How to Warm an Audience

“Don Quixote”
Ballet of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre
Moscow, Russia
February 15, 2024

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2024 by Ilona Landgraf

Moscow’s ballet audience is well-versed and demanding. The crowd that filled the Stanislavsky Theatre last Thursday to watch Don Quixote gave the quirky Don Quixote (Nikita Kirillov) and his gluttonous squire, Sancho Panza (Konstantin Semenov), a friendly but reserved welcome. The company’s former artistic director, Laurent Hilaire, added the production to the repertoire in 2019, and Hilaire’s successor, Maxim Sevagin, has kept it since 2022. As a former etoile of the Paris Opera Ballet who danced under Rudolf Nureyev’s directorate, Hilaire chose to introduce the Russian audience to Nureyev’s version of Don Quixote. Its set and costume design replicates Nicholas Georgiadis’s originals for the Paris Opera premiere.

Back at the bustling market square, the exuberance of the Spanish youth gradually spread through the rows. The legs of the toreadors sliced the air like knife edges; their leader, Espada (Evgeny Zhukov), missed no chance to parade his oomph; the sultry show of Olga Sizykh’s street dancer heated the air so much that the men began to brawl over the women – but the arrival of Don Quixote (on top of his armored old nag Rocinante) chilled passions.
Shenanigans resurfaced promptly though. Sancho Pansa was teased good and proper, and the flirtatious banter of the town’s kingpin couple – Kitri (Anastasia Limenko) and Basilio (Denis Dmitriev) – added fuel to the fire all the time. The tall and snappy Basilio was a likable kind of braggart on whom Nureyev’s tricky variations looked stylish. His handling of the guitar was as rousing and easy-going as his dance. A daredevil, by comparison, his Kitri had punch. The clatter of her castanets made the audience cheer. But not so her father, Lorenzo (Levan Kasradze). Preferring money over romance, he stubbornly refused the penniless Basilio and instead favored the wealthy Gamache (Evgeny Poklitar) as a son-in-law. What are the odds that Gamache is an effeminate laughingstock?

Of the many ruses that Kitri and Basilio invented to escape Lorenzo and Gamache, I especially liked their masquerade at the Romani camp (where the spunky Taiga Kodama-Pomfret cracked his whip). Basilio’s fake suicide lacked spontaneity and – perhaps due to their height difference – the lovers didn’t manage to move in sync. Yet smooth partnering during the pas de deux left no doubt about their togetherness.
After his dramatic fight with the windmills, Don Quixote’s haunted mind found peace in the Kingdom of Dryads. The charisma of their sovereign Queen (Elena Solomyanko) fine-tuned the unity of her nymphs. Solomyanko’s series of grand jetés and her lightning piqué turns were nothing short of spectacular. She was accompanied by the quicksilver (and cute) Amor of Anastasia Malyarova and the refined Kitri.
After Lorenzo was tricked into giving his blessing to his daughter’s and Basilio’s wedding, Kitri was in such high spirits that she went one better. Standing in Attitude, she balanced and balanced and kept balancing, her eyes sparkling in triumph. It was humbling to watch Limenko strive to deliver her very best.

Initially lackluster, conductor Arif Dadashev and the Orchestra of the Stanislavsky Theatre eventually gathered momentum in their rendition of Ludwig Minkus’s score.

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