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Pyotr Illyich
Tchaikovsky Bohislav Martinu Electronic
Music by
Studio of the
Technical University
of West Berlin Choreography
Kenneth Macmillan Production
realised by
Deborah MacMillan Staged by
Monica Parker Designed by
Bob Crowley Conducted by
Barry Wordsworth Grand Duchess Anastasia and
Anna Anderson
Leanne Benjamin Tsar Nicholas II
Christopher Saunders Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna
Genesia Rosato Tsarevitch Alexey
Joshua Moloney Grand
Duchess Olga
Deirdre Chapman Grand Duchess Tatiana
Laura Morera Grand Duchess
Maria
Christina Elida
Salerno Rasputin
Irek Mukhamedov Anna Vyrubova
Vanessa Palmer Tsar's aide-
de-camp
Alastair Marriott Four Officers
Rupert
Pennefather Yohei Sasaki Ricardo Cervera Edward Watson
(also Anna Anderson's husband) Three Officers
Jonathan Howells Tim Matiakis Brian Maloney Ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska
Miyako Yoshida Her partner
Johan Kobborg |
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The Royal Ballet
Covent Garden
21 April - 12 May 2004 |
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Both the original one-act and the later three-act versions of this extraordinary work of art were written for Kenneth MacMillan's great muse Lynn Seymour, who inspired him to create a role at once demanding and dominating. It is demanding characteristic MacMillan style, asking a very great deal of the technique and fitness of the dancer, and dominating because Anastasia is hardly ever off the stage, and in each of the three acts she has to explore the whole range of emotion from girlish happiness to coming-of-age doubt to the frightful anguish of being the unrecognised and rejected survivor of an atrocity.
It does not matter that the unpitying genetic technology of DNA testing has shown that Anna Anderson was not Anastasia but a Polish factory girl. The romance and tragedy of the legend are perfectly made for art, and MacMillan rose to the challenge: a leisurely first act sets scene with the royal family enjoying a picnic on their yacht; the second shows Anastasia's coming-out ball. Both are abruptly ended by terrible events: news of the outbreak of the First World War closes the first act, the revolution of 1917 brings the second to a brutal halt. In this second act MacMillan's power as a narrator of the psychological begins to tell: in the third act, to electronic music and the angular cadences of Martinu's music, he portrays the anguish of the lost Anastasia, full of madness and despair. To enter the third act after the beautiful lyricism of the second, especially with the pure balleticism of the guest dancers (wonderfully performed by Miyako Yoshida with Johan Kobborg), is to be plunged into a boiling vat of pain; filmed images of firing squads, and the rough peremptoriness of soldiers murdering the royal family at Ekaterinburg.
MacMillan sets his dancers difficult problems: reverse jumps, movements which take the classical vocabulary and inflect it into unexpected and often striking dimensions. He had a photographic mind, and loved to see ballerinas lifted and carried in pose, describing shapes that are beautiful in every line. This ballet is a strong expression of these features of MacMillan choreography. Well performed, they carry the searching psychological insight and narrative power equally characteristic of his work. Here, in the hands of a company whose ethos has been partly shaped by his inspiration, the dancing seems entirely natural and appropriate: for this is a company that understands MacMillan's imagination, and responds to it.
The tireless, expressive, magical Leanne Benjamin as a delight as Anastasia. She inhabits the role perfectly, making it her own; those who saw Lynn Seymour dance it feel no need to draw comparisons, because each of them is an individual Anastasia, making comparisons more than usually invidious. Benjamin has an accurate lightness, a crisp, delicate, yet amazingly strong line, that is very admirable, and a high pleasure to watch.
There is much work and scope for the rest of the cast. Genesia Rosato as the Tsarina, both groups of officers, and all Anastasia's sisters, deserve praise for commendable performances ‚ in the officers' case because of the difficulty and occasional awkwardness of what is asked of them. Irek Mukhamedov has very little to do as Rasputin, but glowers and crosses himself convincingly. In an imaginative set, with sumptuous and remarkably apt music, the story cannot fail to be gripping once the slowly-unfolding first act has established the personalities and situation; and the last act is richly poignant.
This ballet is apt to leave audiences with mixed feelings, not because of the performances ‚ in this revival there can be little to cavil at, and a great deal to applaud in Leanne Benjamin's superb performance ‚ but because the ballet itself is stark in its contrasts, bleak in its ending, upsetting in its content, and experimental in its juxtaposition of eloquent classicism and dark, demanding, angular modernism. It was interesting to gauge to the applause on the opening night: among the frank enjoyment of the originality of MacMillan's conception and this performance of it, one could sense that some were unsure of their reaction.
Take the ballet on its own terms, and one sees it as a work of genius danced by a good company, with outstanding individual performances to grace the whole.
AC Grayling |
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