This being the centenary of Shostakovich’s birth, it was inevitable that the Bolshoi Ballet would mark the event in its London repertoire, just as the Maryinsky did last month. But unlike the Maryinsky, whose Shostakovich lineup was sadly disappointing, the Bolshoi’s offering is a cracking new staging that deserves to be that ballet rarity — an instant classic.
The Bright Stream was the work that ended Shostakovich’s career as a ballet composer, such was the official disapproval heaped upon it after its premiere in St Petersburg in 1935. Alexei Ratmansky, who completely rechoreographed it for the Bolshoi in 2003, didn’t have to worry about toeing the party line and was free to do whatever he wanted with Shostakovich’s jolly music and Piotrovsky and Lopukhov’s lighthearted libretto. His new production honours them both with wit and compassion, and a stream of wonderful — and very funny — choreography.
The ins and outs of the plot aren’t important, beyond knowing that the Bright Stream is a Soviet collective farm where amorous intrigues during harvest festival are the cue for droll deception, mistaken identities and comedy cross-dressing. The cast comprises happy farm workers from the Steppes, visiting dancers from Moscow and marching vegetables.
The production acts and moves with equal conviction. Ratmansky has a wicked sense of humour which he purveys in graphic mime, burlesque set pieces and ballet in-jokes; he also has sufficient craft to juggle three sets of liaisons in the air without dropping any of them — not an easy task. And how musical is his strong and breezy choreography, so attuned to its score that you could believe it had been written for him.
More good news from Boris Messerer, whose eyepopping sets are an explosion of wheat and flowers, his costumes a cornucopia of delightful patterns. Shostakovich’s music, the son of Tchaikovsky but a child of the jazz age, is another plus, here played with tremendous enthusiasm by the Bolshoi’s own orchestra.
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Performances were terrific, classically vivacious despite tough demands on technique, and delivered on a comic high. With her delicate lines, Svetlana Lunkina was lovely as Zina, a former dancer turned collective morale officer. Lunkina brought tender regret to her duets with her old school friend (Maria Alexandrova’s hearty Ballerina), sharing the delight of dances past and the pain of her husband’s roving eye. Sergei Filin, the Ballerina’s partner, won the most laughs as a Sylph, en travestie in white tulle for an outrageous turn as a Trock to seduce the foolish Old Dacha-dweller. All in all, the best new ballet to come out of Russia in years.