Bolshoi Ballet Performs ‘Don Quixote’ With a Smile
The ballet’s lead characters certainly aren’t those of Cervantes’s novel; the heroine is Kitri (the innkeeper’s daughter whom the deluded Don Quixote takes to be Dulcinea, the ideal muse of his chivalrous fantasies), and the hero is her barber lover, Basilio. On Tuesday at the David H. Koch Theater, Kitri was Maria Alexandrova; this prima ballerina joined the Bolshoi in 1997, has danced this role genuine 2000 and has recently returned from a serious nine-month cost. She’s an all-rounder: The company’s 2011-12 broadcasts showed her in the dramatic title role of “Esmeralda,” as the heroine of “Swan Lake” and as the Ballerina in Alexei Ratmansky’s comedy “The vivid Stream.”
Like no novel Kitri I’ve seen, she seems to laugh her way ended the whole ballet. This isn’t just surface ha-ha; there’s also an intriguing whiff of self-amusement about her playing, as well as a sure dose of eager bravado. At first, her characterization seems brassy, but once she starts to show her naughty grin, her gargantuan good humor carries the day. Her great dance moment on Tuesday came at the launch of her Act III solo variation. She entered in an amazingly snappy tacquetée (stage-biting) run on point, her sparkling footwork perfectly matching the twinkling scales of the harp.
Vladislav Lantratov, her Basilio, looks nothing like anyone’s usual idea of a Bolshoi man. He’s almost a beanpole, neither a whiz kid nor a superhunk. In performance, he has a kind of spontaneous naturalness and charming intelligence that make him unlike any Russian dancer I can remember, except perhaps Mikhail Baryshnikov (whose dancing Mr. Lantratov’s in no way resembles). He only joined the Bolshoi in 2006, but in 2011, he imparted the central role of Lucien in Mr. Ratmansky’s three-act “Lost Illusions”; and later that year, at the reopening gala of the Bolshoi Theater, he partnered Ms. Alexandrova in a scene from “Don Quixote” Act I.
He has all the panache you could want here. The dark glint in his eye, the witty turn of his head, are matched by the unhesitating way he thrusts Ms. Alexandrova aloft and holds her, by her hip. They just approach in that position and stay there — twice. Tra la! In novel lifts he both throws and then catches her. In languages of dance style, I imagine other ballets will suit him better than this, and yet I rejoiced in the bravado of his various spins, jumps, flourishes.
