Ever since the Bolshoi first hit London in the Sixties, balletomanes have waxed lyrical about the good old days when, night after night, legendary dancers such as Lavrovsky, Liepa, Vasiliev, Besmertnova, Maximova, and Plitsetskaya took to the air drawing gasps from the audience. Spectacular leaps, dazzling fouettes, all done with such relish, made up for the often tawdry costumes and productions. Plitsetskaya was encored twice in the Dying Swan, so excited were we to see those serpentine arms and a pas de bourree that made her look as if she was drifting across the water. Then the Bolshoi ran into trouble and decline. But with rapturous applause still ringing in their ears, today's balletomanes now know that all the stories were true. The Coliseum audience of real ballet goers, free from the formal presence of corporate clients at Covent Garden, rose to their feet and cheered the dancers to the echo.
      The new prodigies are Natalya Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, both young, but impossibly talented. We had to wait for a week to see them together in Don Quixote. And when it came you could feel the buzz all over London. Both have an Olympian jump - literally drawing gasps again and again - but infused with such sparkle and personality, it just had to be the best show in town. Osipova can do anything and all with a smile to light up Oxford Street. We have seen fouettes with triple turns thrown in before, but this was a blur of spins with the odd fouettes thrown in to keep her going. The grand jetes get higher and higher as she circles the stage in airborne bliss. How often do we see a ballerina land on point? Vasiliev twists and turns in the air like Baryshnikov at his youthful peak, effortlessly soaring like a bird. Both look as if they are in love with each other, unlike some of the other Bolshoi stars who seemed to be dancing on their own in dual star turns, but with little real connection between them. Osipova and Vasiliev are also at one with Minkus's underrated score. They dance the music, rather than dance to the music, well played by the Bolshoi's own orchestra. This makes all the difference to Don Quixote which can often seem like an old warhorse of a ballet, where we put up with the 19th Century mime and story telling, as we wait for the next soloist to come on. They make us believe in it.
      Osipova also shone brilliantly in a new production of the quaintly engaging peasant ballet, The Bright Stream. These are comical, idealised peasants on a prettifed farming collective, dancing their hearts out to a charming score by Shostakovich and a daft scenario which defies logic. But Osipova and Serge Filin made some sense of it all and blew critical thought away. Osipova doing half a dozen grand jetes in airborne bliss is the stuff or legend. What a pity that this ballet does not have a big pas de deux for the leads at the end of Act Two. A joyous finale of peasants, even jollier than they were at the beginning is not quite enough in a short evening.
      Soviet peasant joys aside, true drama and revolutionary fervour came with Carlos Acosta's guest appearances in Spartacus. Grigoriev's ballet is glorious tripe. It uses the legend of the rebel Spartacus standing up to the Roman occupation to draw a crude parallel with the defeat of the Nazis. A goose stepping Roman army, degenerate Roman courtiers and rebel freedom fighters symbolise the "story", rather than dramatise it, but again it's all about the dancing. Acosta blazed. From the moment he kills his masked gladiator friend in a forced fight to the death, Acosta devours the stage. Did we know he could act so well? We do now! This was a performance for the history books. Spectacular leaps infused with passion and a totally believable fight for freedom. Add to all this a tender love duet with his beloved Phrygia, danced so expressively by Anna Antonicheva. You know the music, used as the theme tune for The Onegin Line. Sigh! Who could ask for more?
      La Bayadere, with the full corps of 36 dancers in the Kingdom of the Shades scene, and a bright, if not chaotic new production of Le Corsair gave us more distinctive performances. Svetlana Zakarova is one of those rare ballerinas whose line alone is thrilling. In Le Corsair she was partnered by handsome Igor Zelensky lookalike, Denis Matvienko, who spins like a top, Here Zakarova shone with classical perfection and bravura in the famous pas de deux, now placed in Act One. But the rest of the ballet is no anti-climax in dance terms. Acts Two and Three consist mainly in spectacular tableaux, each a grand pas in its own right. With so many tutued dancers in so many diamond-cut Petipa variations and groupings, complete with fans and garlands, one wonders if Busby Berkeley ever saw it. The production now ends with a charming, if creaky shipwreck which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, with dancers mugging for too long on deck, clearly all at sea.
      In La Bayadere Maria Allash was an alluring and enigmatic Nikya, more pure classicism, and well matched with Osipova as the lethally jealous rival, Gamzatti. Vasiliev was the Golden idol. The corps de ballet were impeccably in unison for their celebrated extended entrance, not a wobble in sight. The moment when they all go up on point and "float backwards" is pure magic. The various Solor's did everything required of them, including the fiendishly difficult tours en l'air in the pas de deux.
      For pure bravura and nothing else in Season's triple bill, Asaf Messerer's Class Concert provides a crowd-pleasing fireworks display. It begins with a ballet class for children and builds up to a spectacular finale of dancers showing off what they can do, and goodness can they do it! But Class Concert is not nearly as good as Harold Lander's Etudes, which London audiences know well. Etudes has taste and better music and much more insight into the dancer's world. Class Concert is brash virtuosity, the ballet equivalent of a day at the races. The programme included Elsinore, a new ballet by Christopher Wheeldon (he's done better) and Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room.
      Overall, the season brought us too many gorgeous soloists and principals to cover in one article, but a special mention must go to the very tall Alexei Loparevich in acting roles. In le Corsair and Don Quixote. Loparevich never fails to bring dignity and conviction to cardboard characters that really belong in pantomime. More praise too for the Bolshoi orchestra and the conductors for playing the music with spirit and conviction, unlike the orchestra of the Royal Opera House who often play ballet as if it was a night off from opera.
Max Farber