Swan Lake and La Bayadere on DVD

Two recent ballet DVD releases have made things exciting on my TV while Heroes takes its extended away. Even though both DVDs are of war horse ballet classics, the star power on them is of significant value: in Swan Lake there is the whole of the Paris Opera Ballet, and in La Bayadere there is Svetlana Zakharova dancing a role that she has made one of her signatures.

PARIS OPERA BALLET: SWAN LAKE (Opus Arte)
Production by Rudolf Nureyev; starring Agnes Letestu, Jose Martinez

This recording of Rudolf Nureyev's Paris production of Swan Lake is significantly less quirky version than his older Vienna State Opera production on video with Margot Fonteyn. But it is nevertheless still quirky. Nureyev rechoreographed much of Acts 1, 3 and 4 - the lakeside scene is mostly the traditional Ivanov. Rothbart is the same as the Prince's tutor in this production, and he stalks around looking menacing for the whole evening.

The whole DVD is worth it, though, for Act 2 alone: with the Paris corps de ballet, the swan choreography sublime, and Letestu is a magnificent Odette. Over on Ballet Talk, they're fussing over Letestu's iciness (though they do agree about the overall quality of the corps). I find this iciness a very acceptable dramatic choice: she's distant and reserved from Siegfried because she's scared that a) he's going to shoot her and b) he might not be trustworthy enough to really love her and break the spell. Would you immediately warm to some dude you met wandering around a lake in the middle of the night? Letestu's mime scene where she explains her past to Siegfried is exquisite - not only is this sequence not on video very often (the Russians cut it from their Soviet productions, so its rare when Russian trained dancers will ever do it), Letestu's reading is also clear, dramatically coherent and emotionally intelligent. Her dancing is full of the signature Paris style and glamour, so that makes it especially joyful to watch.

Acts 1, 3 and 4 are considerably less joyful to watch. Much of Nureyev's choreography is overly fussy, and though the dancers accomplish it with remarkable ease - 'Wow, impressive,' one thinks - its fairly unsatisfying when it goes all of nowhere. The opening court dance of Act 1 even has Balanchine pastiche, where corps dancers arranged in lines of four in a diamond shape run from wall to wall of their diamond: just the way Balanchine loved to do in Ballet Imperial, Diamonds and other countless plotless works - it looks like Nureyev is trying out new choreographic ideas in front of us, but it's ultimately unfinished and a big mess. The Act 1 pas de trois is rendered inelegant, with bunches of extra small steps that make things more blurry than neoclassical.

But the wonderful thing about DVD technology (and a well produced DVD with well-placed chapter breaks) is that you can skip straight to the best parts to watch over and over again. And I'll definitely be watching Act 2 and the Black Swan pas de deux over and over again.

TEATRO ALLA SCALLA: LA BAYADERE (TDK Mediactive)
Production by Natalia Makharova; starring Svetlana Zakharova, Roberto Bolle

Though Teatro alla Scala's ballet company is really nothing to get all excited about, I found this DVD to be a perfectly lovely recording of La Bayadere. Super-star guest ballerina Svetlana Zakharova gives a melodramatic, but pretty-to-look at performance as Nikiya, the doomed temple dancer. I normally find the Kirov-trained Zakharova to be a technical monster: she dances everything the same way, with the hard sell - legs in extreme positions and facial expressions with alternate between megawatt smile or furrowed eyebrows for dramatic scenes (like this, this, this, or this). With Nikiya, though, it kind of works. In the white-tutu laden Kingdom of the Shades act, she pulls out all the stops and makes the audience drool at her sublime control. No matter that she's rather over-the-top in all the acting scenes, it's a satisfyingly flashy performance all around. Roberto Bolle is a sturdy, secure partner to her.

The rest of the Italians are in a class somewhere below these two stars. Isabelle Brusson lacks the stage presence or the grand technique required for a successful Gamzatti, and the corps dances all the steps correctly, but rather forgetably. Natalia Makharova's production moves snippily along: no languishing in long character dances the way the Russian productions do - its a sprint to the Kingdom of the Shades, then a bow tie at the end to make it a real evening-length piece. No matter, though, because that actually makes it watchable on video. Leave those extended character dances in the theatre, fine by me.