So successful was Ballet Nacional de Cuba’s visit to Sadler’s Wells last summer, commercially and critically, that the company was almost instantly invited back. Lightning appears to have struck twice. Steered by the legendary dancer Alicia Alonso, the troupe is on fine form in two programmes: the UK premiere of her Don Quixote (tonight and Friday) and a repeat of 2005’s gala-style mixed bill Magia de la Danza (Saturday and Sunday).
This has been a summer of Don Qs, what with the Bolshoi’s sensational performance during its recent London season and George Balanchine’s poignant mess of a version revived at the Edinburgh Festival by the American ballerina Suzanne Farrell.
In its traditional, Russian-based form Don Quixote is one of the most inconsequential but entertaining items in the classical repertoire, a piece of fan-flicking, cape-twirling romantic froth in which the stiff title character plays second fiddle to the sunny young leads.
On the press night we had Viengsay Valdés and Joel Carreño as Kitri and Basilio, an exceptionally good match in terms of technical strengths and exuberant personalities. Valdés possesses both sophistication and zest, topped off by a delicious smile. Carreño comes across as a sweet, hunky boy prone to throwing out his moves with a sudden and perfectly controlled manly élan.
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The two were absolutely on target in the first-act pas de deux, especially in the bit when Carreño held Valdés aloft at the waist on one arm. Twice. In both instances, time stopped. At the first lift a few members of the audience gasped. After the second came the bravos.
The pair fulfilled their promise in the last act, a string of academic party tricks that sent the public into paroxysms of pleasure. Valdés in particular pulled off some of the most phenomenal balances imaginable. To hear her purring with satisfaction over her triumph would have been understandable.
The production as a whole was consistently pleasant rather than truly scintillating. But the story, fluffy as it is, was told with an admirable clarity. There were also excellent opportunities to showcase individual dancers and the ensemble. I enjoyed Carlos Quenedit’s gravitas as Espada, and his resemblance to Val Kilmer in matadorial drag. Anette Delgado and Aymara Vasallo made brief but lovely impressions in the second-act vision scene, and the men in the company were unfailingly adept at scissor-legged leaps. Cubans, por favor, come again.
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