Banned soon after its original 1935 production and never seen here before, this is a rollicking bucolic comedy with a vivid, jazzy score — vivaciously played under Pavel Sorokin — and Ratmansky’s characterful choreography, a blend of classical, folk and even music- hall, bolsters every twist in a light-hearted tale of romance, farcical deceptions and happy resolutions. It hasn’t the subtlety of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or La Fille mal gardée, but it treads similar paths with never a dull moment.
The fun starts with Boris Messerer’s witty designs, a collage of Soviet poster-slogans, ironically intended (you can get away with that now), giving way to stylised ploughed fields, corn stacks and a riot of fruit and veg. Model tractors and planes fly past, and a train steams across — delightful. The 1930s period is confirmed by the costumes, such as the over- patterned woolly jumper that one of the leading men wears tucked inside his belted slacks.
The Bright Stream is a collective farm in the Russian steppes, and it is harvest-festival time when a troupe of dancers from Moscow arrive to entertain the workers, upsetting the applecart and wreaking havoc. There are plenty of jolly moments for myriad local characters, including a waddling, pipe-smoking old farmer, the self-appointed life and soul of the community; a tractor driver, who rides a bike in a dog costume; a hen-pecked old dacha-dweller and his wife, who has impossible aspirations (including ballet).
The comic-romantic business, trysts, misconceptions and revelations pile up, and Ratmansky juggles them cleverly with as much wit as in-your-face humour. Of the two principal couples, the lovely Svetlana Lunkina, as the collective’s entertainment organiser, and Yuri Klevtsov, as her agriculture-student husband, achieve a reconciliation in one of Ratmansky’s most attractive duets; while Maria Alexandrova and the indispensable Sergei Filin, the glamorous ballerina and her partner, cross-dress for a high spot of the evening. She, sleek with bobbed hair and breeches, gives a brilliantly detailed male classical solo, and he, in white tulle, hilariously impersonates La Sylphide (Trock fashion) with great aplomb on pointe. The whole company dances the ballet with zest and palpable relish — a treat that is bound to return next time.
Unfortunately, the triple bill of this visit, last Monday, was less of a success. Two of these pieces were UK premieres. Ratmansky’s own Go for Broke, made last year, uses Stravinsky’s bright and sparky Jeu de cartes score, but jettisons the original theme of poker deals. The result is busy incoherence. As my companion remarked, it was choreography that hit you like a scattergun. The dancers couldn’t be faulted, though.
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The French choreographer Roland Petit is largely unknown in Britain. His Pique Dame (2001) is a considerable rethink of a ballet he created years ago for Baryshnikov on Pushkin’s Queen of Spades. A big change is the music — no longer Tchaikovsky’s opera, but now the whole of the Sixth (Pathétique) Symphony — inapposite at times, and too much music to fill for meaningful action. The result is long-winded and padded.
We ended with Balanchine’s glorious Symphony in C (to Bizet), something grand and uplifting to go home on, although it came late in the evening. Better luck next time, Bolshoi; but on balance, a strong season.q