Dunham16

Not sure Raymonda is a big seller among all but insular ballet groupies. It is one thing to see Sergeyev at 38 dancing with Dudinskaya at 36 in filmed excerpts of the dream scene in Act I and the marriage divertissement which closes the ballet produced more than 65 years ago. It is quite another for general audiences to experience a tale of often slow moving medieval chivalry with a danseur who does not have too many appearances during the entire stage time to not that generally in the public domain Glazounov music. The excerpts and the full length ballet are more specialty pieces for a specific ballet audience.

What seems interesting in this regard is the way the 1956 commercial film of the Bolshoi London Ulanova/Fadeyechev GISELLE was edited into a commercial Paul Czinner film before the era of videotape or VHS. One gathers the entire ballet was filmed but not included in the final print. The edited version includes multiple cuts, one this solo. It was assumed that because UIlanova danced with Sergeyev at the Kirov/Maryinsky as early as 1930, years before this solo was standard choreography in GISELLE, it is possible Ulanova did not dance this solo in her many GISELLES in Russia and later when the Bolshoi just began touring. If anyone has the takes for this film before the final version was edited researching this might be valuable to statting this particular solo.

I saw the Ulanova GISELLE film with her final partner, Alexei Fadeyechev's dad, Nicolai. It was for many years on commercial Hollywood reel type film shown publicly in library and other musical venues. Apparently the entire ballet was filmed in 1956 at the time the Bolshoi visited London and Ulanova was 46 but the entire performance is not included in the edited film. I recall the peasant pas de deux was NOT edited in as well as the lyric poem dram ballet at the time Albrecht arrives repentant at Giselle's gravesite. Although Ulanova's great passage of 16 entrechats quatres en diagonale is superb and considered a standard, what really bowls over modern audiences is her interpolated solo, I believe dating from Russia around 1900,. following Albrecht's variation which I have never seen performed so superbly. .

The three dancers are schooled differently, hence approach their roles from different perspectives even when their work melds together dramatically into a storyboard whole. One does not need biographical information to quickly grasp Shkylarov is from the Kirov, Semionova is from Berlin via the Bolshoi school and Seo is not Russian in training. With the cast changes and apparent limited rehearsal time discussed earlier in more formal published reviews.there was an issue in the pas de huit. With the stages of both the Royal in London and and the Met narrower than the Russian stages, the cast change and the otherwise noted limited rehearsal time Shkylarov had an issue with the dance floor he certainly did not experience when he danced recently Ivan in THE LITTLE HUMPBACKED HORSE on the Met stage with a Russian laid dance floor. Two pas de huit dancers were too close to him and were nearly in an accident but Vladimir, an experienced performer, managed to avoid this and stay in character. Following the pas de huit, Shkylarov and Seo soon have back to back variations and Semionova a major dance sequence several minutes later. All were well done yet from different ballet perspectives. What really came together were Shkylarov and Semioniva onstage and the concertmaster in the wings for the violin solo in the grand pas de deux and the true glory of the execution of the closing movement of the grand pas which rocked the house as one of the most exciting renditions i have seen over the years in more than forty performances by different companies.