The Bolshoi's overstuffed Le Corsaire

(The Jardin Anime scene in the Bolshoi Ballet's production of Le Corsaire. Photo by Damir Yusupov.)

June 20 & 21 - The Bolshoi's new production of Le Corsaire, shown in Washington DC last week, is a reconstruction of the original 19th century production that also includes many of the little bells and whistles that have been added in the intervening yeaers. The whole thing is really more of a spectacle than an evening of ballet. There are big sets, a live on-stage shipwreck and a ridiculous amount of costumes and costume changes. The story is told with the maximum amount of kitsch and political incorrectness; one might even say that this spectacle revels in its outmoded attitudes towards women and foreign cultures. Somewhere in between lies some bravura classical dancing, done big and brassy because this is after all the Bolshoi Ballet. The show had its fun parts, but I can't help but feel that I may have outgrown such lavish kitsch: I'd rather see more dancing, or at least a story ballet that isn't so outlandishly corny.

Corsaire tells a fairly convoluted tale of merry pirates, slave women and a Pasha with a harem full of beautiful women in tutus and tiaras. The main characters are Conrad, a free-spirited pirate, and a beautiful girl Medora. They fall in love, but Medora is sold away to the Pasha. To steal her back, Conrad takes himself and his pirate gang on several swashbuckling adventures that involve plenty of sword fighting, backstabbing subplots and a not insignificant number of tutus and flowers.

(Curtain call, with the shipwreck in the background. My photo.)

The story and character details in this production differ in many ways from the story that American audiences are familiar with, most notably in Anne-Marie Holmes' production for American Ballet Theatre and Pyotr Gusev's production for the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet. The Medora/Conrad relationship is mostly the same, but Gulnara is very different in this Bolshoi production: we don't meet her until Act 2, where she is already a member of the Pasha's harem and is quite happy to be there. Gulnara and another harem girl Zulmea compete to be the Pasha's first wife, and much scheming and plotting is scene accordingly. Gulnara is much more playful and giddy here, scene playing many jokes on the hapless, overdramatic Zulmea. The pas d'esclaves that Gulnara dances in the ABT and Kirov productions is reassigned to two nameless slave characters – effectively another place for young Bolshoi soloists to step in and shine.

This production's Act 1 contains all of what the ABT and Kirov productions split into Acts 1 & 2 (the bazaar scene and the pirate's cave scenes). Act 2 is the Pasha's palace and the Jardin Anime scene, and Act 3 is entirely new to American audiences. Here, there is a complicated sham wedding, in which the pasha thinks he is marrying Medora but instead is wed to Gulnara in disguise – meanwhile Medora is fleeing the palace with her beloved Conrad. The escape scene on the pirate ship is elaborate and ends in a spectacular shipwreck, with the giant stage ship splitting into two pieces. Miraculously, Medora and Conrad are the only survivors, washing up onto the shore to live happily ever after.

The story tends to be an excuse to arrive at various showpiece classical dances, though in the version presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington last week, there was much more story and groan-inducing mime, and much less dancing. (Repordedly, the full production, which was seen in Moscow and on tour in London during past seasons, includes a few suites of dances that were excluded from the Washington run due to time constraints.)

What dances we did see, though, were spectacularly entertaining, in true Bolshoi style. The company specializes in grand classical dancing: the technique is crystalline, the style is brash and showy, the jumps are always big, the turns always in multiples. Both the women and the men possess these qualities, and the Bolshoi amplifies it in numbers. Nearly everyone that parades in front of the audience has this spectacular technique and it can be dazzling to watch. The Jardin Anime scene in Act 2 is the prime example of this glory – nevermind that it is a scene that comes, narratively, when the Pasha decides to show off his garden of beautiful ladies (groan). It's a big classical showcase that is so overstuffed that one can ignore the story and just watch the spectacle on stage. The corps here showed the marveled unison of a company that dances with unity of style, and the principal women showed off in dazzling variations.

There were other showpiece moments: the famous pas de deux for Conrad and Medora in Act 1 (in many other productions it is a pas de trois for Medora, Conrad and the slave Ali, but in this Bolshoi production it is cut to just the two characaters – it makes more narrative sense to me), the dance for the three odalisques in Act 2, and the pas d'esclaves in Act 1. They're fun enough to watch that I was nearly – nearly – able to ignore the filler in between. Act 3 is nearly entirely mimed (a major dance was cut from this act for time), and features the story's resolution and the big shipwreck.

Ekaterina Shipulina and Ruslan Skvortsov ended up dancing at both performances that I attended. Originally, Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev were scheduled to dance the Sunday afternoon, but both had to bow out due to illness, so Shipulina and Skvortsov heroically stepped in to dance what was reportedly their third performance this weekend. Shipulina was glamorous and technically up to standard for the role, I thought she looked very pretty and was appropriately funny and technically dazzling. Skvortsov did everything he was supposed to with satisfying athelticism and fun as well.

Unfortunately, this production is really not interesting enough to be seen twice in a row with the exact same cast. It would have been fun to see Osipova swing through its acting and technical challenges, especially after seeing her spectacular performances with American Ballet Theatre earlier in the week (I was particularly looking forward to seeing her showoff her spectacular technical abilities). However, it was not so fun seeing the exact same performance yet again with no surprises. Shipulina and Skvortsov were fine, but neither were compelling enough to command immediate repeat performances. On Sunday, after reliving the Jardin Anime scene – the best part of this production – I decided to skip the rest of show, which was all mime anyway.

Inset photos: (1) The Act 1 bazaar scene, photo by Damir Yusupov; (2) Ekaterina Shipulina and Ruslan Skvortsov during bows after Act 1, my photo.