Sunday night at the London Palladium with a show-stopping variety show to surpass all variety shows… of ballet and contemporary dance from 1789, 1856 through 1907, 1941, 1943, 1946, 1957, 1960, 1965, 1967, 1980 to 1997, 2005, 2021, 2024. Look at the dates: French Revolution, WW2, and here we are again in a time of unwarranted aggression, but art continues and must be helped to flourish in time of war.
Dance for Ukraine is not just a fundraiser, but a hugely entertaining range of immortal dance, kept alive by love and dedication. Fifteen pieces, some well known, some new, are performed by an international cast—now that must have taken some arranging—with huge commitment and passion, giving the best of themselves.
Baryshnikov, who escaped Soviet repression, has generously donated $10,000 to “our chance to dance with Ukraine in spirit”. I still see Baryshnikov in my mind’s eye in Le Corsaire, that gala warhorse.
Royal Ballet’s First Soloist Luca Acri and Ukrainian born Artist Marianna Tsembenhoi pull all the stops out in their Le Corsaire party piece. She, with the huge determination of youth, completes thirty-two fouettés, which many experienced ballerinas find taxing. Ukrainian Vladyslav Bosenko, now with Slovak National Ballet, completes the impressive trio.
Two versions of La Fille mal gardée surprise: Alexander Gorsky’s after Petipa, original by Jean Dauberval which premièred in 1789, performed delicately by ENB’s Francesca Velicu and with pizzazz by Russian Dmitri Zagrebin, now with the Royal Swedish Ballet; and Ashton’s 1960 ribbon dance by dancers new to me: Latvian Sabine Stroksa and American Philip Fedulov, both with Latvian National Ballet.
Dancers come from Sweden, Japan (Sugaru-Otome and Yuuri Hidaka), Latvia, Holland, Ukraine, Slovakia, not necessarily of that ethnicity—dancers are peripatetic creatures—and from our own Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Northern Ballet, and two independent companies, Russell Maliphant and Andrew McNicol of his eponymous Ballet Collective.
There are nearly thirty dancers and it’s impossible in this space to do them all justice, but all deserve their bouquets at the end. Marianela Nuñez in Wheeldon’s After The Rain; ENB’s recent joiners Sanguen Lee and Gareth Haw in David Dawson’s Metamorphosis to Philip Glass. Lauren Cuthbertson and Matthew Ball as the ill-fated young lovers in MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet burn the stage with love and yearning.
There are many highlights, one is the hardworking modest producer of the gala, former Principal with The Royal Ballet, Ukrainian Putrov, who dances in Maliphant’s 1997 / 2009 Two By Two with Maliphant company member Grace Jabbari. He is mesmerising under Michael Hulls’s lighting. Another is Andrew McNichol’s new solo piece for RB’s William Bracewell to a Rachmaninov prelude.
Olga Smirnova, former Principal of the Bolshoi, since 2022 with the Dutch National Ballet, shows off her Vaganova training in two pieces, The Dying Swan of 1907 and Carmen Suite, which premièred at the Bolshoi in 1967. The woman in white dying gracefully and the defiant woman in red, two sides of the same coin...
It’s the latter, choreographed by Cuban Alberto Alonso to music by Rodion Shchedrin composed for his wife Maya Plisetskaya, that thrills me. I never saw Plisetskaya live and this is the closest I will get to that experience. Denys Matvienko is a marvellously mature Don José; together, they are dramatic dynamite.
Beauty and light-heartedness to ward off the evil spell of a Rothbartian leader and his cabal, to lift spirits, to state categorically that life is not a traumatic prison of the soul. As in Pina Bausch’s work, Nelken, recently seen at Sadler’s Wells, we must place the possibilities of free expression against a wall of hate and conformity. Just days after Navalny’s horrific death, the gala could be seen by some as the hopeful equivalent of anti-war protesters putting flowers into gun barrels, but one works with what one has to stir compassion.
Two years ago, Ivan Putrov and Alina Cojocaru raised funds for Ukraine not long after Putin unleashed his euphemistic “special operation”. Now Putrov, Artistic Director, producer and dancer—with the help of many—has done it again, this time to raise money to stage a new production of Frederick Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée in Ukraine. Choreographic rights, owned by Jean-Pierre Gasquet, have been gifted to the Ukrainian National Ballet. It would be the first British ballet to enter its repertoire. Proceeds from the gala will also go to providing aspiring dancers with grants towards their training to make sure the reality of war affects them as little as possible.
The list of sponsors is long, thankfully, and their good wishes in the programme are effusive, but it's the performers who give of their physical strength and talent. Of necessity, some music is recorded, but many pieces have the accompaniment of Ukrainian pianist Sasha Grynyuk, cellist Urska Horvat and violinist Benjamin Baker. Kseniia Nikolaieva sings the Ukrainian National Anthem and a “Prayer for Ukraine” by Valentin Silvestrov.
The evening ends with MacMillan’s 1980 Gloria, his homage to his father’s WWI generation. The carnage of war Ukraine has been experiencing for an improbable two years now, a senseless invasion. There are loud cheers and shouts throughout of well done in Ukrainian and Russian. It is emotional. We are here not to judge but to support morally and financially (donations can be made online).