Nina Ananiashvili in Giselle with the State Ballet of Georgia. Photo courtesy of Cal Performances.
You would expect any company calling itself the State Ballet of Georgia to reflect the influence of its most renowned native choreographer, and you would be right. In both dances and spirit, George Balanchine (or Georgi Balanchivadze, as he was known back in the former Soviet republic) dominated the mixed fare that launched the opening program Thursday (Feb. 14) at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, the initial engagement of the organization’s first extensive American tour.
On this occasion, it was not chauvinism, but sound artistic judgment that brought Balanchine (born in St. Petersburg to Georgian parents) to the fore. The Tbilisi-based company with roots going back to the 19th century was languishing in 2004 when Nina Ananiashvili, born in Georgia and celebrated for her sublime dancing at the Bolshoi Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and sundry troupes around the globe, was invited by the country’s president to assume the artistic directorship. She is evidently a believer in both miracles and hard work, and, lucky for her, she started with a reserve of Georgian talent in need of refinement.
Four years later, Ananiashvili has delivered to us a smart, attractive, adventurous troupe. The remainder of this Cal Performances run will spotlight the team in Romantic repertoire (specifically, a new staging of Giselle by former Bolshoi director Alexei Fadeyechev). Thursday’s fare, which included Balanchine’s Chaconne and Duo Concertant, as well as American premieres of Alexei Ratmansky’s new Bizet Variations and Yuri Possokhov’s Sagalobeli, reveled in the Georgians’ affinity for quirky contemporary classicism.
If Thursday’s exhilarating performance of the 1972 Duo Concertant is typical, star power lurks in the company’s ranks. I can’t recall the last time this work so transcended its ground plan (dancers start by listening to the Stravinsky music and return to it periodically for inspiration) to explore the human element. Lanky Lasha Khozashvili and his partner, Nino Gogua, seemed determined to imbue the austere choreography with a passionate subtext. Their parallel tendus suggested collaboration rather than competition. The extended arms, reaching for companionship in the void, left the classroom behind. The isolated limbs offered unspoken temptations. The couple was propelled by a lush onstage performance of the music by violinist Franklyn D’Antonio (who recovered after some frightful intonational lapses) and pianist John Parr. Amiran Ananeli’s lighting needs work.
The lovely Chaconne (1976), in its first Bay Area performance in decades, offered less satisfaction. The music, cobbled from the ballet music for several versions of Gluck’s opera, Orfeo ed Euridice, demands more uniformity of bearing and a higher center of gravity than the Georgian corps can muster at this stage of its development. Épaulement sagged and the women don’t seem capable of the ideal turnout for this material. Hips locked when they should have blossomed. In their first pas de deux, Anna Muradeli and Vasil Akhmeteli strove to communicate the grave majesty of the arched backs and stately promenades. The second duo brought problems of articulation and broken line. By contrast, in the pas de trios, Ekaterine Chubinidze’s velocity and charm found empathetic responses in partners Rusudan Kvitsiani and Otar Khelashvili.
Natia Sirbiladze’s pastel costumes looked a mite overdone; one green skirt suggested a recycled "Waltz of the Flowers" outfit. Robert Cole conducted members of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra with a canny ear to rubato. Chaconne was staged by Bart Cook and Maria Calegari who know their Balanchine as well as anyone.
Like Balanchine, Ratmansky, who is the outgoing artistic director of the Bolshoi, seems marvelously adept at making us listen anew to music we thought we knew. In Bizet Variations, he has drawn from Bizet’s most atypical Variations Chromatique for solo piano a moody haunted ballroom sextet that uncorks an ominously sweet perfume. There are echoes of Balanchine’s La Valse in the tulle skirts and gloves for the women, as well as reminiscences of Scotch Symphony, Liebeslieder Walzer and a couple of other ballets.
Yet Ratmansky suggests depths of feeling, as the male outsider (Akhmeteli) and female loner (Ananiashvili in her only appearance in the program) finally meet each other in what seems a churning sea of libidinous humanity. There’s a genuine stylist at work in the arresting groupings and sudden displays of bravura. At 43, Ananiashvili has lost little of her glow, fluidity or emotional vulnerability; her sole Giselle Saturday evening should not be missed.
Ex-dancer Possokhov, who is the San Francisco Ballet’s choreographer-in-residence and has known Ananiashvili since their Bolshoi school days, has gifted the Georgians with Sagalobeli, the name of the performing ensemble that accompanied the 14-dancer work. The music may be traditional Georgian, but this is less a folk dance essay than a meditation on one. Two men in vests launch the work with a rope pulling contest. The women, their torsos undulating under long skirts, glide across the stage in silhouette. The music, both vocal and instrumental, trades in earthiness and rhythmic allure. The men shift their weight from foot to foot and it all meanders on to the half-hour mark.
Possokhov exhibits a remarkable feeling for the gripping moment, for a dramatic lift that comes out of nowhere, for sudden groupings that make you gasp. But Sagalobeli falters on structural grounds; the men’s ensemble at the end looks arbitrary and the episodic quality throughout is troubling. After a while, the work begins to resemble a divertissement from one of those turgid Bolshoi epics Possokhov left behind him decades ago. The dancers, however, went at it with gusto.
For tickets to the State Ballet of Georgia, which runs in Berkeley through Sunday at 3 p.m., call (510) 642-9988. The company’s next tour stop is Royce Hall, UCLA, Feb. 21-24, with this same repertoire.
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