For their final performance in the National Concert Hall last night, St Petersburg Ballet Theatre soon charmed the audience with the brilliance, fire, humour, colour, Spanish-flavoured dance and sheer joy of their Don Quixote.
Only those who knew this Petipa/Gorsky/Minkus ballet would have realised that two whole scenes - the Gypsy Camp and the Visions scenes - were missing, as the production has been tailored since I saw it in Belfast last October to remove any pieces of plot relating to the missing scenes. And if people were somewhat confused at the lovers apparently hiding in the middle of the square in Barcelona, due to the impossibility of hanging a front cloth in the Concert Hall, the fine dancing soon made them forget about it. Margaritta Koulik and Vladimir Kim from the Kirov were better suited to their roles as the mischievous innkeeper's daughter and her resourceful lover than they were in the classicism of the previous night's Swan Lake. Their partnership was wonderfully assured as he deftly caught her after every apparently reckless leap and they gave a virtuoso performance of the famous last act pas de deux. Unfortunately, no credit was given to the splendid performer of the Variation during the pas de deux.
There was fine comedy from Vladimir Zenzinov's Sancho Panza, Mikhail Ousatchev's innkeeper and from Yuri Gumba as the rich old fool he wants for a son-in-law, while Sergei Shtykov made a noble Don. But all the toreadors, flower girls, street dancers and townsfolk swept us into a feeling of fiesta which deserved the prolonged applause it received.
