March 9, 2009
Coppelia is famously a brilliant ballet for beginners – it has a family friendly story-line, complete with happy ending, and it’s not a full-on three hour event (three half hour Acts and two fifteen-minute intervals – perfect for retaining the attention of all but the smallest persons). This was a truly delightful production, and there were plenty of opportunities to observe how well it went down with the variously aged moppets in the audience. The production values were solid, old-fashioned, ungimmicky – this is good in my book – the budget had mostly gone on delicious costumes, some of it on functional scenery. There are many thrillingly wonderful moments in this ballet, mostly to do with human-sized automata being wound up and coming to life – when these scenes occur (mostly in Act II) you do wish it could actually be much longer than it is. More living-doll dances and slightly fewer pretty village maidens-and-their-swains dances would probably heighten the interest for the twenty-first century audience; but this was a perfectly traditional performance, employing the time-honoured 1894 choreography of Russian giants Petipa and Ivanov. And it is very beautiful and charming.
I cannot speak highly enough of prima ballerina Kristina Terentieva (Swanilda), who performed the most extraordinary feats with magical ease and grace. When Swanilda impersonates the doll Coppelia in order to fool Dr Coppelius into believing that she has come to life, and thus prevent her fiancé Frantz from being magically drained of his life force, she does an astonishing dance in which every step places her feet higher than her head, effectively doing the splits while standing up – she makes it look so natural and graceful, her beautiful face betraying not the smallest trace of strain or exertion. She also managed in Act III to perform something like fifty high-speed pirouettes (I lost count after thirty) one after another, with perfect control and timing. Her husband Alexei Terentiev as Frantz was equally accomplished, achieving those astonishing gravity-defying leaps in which the dancer appears momentarily suspended in the air like thistle-down before gracefully (and noiselessly) descending to the stage again. The whole company – almost too many ballerinas to fit on the stage – were without exception exquisitely beautiful and superb dancers. Just watching it made you want to walk very tall and step very proudly.
From what I could observe, children aged five and above were as if hypnotized, especially if female; very small male children did not appear to really get into it. I do absolutely recommend this production if there are any tickets left. One further note – if you sit in the stalls, the (excellent) orchestra will be between you and the stage and you will be shielded by it from the inevitable sound of wooden blocks supporting a hundred and twenty pounds or so of solidly muscled ballerina hitting the stage (male ballet dancers don’t have wooden blocks in their shoes so it’s not a problem for them). This sound is much more audible from the circle, and it does spoil the illusion a tiny bit. So go for the stalls.
I cannot speak highly enough of prima ballerina Kristina Terentieva (Swanilda), who performed the most extraordinary feats with magical ease and grace. When Swanilda impersonates the doll Coppelia in order to fool Dr Coppelius into believing that she has come to life, and thus prevent her fiancé Frantz from being magically drained of his life force, she does an astonishing dance in which every step places her feet higher than her head, effectively doing the splits while standing up – she makes it look so natural and graceful, her beautiful face betraying not the smallest trace of strain or exertion. She also managed in Act III to perform something like fifty high-speed pirouettes (I lost count after thirty) one after another, with perfect control and timing. Her husband Alexei Terentiev as Frantz was equally accomplished, achieving those astonishing gravity-defying leaps in which the dancer appears momentarily suspended in the air like thistle-down before gracefully (and noiselessly) descending to the stage again. The whole company – almost too many ballerinas to fit on the stage – were without exception exquisitely beautiful and superb dancers. Just watching it made you want to walk very tall and step very proudly.
From what I could observe, children aged five and above were as if hypnotized, especially if female; very small male children did not appear to really get into it. I do absolutely recommend this production if there are any tickets left. One further note – if you sit in the stalls, the (excellent) orchestra will be between you and the stage and you will be shielded by it from the inevitable sound of wooden blocks supporting a hundred and twenty pounds or so of solidly muscled ballerina hitting the stage (male ballet dancers don’t have wooden blocks in their shoes so it’s not a problem for them). This sound is much more audible from the circle, and it does spoil the illusion a tiny bit. So go for the stalls.