Bolshoi Lords Aleaping

By Martha Duffy

Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet is roaring across America for the first time in eight years, the grandest event on the 1987 dance calendar. Indeed, with the spirit of glasnost flourishing and international artistic exchange becoming commonplace, it may be several years before the arrival of a foreign troupe causes such excitement. The performances on the four-city circuit (New York, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles) are practically sold out. At the Metropolitan Opera House the crowds have patiently worked their way through strict security checks. Arguments among balletomanes about whether the company lives up to its legend are steamier than Manhattan sidewalks. Bolshoi means big, and this bravura ensemble virtually defines it.

Its veteran director, Yuri Grigorovich, 60, has a new generation of dancers to show off. Only a handful of the principals on the company's 1979 visit returned, including two senior ballerinas, Natalya Bessmertnova (Grigorovich's wife, who was sidelined almost at once by a leg injury) and Lyudmila Semenyaka. Equally important, after 23 years at the helm, Grigorovich is presenting his finished vision of what the world's largest and most celebrated ballet company ought to be.

The cliche goes that the Bolshoi aims for outsize spectacle and athletic feats. If some vulgarity creeps in -- well, that's show biz. If you want pure artistry, go to Leningrad and see the Kirov. If you want to explore classicism stretched into infinity, catch the New York City Ballet. What the Bolshoi does best now is Grigorovich's signature ballets, the socialist-realist works like Spartacus and The Golden Age that dramatize episodes in class warfare. The dancers command extraordinary energy and seem in total, avid sympathy with the choreographer. Unfortunately, American audiences may find these mighty pageants simplistic. The silent-film grimaces, the cartoons of good and evil, + the battle cries hurled soundlessly into the air can all be a bit quaint, unless one is willing to forget everything that Balanchine and Tudor accomplished and enter this brave old world wholeheartedly.

But the Bolshoi has a potent secret weapon. The major revelation of the tour is the U.S. debut of Irek Mukhamedov, 27, a thrilling performer whose presence almost legitimizes all the excesses of Soviet realism. Perhaps the best offering in the tour repertory is the second act of Spartacus, which closes the "Highlights" program. The choreography is little more than an astounding series of leaps and runs. Mukhamedov's entrance is a cadenza of high, bullet- fast jumps. He becomes a projectile of the Roman slaves' insurrection, ending the torrid first scene by rushing downstage to the footlights in an embodiment of bloodlust. But he is no caricature. Mukhamedov's manner is actually diffident, almost impersonal, and this modesty adds a human, even modern, scale that counterbalances his explosive feats.

Grigorovich's choreography focuses on men, and the Bolshoi male dancers are superb. Several young corps de ballet members seem ready to break into solo or starring roles. There is no classical stylist as elegant as Vyacheslav Gordeyev, who, with his partner and then Wife Nadezhda Pavlova, burnished the memory of the 1979 visit. But Andris Liepa and Alexei Fadeyechev (both of whose fathers were famous Bolshoi dancers) are fine performers and superior partners, and Alexander Vetrov stole several shows with his marvelous, scenery-chewing character roles.

But there are troubling aspects to the 1987 Bolshoi, and they show when the company strays from its bread-and-circuses repertory. For one thing, the women are not nearly so satisfying as the men, and their level of dancing has deteriorated in recent years. The bewitching Semenyaka, 35, is exquisite as Giselle but elsewhere pushes her allegro technique almost frantically, so that she sometimes approaches self-parody. The second-tier ballerinas, too, were wound up clock-tight, dancing with silly speed in which detail gets lost and charm obliterated.

Classical ballets, which must be carried by women, have not been enhanced by Grigorovich. He has streamlined Raymonda, a Petipa fantasy that is long on courtly pomp and trickle-thin on plot. His new version de-emphasizes what story there is, cuts down on mime and presents the heroine not as a medieval princess but as just another glamorous ballerina. One of the small satisfactions of the old full-length ballets is the way they illustrate good manners and elevate them into grace. In the Kirov's Raymonda, for example, the heroine is delicately escorted by friends and courtiers. At the start of the famous dream sequence, she is seated in a handsome chair. In this version, the princess's friends do their solo turns and scarcely look at her. Worse, she falls asleep leaning against a pillar.

It is ironic that while Grigorovich labors to cut back on mime and gesture, his countryman Mikhail Baryshnikov emphasizes them in his American Ballet Theater productions, particularly this year's stylish The Sleeping Beauty. Oddly, it seems as if the Soviet does not trust the tradition that is his natural legacy. (His new restaging of Giselle is better than Raymonda, but even here he has added a martial element.) Similarly, Grigorovich has let the ideal of the ballerina languish. Some of the women in important roles have little idea of how to present themselves. There are no equivalents to the Bolshoi's talented young males. Partly this may be bad luck; the Kirov right now seems to have the more promising young female dancers. There is no one at the Bolshoi who compares with Altynai Asylmuratova, the Kirov's astonishing young star, or for that matter the New York City Ballet's Darci Kistler or Kyra Nichols.

Still, New York audiences took one new ballerina to their hearts, and they were right. Though not a technical whiz, Nina Ananiashvili, 24, has a lovely, sensuous line, strong feet and a crisp attack. She is also, ineffably, an old- fashioned girl whose spirit summons the perfumed kingdoms of ballet. The most important advantage she has happens to be young Liepa, 25, her frequent partner. Fair as she is dark, he is attentive, handsome and gallant. By keeping things simple and performing on a common impulse, the pair gave several performances that were more satisfying than their showier elders'. At least in the context of this tour, they seemed to reassert values that the Bolshoi would do well to remember.