Technique, live music buoy 'Swan Lake'

TAMPA -- With a group of young dancers, the Grigorovich Ballet of Russia did not bring a lot of nuance to Swan Lake, performed Tuesday and Wednesday at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. But the production made up for lack of seasoning with sheer numbers -- the company travels with 85 dancers, plenty to mount a grand-scale ballet -- and solid, well-drilled technique.

For example, Tuesday, when Odette made her dramatic Act II entrance, Tatiana Vladimirova was more matter of fact than magical, coming from the wings in a rush, as if she were running late for an appointment. An arabesque seemed a bit perfunctory. Still, Vladimirova was a gorgeous vision in white, and her partnering with Yin Dayong's high-leaping Siegfried was graceful and strong.

In the third act, as the enchantress Odile, Vladimirova captured the dark glamor of her character in the Black Swan pas de deux, winding up with the famous set of fouettes.

Among the other principals, a standout was the athletic, raptorlike Rothbart of Nikolai Motchtchakov. As the Fool, Vadym Slatvitsky dashed off a series of flashy pirouettes in the first-act castle scene, though his finish was wobbly. The most striking of the Act III brides-to-be was Zarema Ouridina in the Hungarian czardas.

There was another reason the large crowd Tuesday enjoyed the ballet: the Florida Orchestra.

In this dreary era of touring dance to canned music, seeing a full-evening ballet with an orchestra in the pit was a rarity. It must have been as refreshing for the Grigorovich dancers as for the audience. Midway through a long U.S. tour that began in early January, performing nearly every day, the company has had only one other engagement with live music.

Vladimir Moiseyev conducted, and with just a single rehearsal of dancers and orchestra, there were moments when tempos were out of synch, such as the ragged first-act pas de trois. But the sense of freedom that developed as everyone settled into the flow of Tchaikovsky's wonderful score was a treat.

Swan Lake is like a Shakespeare play. It's always cut, and thank heavens for that. If this most popular romantic classic was performed complete, it would run longer than a Wagnerian opera. Company founder Yuri Grigorovich, onetime head of the Bolshoi Ballet, stripped the Petipa-Ivanov original down to a compact size, dispensing with such traditional elements as the crossbow-wielding hunting party that comes upon the swans. The ending was happy instead of tragic.

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