28 July 2008

The dancers of the Bolshoi


It is not the first time I see the Bolshoi ballet group. The first one was in Mexico City in one of the memorable Festival Cervantinos, probably in 1982. Then I also saw the extremely fine and seemingly fragile female ballet dancers at the cafe of the Covarrubias theater, while they were having a rest. I suddenly remember, they were not eating at all but most of them were smoking.
At that time I danced quite a lot, some om my friends even thought I was going to be a professional dancer. Oh no, I never thought about it! For me it was only an extremely tiring and full time hobby or maybe some kind of sport-art.
And if there was any doubt, after seeing the super thin, gracious and extremely body conscious then Soviet dancers I was sure of it. My body had nothing to be compared with those ethereal and nearly floating bodies. You could see that it was their life. It could had never been mine. They were the ballet and ballet was them.
Last Saturday I saw the company for a second time, with very different eyes. Now they were also young and beautiful, as I didn't notice at the Covarrubias. Their strength and nearly acrobatic dances impressed me more than the artistic side of it. I wondered too how faithfull the coreography was to the one of 1968 of Spartacus. I felt it so old fashiones that I was nearly seeing it in black and white. And that was part of my biggest enjoyment of the evening.
We were unlucky that there was another dancer Alexander Petukhov than the long spected Spartacus soloist. One of the ballerinas Svetlana Zakharova who played Phrygia was the one that I enjoyed the most. She was extremely sensual and gracious apart from her typical Russian high qualities from a soloist.
People enjoyed it and I with them. Thanks for the invitation.

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