The Mariinsky Ballet and Orchestra’s three-week season continues at the Royal Opera House in London. The second week of the tour concluded with George Balanchine’s ballets Apollo and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the homeland of William Shakespeare marked four hundred and fifty years since the birth of the great dramatist. British audiences, more familiar with another interpretation of this Shakespearean play – a one-act ballet by Frederick Ashton – gave a warm welcome to Balanchine’s two-act production as performed by dancers of the Mariinsky Ballet. The correspondent of The Telegraph awarded A Midsummer Night’s Dream five stars. Meanwhile, The Times considered that Balanchine’s ballet after Shakespeare’s plot was “a gleaming showcase for elegant, aristocratic dancing, just the ticket for these St Petersburg dancers.” Among the performers of the lead roles, the British critic noted Viktoria Tereshkina as “an extra marvel as Titania” as well as Timur Askerov who was “noble and accomplished as Oberon” and Vasily Tkachenko’s “eye-catching Puck”; Anastasia Matvienko’s “dazzling pirouettes” and leaps as Hippolyta also drew the critic’s attention. London reviewers loved the “illumination of the stage with sensuous radiance” that filled the theatre in the Act II duet with Oxana Skorik and Konstantin Zverev in addition to stating that “Kimin Kim and Nadezhda Batoeva are radiant in the floating lifts and dreamy phrasing.”
Critics spoke of all three performers of the title role in Apollo; The Independent noted the “elegance of the dancing” and that “Parish has pure line and a high jump”, while the critic of The Times related how “Alexander Sergeyev had the stature and charisma I associate with the best Apollos” and the reviewer for The New York Times wrote how “Mr Shklyarov is an immediately engaging performer, technically powerful, alertly musical and tenderly responsive to Ms Shapran, Nadezhda Batoeva as Polyhymnia and Viktoria Krasnokutskaya as Calliope.”
Kristina Shapran who performed the role of Terpsichore was forecast a great future by The Financial Times. Clement Crisp, one of the most influential critics in Great Britain, spoke of how “Here is a very rare talent” with regard to the young soloist and referred to her appearance in Apollo as “dancing of astonishing promise”, going on to say that “She is young, has exquisite feet, an ideal physique, is musically alert and technically assured (...) But Shapran seems to give each step, each action, an inner life that is revealed to us as she moves.”
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