very much and am now wishing I had booked this time around.  Sounds like a super evening.

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I think Anna Karenina gets better the more you see it, I enjoyed last night more than Thursday, I'm not just saying this because it was Xander Parish, but for me he was a much more passionate Vronsky than Konstantin Zverev, on the other hand Diana Vishneva had the perfect doom laden quality for Anna, nothing really made her happy, she was always aware of fate. Wonderful to see both casts, I too would love to see Ekaterina Kondaurova as Anna some time. The cast list of very long Russian names made me smile,  in reality most of the people mentioned go unnoticed, it does get everyone buying the programme though. After all the endless curtain calls in other ballets, there were very few both nights, and none in front of the curtain, just when I could have stayed, and no bouquet for Viktoria Tereshkina!

 

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3 hours ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

A lovely review, thank you but, at the risk of reopening old wounds I'm not sure I'd class Zakharova with Vishneva!

 

I agree, they are very different. Bruce Wall's "They pose and glisten " may be perhaps the only thing they share. His "They are a tribute to their dressmaker's art" in my opinion is applicable only to one of them (a remarkably apt observation, by the way).

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