“An enchanted evening” was how The Washington Post newspaper described the programme comprising the one-act ballets Le Sacre du printemps, Le Spectre de la rose, The Dying Swan and “Paquita” Grand Pas that was performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
American critics commented on the variety of the repertoire of the tour, which demonstrated all of the historic and stylistic facets maintained by the Mariinsky Ballet, in addition to noting the expressiveness of the images created by Kristina Shapran, Vladimir Shklyarov and Kimin Kim in Le Spectre de la rose and Oxana Skorik in The Dying Swan. According, however, to the columnist of The Washington Post, the queen of the tour was Ulyana Lopatkina. Enchanted by her “endlessly long” lines and “flowing” arms, the critic wrote that “Ulyana Lopatkina rippled and wilted deliciously through The Swan”, as if she were born for it.” And in Paquita she “dazzled us with her languid precision” and her “fouetté turns with a tinge of cold fury.” The columnist for The New York Times was bewitched by the corps de ballet in “Paquita” Grand Pas: “Nothing last weekend was more marvelously alive than the corps de ballet, with perfect brio and ravishing coordination (...), and it grew only more exuberant at each performance. The subtle emphasis with which their torsos tipped and arched away from sheer verticality, while their feet carried them gleamingly across the stage, was intoxicating.” Of the performers of the lead roles, The New York Times focussed on Yekaterina Kondaurova, referring to her as “the most glamorous and sensuously elegant of all current European ballerinas.”
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