When the Perm State Ballet of Russia opened their second Irish tour at Dublin's Olympia Theatre on Tuesday night with a Concert Programme they were deservedly cheered by an enthusiastic audience, for they are a top-class company excelling in the classics and in modern works never before seen in Ireland.
The wonderful Natalia Moiseeva and her partner, the long-legged Vitaly Poleschuk, who somehow managed to keep his great leaps within the small Olympia stage area in the pas de deux from the Tchaikovsky/Petipa Sleeping Beauty, both seemed equally at home in Kirill Shmorgoner's beautiful modern mood piece Moonlight, perfectly fitted to Debussy's Claire de Lune. We also saw brilliantly-danced excerpts from two other pieces by artistic director Shmor goner: Adagio (to a Marcello score) with remarkable lifts, including one with Roman Geer supporting Galina Dubrovina on the back of his neck, and Tango, Tango, Tango with music by Piazzola, danced by two couples with splendid Latin panache.
Elena Kulagina danced the ever-popular Dying Swan before joining with Dubrovina, Natalia Makina and Natalia Vysochina in a witty rendering of Anton Dolin's subtle sendup of rival ballerinas performing the Pugni/Perrot Pas de Quatre before Queen Victoria in 1845. Alexandr Lodochkin's Gopak was cheered and only space limitations prevent individual praise for fine performances in excerpts from Swan Lake, Le Corsaire and other ballets, ending with the Russian version of the Nutcracker Adagio, with Moiseeva flying between five excellent partners. Space, however, must be found to hail Dublin's own Monica Loughman's praiseworthy first solo, supporting Kulagina and the versatile Radiy Miniakhmetov in the Don Quixote Grand Pas.
This programme is being repeated tonight and tomorrow night at the Cork Opera House and on November 6th and 7th (matinee on 7th) in the Town Hall Theatre, Galway.
