A la Russe, Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam

Strangely enough, Amsterdam is shaping up to be the place to see the very best of Russo-American ballet in western Europe. The Dutch National Ballet’s latest mixed bill, A la russe, celebrates the company’s rather unexpected connection with two great choreographers who left Russia for New York: George Balanchine and Alexei Ratmansky. Only Krzysztof Pastor’s Dumbarton Dances, a witty but one-dimensional showcase for eight men set to Stravinsky, fell flat, but who wouldn’t in such good company?

The Dutch have long boasted one of the largest collections of Balanchine works outside New York City Ballet, and they dance them fearlessly, with tremendous attack in the legs. The lyrical Serenade was given uplifting performances last weekend by the company’s women, led with spirited musicality on different evenings by Anna Tsygankova and Nadia Yanowsky as the Russian Girl. In Tchaikovsky pas de deux, similarly, both Cédric Ygnace and Matthew Golding tackled the virtuoso variation and coda with glee, unruffled by their technical shortcomings, while Jurgita Dronina charmed with artful ease.

The main event, however, was the European premiere of Ratmansky’s On the Dnieper, created in 2009 for American Ballet Theater. Based on a libretto and score commissioned by the Paris Opera Ballet in the early 1930s, it tells in one act the story of a soldier, Sergei, who returns home after the first world war and finds he prefers betrothed beauty Olga to his own fiancée, Natalia.

Alas, Prokofiev’s fast-paced, monotonous score isn’t one of his best narrative efforts, and it takes more than one viewing to appreciate the oddly melodramatic first half, where Sergei scurries from his former friends to his mother to Natalia in a series of matter-of-fact reunions.

Dutch National Ballet’s lyrical and uplifting ‘Serenade’

The scene is nonetheless set for what is more than a love triangle in Ratmansky’s retelling. Using only the lovers’ parents and a corps of young couples among delicate cherry trees, he delineates an entire community with its hierarchy and traditions: always a counterpoint to the soloists, they welcome back the hero (Jozef Varga) and yet separate him metaphorically from Natalia, who belongs in the village. Sergei and Olga (a vivacious Marisa Lopez), on the contrary, fall for each other because they recognise each other as outsiders. As she dances for everyone, trapped with a fiancé she hasn’t chosen, Olga’s variation is all unfulfilled dreams, phrases left hanging in the air and steps retraced in disarray.

Ratmansky’s patterns and folk-flavoured steps for the corps de ballet are unparalleled in sweep and inventivity, but On the Dnieper is also a rare gift for dance actors. Former Mariinsky soloist Larissa Lezhnina is at her very best as Natalia, bringing shades of Onegin’s Tatiana to this quintessentially Russian woman, her understated pain and resignation heartbreaking as she helps the lovers run away in a final twist.

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