Tuesday November 18, 2014 Part 2

A quick dinner and off to Lincoln Center for the

Mikhailovsky Ballet's first U. S.  tour. We had 1st row, 1st ring seats for Three Centuries of Russian Ballet - a unique combination of three, totally mismatched, one-act ballets spanning, you guessed it, 300 years of Russian ballet. We did seem to be the only ones in the audience not speaking Russian!

The first ballet was Le Halte de Cavalerie (The Calvary Halt). Peasant girls Maria (Angelina Vorontsova) and Theresa (Olga Semyonova) are in love with local boy, Peter (Ivan Vasiliev). A hussar regiment halts at the village while their colonel

(Alexey Malakhov) demands housing and food. Peter objects and is arrested. Theresa distracts the officers by flirting with them while Maria distracts the guards. Peter escapes. The colonel blesses the marriage of Maria and Peter, so Theresa has no more objections to the colonel's amorous attentions.  But duty calls, the hussars leave, and the forgotten village lads delight anew in the attention of the fickle village beauties.

The second ballet, Class Concert, is a plotless work which presents the progression from children training at the barre with first exercises to the leading dancers performing virtuoso feasts. It may be a plotless ballet but the audience goes wild over all the cute kids, double tours, fouetté turns, soaring grand jetés, and 540˚ revoltades. 

It is a show piece for the audience as well as all company dancers. 

The final ballet, Prelude,  is an interpretation of the emotions and impressions which Nacho Duato, the choreographer, experienced when he

moved to St. Petersburg as the director of ballet at the Mikhailovsky Theatre. 

The meeting of classical ballet and contemporary dance forms 

the core of this piece. It is the first piece he choreographed for the Makhailovsky. 

A magnificent evening!