Kristina Petrova | Landgraf on Dance

The Hub

January 4, 2025

“The Nutcracker”
Bolshoi Ballet
Bolshoi Theatre
Moscow, Russia
December 31, 2024 (live stream)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

During this year’s Christmas sermon, my pastor asked which moment should best represent Christmas. The Christmas dinner? The lighting of the candles? Or, perhaps, unwrapping the presents? For me, this moment was the moment during the Bolshoi Ballet’s performance of The Nutcracker when the newlywed Marie (Elizaveta Kokoreva) and the Nutcracker Prince (Artem Ovcharenko) were lifted by their court toward the star at the top of the Christmas tree. It was the climax of their spiritual journey and of Yuri Grigorovich’s choreography for which I had been waiting since I last saw his Nutcracker live in Moscow in 2022.

Two live streams on December 30th (evening performance) and December 31st (matinee) enabled a vast audience to follow the heroes’ journey. To meet the demand, the number of cinemas offering live broadcasts grew from one hundred to three hundred in December. Most were located in Russia, but cinemas in Belarus, Armenia, and the United Arab Emirates also participated. I was able to watch the matinee on the Bolshoi’s vk video platform. (more…)

An Opening Salute

September 10, 2024

“The Sleeping Beauty”
Bolshoi Ballet
Bolshoi Theatre
Moscow, Russia
September 07, 2024 (live stream)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2024 by Ilona Landgraf

The Bolshoi Ballet opened its 249th season with a revival of Yuri Grigorovich’s The Sleeping Beauty, which has been absent from the stage for four years. Because of the thorough change of décor, the production was announced as a premiere. It swapped the opulent (and often criticized) sets and costumes that Ezio Frigerio and Franca Squarciapino designed for the 2011 revival (celebrating the reopening of the theater’s Historic Stage after six years of refurbishment) for the restrained décor that Simon Virsaladze (1909–1989) created for Grigorovich’s second version of the ballet in 1973. The subdued hues and aquarelle-ish style of its courtly surroundings direct the gaze toward the colorful costumes (recalling French court fashion from King Louis XIII’s to the Sun King, Louis XIV’s, reign), beautiful flower garlands and bouquets at Aurora’s birthday party, and, most importantly, the dancers and their performances. Raising the curtain didn’t elicit oohs and aahs from the audience as, for example, Jürgen Rose’s décor for Marcia Haydée’s Sleeping Beauty regularly has done on Western stages. (more…)

A Grand Spectacle

February 22, 2024

“La Fille du Pharaon”
Bolshoi Ballet
Bolshoi Theatre
Moscow, Russia
February 16, 2024

The Bolshoi Ballet’s La Fille du Pharaon is about an Egyptian pipe dream—and it felt like a dream indeed. I was already impressed in 2019 when I watched it for the first time. Five years later, the cultural landscape has changed so much that its magnificence seems surreal. It highlights the extent to which the paths of Western and Russian cultures have diverged. While European culture finds itself on shaky grounds, the Bolshoi stands firm as a rock. The critics who argue that Pierre Lacotte’s recreation of Marius Petipa’s La Fille du Pharaon (1862) is like unearthing a dusty ballet mummy are wrong. True, the piece’s libretto (which is based on Theophile Gautier’s 1857 Le Roman de la Momie and was edited by Lacotte) is flimsy. Hearty drags on an opium pipe transport a traveling Englishman and his servant to the pyramids during the reign of a mighty pharaoh. This pharaoh has a daughter who instantly falls in love with the Englishman. After some adventurous trouble (including the dispatch of a lion, a last-minute escape, a nearly murderous assault, a suicide attempt, and the hero’s near execution), the lovers are happily united. But – alas! Upon awakening, (more…)

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