Nina Ananiashvili was one of her generation’s great ballerinas, dancing with the Bolshoi and American Ballet Theatre. Now 61, she’s director of the State Ballet of Georgia in her home city of Tbilisi, having revived the company over the last 20 years. For its English debut she stages Swan Lake, keen to prove the Georgians can match up to the big Russian ballet brands who danced regular summer seasons in London before the invasion of Ukraine.
On tonight’s evidence, they are not quite there, although this trad production – adapted by Ananiashvili and former Bolshoi artistic director Alexei Fadeyechev from the Petipa/Ivanov version – certainly has a (somewhat staid) Russian feel, including the endless stopping for applause between variations and the – spoiler alert! – happy ending.
The dancers are more than capable technicians; the hard-working corps of swans generally strong (with the odd mismatching line). Ananiashvili and Fadeyechev have tightened up the ballet to run with only one interval, made some nice innovations and just one noticeably awkward music cut. But overall there’s little to lift this story off the page and missed opportunities to show musicality (from both the dancers and the ENO orchestra, under the baton of Papuna Gvaberidze).
Oleh Lihai’s Prince Siegfried is a gentle, vacuous sort. He arrives not searing the air but with the effortless grace of a man who hasn’t had to work for his privilege and isn’t consumed by his status; floating, sometimes literally, above it all. Nino Samadashvili takes on the fiendishly demanding dual role of Odette/Odile. As white swan Odette she tilts unevenly between the blank demeanour of a trapped woman and occasional moments of tensile tenderness, where we see melancholia briefly rippling through her arms, or a flash of terror in her eyes as the evil Rothbart (Marcelo Soares) subdues her.
The company dances with care but little fire. It is possible to make a 19th-century ballet feel vital, not by modernising it necessarily, but making the characters, or their relationship with the music, feel alive. Ironically, Ananiashvili herself was a vivid performer of natural expressiveness and emotional connection, but that’s exactly what’s lacking here, although there are two weeks to bed in, and three more casts to come.
• At London Coliseum until 8 September
