The Bolshoi Ballet: Spartacus
A bad performance can make Spartacus feel like the worst kind of choreography-by-numbers. Grigorovich's 1968 ballet delivers its monumental effects by repeating every jump, skip or triumphal salute in multiples of four. The characters switch in blunt succession from heroism to horror, piety to brutality. Khachaturian's score trundles out its themes by rote, and you can find yourself passing the time – all three and three-quarter hours of it – by counting the number of shields and swords being brandished on stage. And then you get performances like this one, with which the Bolshoi opened its summer London season.
The power to transform Spartacus from Soviet museum piece to living classic lies primarily in its lead dancer – and the Bolshoi's Ivan Vasiliev is beyond compelling. We know from past appearances that this is a man who has carved out his own virtuosity, through the swivelling, scissoring embellishments of his enormous jump and the inhuman assurance of his pirouettes. But Spartacus also reveals Vasiliev as a maturing artist. He inflects the most juggernaut step with expressive detail – his eyes pooling depths of anguish or hope, his body tugging against captivity. The shape of each split jeté or rivoltade is etched, definitively, in mid-air. Even the standard string of pirouettes with which Spartacus celebrates his leadership of the revolt is reinvented as Vasiliev arches his upper body on each rotation, as if ecstatically breathing the air of freedom.
It's a performance that most dancers could only hope to give once in a lifetime. But magnificent as Vasiliev is, this Spartacus isn't a one-man show. There's a collective commitment in the company's performance that gives a true and sympathetic reading of the ballet's period style. Danced with this degree of intelligence, we get to see exhilarating echoes of old Soviet constructivism in Grigorovich's choreography, especially in the industrial grandeur of its climactic tableaux – the massing of the Roman army; the death of Spartacus. In scenes such as the Russian orgy, we get to appreciate just how radical the hint of 60s free expression and pop-art colour must once have looked.
There are fine individual performances, too. Nina Kaptsova is textbook Phrygia, a wisp of moral rectitude steeled by a revolutionary fervour, and Alexander Volchkov – served by an unlikely, but ideal, mix of Julian Clary prettiness and technical incisiveness – brings a barbed glitter to the role of the narcissistic bully, Crassus.
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