Word: grigorovich
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Dates: during 1975-1975
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...enduring Bolshoi mystique is its magnitude: the colossal technical prowess of its dancers, their grandeur of emotion, the elaborate theatrical productions. Alas, on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera the gallant dancers often sag beneath the weighty spectacle of the frantic choreography of Director Yuri Grigorovich. Yet Giselle, the company's corner stone, abounds in fresh lyrical dancing and finely drawn characterizations. Radiant young Ludmila Semenyaka and Vyacheslav Gordeyev, a powerful classical dancer, should win fans during the Bolshoi's nine-city national tour...
...great classics of dance-Swan Lake, for example, or Giselle-as if they were museum pieces on the move, as many of them are. The Russians' excessive awe of tradition can be a hindrance when it comes to creating new choreography. A striking case in point is Yuri Grigorovich's Ivan the Terrible, which was given its American premiere at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House last week by a large touring company of the Bolshoi. Grigorovich is probably the Soviet Union's finest classical choreographer, and the two-act ballet is his first original work...
...queen. After her death, the Czar's madness grows, and with it his use of the dreaded oprichniki (a primitive kind of secret police) to suppress both boyar and peasant revolts. Ivan's Stalinoid cruelties have always represented something of an ideological embarrassment to the Kremlin. Grigorovich, in a program note, argues unconvincingly that the real heroes of the ballet are the Russian people, "who withstood all the ordeals, survived and emerged victorious...
Beyond Caricature. In fact, the real heroes are the Bolshoi dancers, who survive Grigorovich's overly athletic, cliché-ridden choreography with amazing élan. The crowd scenes, whether they involve battles, conspiring boyars or rebellious peasants, are confused and repetitive, and pale in excitement by comparison with the kind of dashing maneuvers performed by Russia's folkish Moiseyev company. Every grimace and gesture seems aimed broadly at viewers in the last row of the top balcony. Naturally, the boyars are evil beyond the point of caricature; the peasants are simple and good...