Word: makarova
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...would have thought that this prism of bliss is a mere pause amid tumult, a respite in a plot-clogged saga of murder and revenge, which features, among a good many other things, poison asps, opium, the collapse into rubble of an entire Indian temple? With Natalia Makarova's direction, the American Ballet Theater has produced the full-length La Bayadére, at a cost of about $500,000. American balletgoers are not used to such a florid, densely populated drama. To appreciate it, one must be prepared for a very full, surprising experience. The evening...
...Makarova grew up on this ballet in Leningrad, dancing in it at the Kirov. For American audiences she has rearranged the work, adding and deleting portions. Most of the time she manages to keep the story line in focus. She is clearly skilled at staging Russian classics, but it requires either a more imaginative choreographer or a tougher critical judgment to translate the work completely from a secure tradition to a new aesthetic setting. In the first act, an hour and ten minutes long, melodramatic mime sequences and decorative dancing compete for the viewer's attention...
...story is a boggler. Nikiya (Makarova), a bayadére, or temple dancer, and the imperious Rajah's daughter Gamzatti (Cynthia Harvey) are rivals for the love of the great warrior Solor (Anthony Dowell), who pledges himself to Nikiya over a sacred fire. Later the Rajah chooses Solor to marry his daughter. If this sounds like Aida, it is. In the ballet, both women are murderous. Gamzatti, who plants a deadly snake among flowers given to the dancer, is the successful killer, but Nikiya has ectoplasmic revenge. Her spirit appears first in a lyrical vision to Solor, and again...
...Antony Tudor made dance dramas like Pillar of Fire. More recently A.B.T. has performed works by Eliot Feld and Glen Tetley and reaped a huge hit in Twyla Tharp's Push Comes to Shove. Chase has nurtured Americans like Cynthia Gregory and welcomed the Soviet comets, Nureyev, Makarova, Baryshnikov. The newest arrival, Alexander Godunov, hurled himself through the rousing pas de deux from Le Corsaire as a highlight of the gala...
...relentless touring schedule alone would preclude that. The corps is capable of disciplined ensemble work and, on other occasions, some ragged footwork and wayward arms. The star system provides Americans with standard-setting performances, but not even Chase can always find a way to make virtuosos like Makarova, Gregory and Gelsey Kirkland flourish in harmony-or even appear in the same city. At curtain time, there was the usual clutter of telegrams. One began, "Rosalynn and I." A message from Baryshnikov, who was in Paris, burbled on to his "Lushinka...