Reviews of the Bolshoi Ballet.
Back in 1932, Vainonen's radical innovation was to make the crowd, the corps de ballet, the principal character on stage and to animate it with vigorously vernacular dance. Ratmansky has retained that vitality with teeming ensemble dances and friezes of heroic, fist-waving workers. But he's also layered in extra material that moves the ballet beyond its original two-dimensional morality.
On the following evening, The Flames of Paris. This was a famous Soviet-era rabble-rouser about the French Revolution, made in 1932 with a jolly score, and re-made by Alexey Ratmansky five years ago. I reported on it at that time, and record that it is still a skilled adaptation of a Soviet blockbuster intended to inspire the proletariat with the right sense of purpose, and doing so through roaring effects of vivid social protest. Ratmansky understands this tradition: his mass dances, scenes of revolutionary fervour, flag-waving ardour and cascade of dazzling steps, are intoxicating, and given with superlative skill by the Bolshoi dancers.