04.04.2013
“A Fixture in London”
“The Mikhailovsky Ballet is becoming something of a fixture in London”, opened an article on the company’s London tour in the well-respected Times newspaper. “Audiences are starting to get to know the St. Petersburg company rather well”, the paper’s ballet critic Debra Craine wrote. She noted that on this occasion the theatre had sprung “more surprises”: the performances featured “two of the biggest stars in the world — Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev — and a line-up of luminous guest artists”, and the Spanish Artistic Director Nacho Duato “has brought a new contemporary aesthetic into the repertoire.”
In the Financial Times, the doyen of British ballet critics Clement Crisp devoted his review to the opening production, Giselle, a ballet that “follows hallowed traditions”. According to Crisp, “the ensembles were done with clear, devoted style by the troupe, but the key to this performance was, inevitably, the presence of Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev in the leading roles. Hung about with our expectations of virtuosity, these artists yet compel us to see them as notable interpreters.”
The Guardian was also entranced by Giselle. “I don’t know of any other production that elicits so much from the opening scene”, the newspaper’s reviewer Judith Mackrell wondered rhetorically before going on to praise the performers in the principal roles. “Natalia Osipova is a prodigiously talented dancer. Her Giselle is a headstrong young woman who’s stumbled into a gothic horror; while she dances much of the first act with a sunny buoyancy, dark cracks of apprehension zigzag across her happiness. In the second act, as all realism is blown to the winds, Osipova is extraordinary — a driven, anguished spirit. When she gusts across the stage in a sequence of tiny jumps, the unnerving stillness with which she holds her body is a moving flashback to the imagery of her mad scene, in which Giselle has tried to physically compress and contain the chaos of her disintegrating mind. It is also in this act that Vasiliev rises to Osipova’s level. Maddened with love and grief, his Albrecht seems as possessed as Giselle. As he explodes from one lung-bursting, sinew-breaking jump to another, you feel he is genuinely capable of dancing himself to death.”
Mark Monahan in the Telegraph paid homage to the performers of the principal roles in Giselle. While paying tribute to the “suitably icy” Ekaterina Borchenko as the Queen of the Wilis, he was unstinting in his praise for Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev. “When this duo move, they are close to perfection... Perhaps inevitably, these two Titans here eclipsed everyone else on stage”, wrote the reviewer. And he has some advice for the public: “This remarkable duo will be fronting other works by the Mikhailovsky between now and April 7. I’d get booking.”
In the Financial Times, the doyen of British ballet critics Clement Crisp devoted his review to the opening production, Giselle, a ballet that “follows hallowed traditions”. According to Crisp, “the ensembles were done with clear, devoted style by the troupe, but the key to this performance was, inevitably, the presence of Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev in the leading roles. Hung about with our expectations of virtuosity, these artists yet compel us to see them as notable interpreters.”
The Guardian was also entranced by Giselle. “I don’t know of any other production that elicits so much from the opening scene”, the newspaper’s reviewer Judith Mackrell wondered rhetorically before going on to praise the performers in the principal roles. “Natalia Osipova is a prodigiously talented dancer. Her Giselle is a headstrong young woman who’s stumbled into a gothic horror; while she dances much of the first act with a sunny buoyancy, dark cracks of apprehension zigzag across her happiness. In the second act, as all realism is blown to the winds, Osipova is extraordinary — a driven, anguished spirit. When she gusts across the stage in a sequence of tiny jumps, the unnerving stillness with which she holds her body is a moving flashback to the imagery of her mad scene, in which Giselle has tried to physically compress and contain the chaos of her disintegrating mind. It is also in this act that Vasiliev rises to Osipova’s level. Maddened with love and grief, his Albrecht seems as possessed as Giselle. As he explodes from one lung-bursting, sinew-breaking jump to another, you feel he is genuinely capable of dancing himself to death.”
Mark Monahan in the Telegraph paid homage to the performers of the principal roles in Giselle. While paying tribute to the “suitably icy” Ekaterina Borchenko as the Queen of the Wilis, he was unstinting in his praise for Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev. “When this duo move, they are close to perfection... Perhaps inevitably, these two Titans here eclipsed everyone else on stage”, wrote the reviewer. And he has some advice for the public: “This remarkable duo will be fronting other works by the Mikhailovsky between now and April 7. I’d get booking.”
