The Mariinsky Ballet Company in Edinburgh

The land of golf, heather-covered hills, crystal-clear lochs and green meadows where wild sheep graze, the men wear kilts, berets with pompons and woollen socks compete at caber tossing and quoits, run up mountains and play the bagpipes better than anyone else, where lamb’s kidneys are cooked and served with gold-coloured whisky and where the women dye their hair every colour of the rainbow, becomes home – once a year – to students, travellers and those who simply love the arts, be they those who like everything to strict aesthetes. At this time of year, Scotland’s capital city, filled with performers and tourists alike, is immersed in music, dance, poetry and drama and begins to give off flavours of remote and exotic lands. Something is always happening on the streets, boiling, bubbling and “being baked”. And even if you haven’t bought a ticket to a performance, don’t read newspapers or playbills and have no idea what time of year it is or what the Edinburgh Festival is you can’t just walk past because the city itself has been transformed into a carnival of different cultures, and – even though you might not want to – you become caught up in it all. So, regarless of your social rank, nationality, sexuality or politics “you are welcome to join!”

This year the festival took place at the same time as the Olympic Games in London and elected Valery Gergiev its Honorary President, a titan of music’s Mount Olympus who resolved to stun the public not just with his symphony programme but the legendary Mariinsky Ballet Company’s first ever trip to Edinburgh as well. Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Cinderella, with innovative choreography by Alexei Ratmansky and its “allegorical, almost classical geometry” according to a rave review by The Guardian, was chosen from the theatre’s huge repertoire. The city itself, surrounded by its natural volcanic majesty, was gripped by the magic.

The Scots love their Queen no less than other Britons. The  National Anthem was sung in her honour at the fireworks ceremony concluding the festival. For Scotland, the monarchy is a kind of living fairytale – there is something for everyone. And so the story of Cinderella may be initially unpalatable to some, as is hierarchical change, while for most she represents freedom and that unearthly system of values for which the Edinburgh Festival has fought over the sixty-six years since it was founded.

In a literal sense, Edinburgh almost drowned in Russian culture. The city was plastered with posters for  Anna Karenina, the new Hollywood blockbuster, and for the Mariinsky Theatre’s Cinderella. Moreover, the festival also hosted the Dmitry Krymov Laboratory Drama Theatre (Moscow) while Brazil’s Deborah Colker Company brought a ballet entitled Tatyana after motifs from Eugene Onegin.

Despite the fact that the festival’s policy is international, informal and “open-to-all”, the cost of tickets for the Mariinsky Ballet Company was higher than for other dance troupes also performing during the final week of the festival, among them New York’s Juilliard Ballet and the Batsheva Dance Company from Israel. Tickets for every single performance of the Mariinsky Theatre’s Cinderella were sold out long in advance with the Festival Theatre’s auditorium having a capacity audience of roughly two thousand people.

The company brought two casts – Diana Vishneva danced with Igor Kolb and Yekaterina Osmolkina with Alexander Sergeyev. Maestro Gergiev conducted the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra at all four performances.

The first day of the tour, 30 August, was the most exciting and brought together the cream of Scottish society. Diana Vishneva’s performance as Cinderella was like an inspection ball where she was judged, open-jawed, by hundred-year-old women dripping in diamonds and Dior while their equally aged partners would bow ceremoniously and read the programme aloud to them.

When the Russian beauty came on stage in woollen leggings and a light and transparent tunic and was followed by her caricature stepsisters and stepmother, the audience was somewhat taken aback, expecting from the Mariinsky a classical production and the tutus so often associated with Russian ballet among western audiences. Others expected a comic Princess. In the direct sense of the phrase, Cinderella had to force her way through the stereotypes of standoffish theatre-goers, transforming herself from an unprepossessing girl before their very eyes into a true aristocrat of whose blue blood there remained no doubt. Tender, delicate and deeply lyrical, she soared above the stage like weightless silk. Vishneva who loves Prokofiev’s poetry danced an Assol-like Cinderella crossing the waves of the North Sea. And she was met with welcoming, azure-blue eyes from the “gluttons” in the gallery and their happy children, while the ladies in their diamonds had nothing to due but judge true worth and their cavaliers nothing but to take off their hats in silence.

As the stepmother, Yekaterina Kondaurova surpassed herself in terms of temperament and fire, depicting an incomparable red-haired rogue and, in her witch-like dance, surprisingly combining angular movements and broken lines with light leaps like a panther.

Critics were literally “blinded” by the orchestra under Gergiev’s baton and Vishneva’s Cinderella (also appearing at the end of the tour on 1 September). Mary Brennan, dance critic of Scottish newspaper The Herald, saw two casts. The first time she was at a performance in St Petersburg during the Stars of the White Nights festival, and she was captivated by Alexander Sergeyev’s performance as the Prince, while at the opening of the Mariinsky Ballet Company’s tour to Edinburgh she was entranced by the love line of the Prince and Cinderella (Kolb and Vishneva), being especially taken by the sincerity and natural plastique of the dance language.

The off-stage highlight of Vishneva’s visit was her appearance at the prize-giving ceremony of Scottish newspaper The Herald’s Angels awards. This prize is presented to the best performance of the preceding festival week and is awarded to the winners by one of the festival’s star participants. This year the Angels award went to the Russian Cinderella.

The anonymous blogger Mr Sketcher “sketched” a performance especially for the festival’s website, accompanying his drawing with amusing comments. Having seen this ballet for the first time, this author was lucky enough to have set out on a “magical journey” and seen how “the stage exploded with dramatic colour and emotion.”

Anastasia Grib