Swan Lake

On Sunday night's showing, the St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre is a great little touring company. It was tough to have to open with Swan Lake after the almost definitive production last Christmas by the superb Russian Stanislavski Ballet, which had all the facilities of the Point in which to display their fine sets and flights of swans, whereas the limitations of the National Concert Hall prevented changes of backcloth for Acts 2 and 3. Worse, it prevented the appearance of a distraught Odette-figure in Act 3, to reveal to Prince Siegfried how he has been deceived into betraying her.

Kirov guest soloist Margaritta Koullik achieved so great a contrast between her Odette and her brassy Odile, however, that it seemed only Rothbart's magic could have persuaded Siegfried they were one and the same. Her 32 fouetes brought the house down although the recorded music to which she danced took them far too fast and her earlier variations were both more difficult and better executed. She was not well-matched in size with fellow guest soloist Vladimir Kim, whose lack of inches was not helped by the tall head-dresses given by designers Galina Soloveva and Semon Pastukh to so many of the women, but he overcame this difficulty, just as the fine dancing of the whole company made us overlook the limitations of stage. But at least everyone in the NCH could see more clearly the talent on display than is possible in all but the best seats in the Point, emphasising yet again the scandal that we have no theatre suitable for ballet in Dublin.