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Nina Ananiashvili,
a bravura ballerina of prodigious talent, is one of the true international
ballet stars today. Her dancing is graced with classical purity, superb
musicality, fierce intelligence, sculptural heft and a honeyed, burnished
lyricism. Her genius is that she's a complete original, impossible to
typecast. She dances with equal authority the virtuoso, romantic, dramatic
and classical roles, and she can do anything--turn, jump, balance, sustain
an adagio pose, spin out a long legato phrase of steps that can stop the
heart and dance at death-defying speed.
Trained at the
Bolshoi, Ananiashvili epitomizes the Russian school of classical dance that
reached its pinnacle in our century, and she stands in a direct line of
succession to the great Bolshoi ballerinas of the past--Marina Semyonova
(one of her teachers), Maya Plisetskaya, Raisa Struchkova (another teacher)
and Ekaterina Maximova.
Ananiashvili
has not only distinguished herself in performances with her home company in
Moscow and on tour. She has made history as the first Russian ballerina to
dance with the Bolshoi while also appearing with the Maryinsky (Kirov), the
New York City Ballet, the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, the Royal Danish
Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. Furthermore, her own troupe, "Nina
Ananiashvili and International Stars", has enjoyed phenomenal success,
breaking box-office records at theaters in Asia, Europe and the United
States.
Ananiashvili's
Russian repertory centers on the classics, Swan Lake, Giselle, The
Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, La Bayadere, Raymonda, The Nutcracker and
Romeo and Juliet. Her performances in these ballets are graced with what
the writer Gennady Smakov has called a "special amplitude of gesture and
pose," suggesting passion that has long been attributed to the Russian
national character.
Nowhere is this
attribute clearer than in Swan Lake. In Act II, Ananiashvili's
tremulous Odette folds her head and neck onto her shoulder as if she's
trying to obscure herself in her plumage, and the position takes on the
force of a signature pose. Her Odile is 180 degrees different--she enters
like a blast of heat from the furnace of hell, the ultimate femme fatale.
As Kitri in
Don Quixote, Ananiashvili's is the performance all others must measure
up to: an exuberant amalgam of charm, comic timing, breathtaking virtuosity
and classical purity. Equally impressive is La Bayadere. Here she
embodies Nikiya's moral fervor, romantic passion and forgiving nature while
linking the various facets of the role--dancing girl, temple virgin,
vengeful rival, shade--to near textbook classicism that is ravishing.
In addition to
her mastery of the nineteenth-century classical style, Nina is gifted with a
sensitivity to modern choreography coupled to a supreme adaptability, which
has enabled her to succeed beautifully in twentieth-century works. Her
Firebird with the Royal Ballet sparkled with a supernatural magic. And
her affinity for Kenneth MacMillan resulted in triumphs as that
choreographer's Juliet and Princess Rose in The Prince of the Pagodas.
And has any visiting artist at New York City Ballet ever scaled the summits
of Balanchine's greatest masterworks, Symphony in C, Raymonda Variations
and Apollo as effortlessly and sublimely as she?
New York has
had the good luck of seeing Nina refine her mastery of her signature roles.
As an ABT artist since 1993, she has also made her mark in ballets new to
her--Macmillan's Manon, Balanchine's Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux
and Ben Stevenson's Cinderella. In the most recent season, she made
Ronald Hynd's Merry Widow unforgettable.
The miracle of
Nina Ananiashvili's artistry is that--her triumphs notwithstanding--we feel
her greatest years are still to come, and it is with wonder, joy and
excitement that we await them. |
