Maria Alexandrova as Odette in Swan Lake (Image: Damir Yusupov)
Late last year, Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre reopened after a seven-year, $760-million renovation. There was a splashy gala, where statesmen, billionaires, grande dames and Mikhail Gorbachev all came to show their support. The company marked the occasion with the signature dance from its signature work: the elegant pas de deux from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, which had its world premiere at the Bolshoi 135 years ago. This is a ballet—and a company—that has withstood revolution, totalitarian Communism and censorship, and now the touring company has brought the hallmark show to Toronto for a week of performances.
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Jillian Vanstone is the kind of person who, when asked to name her flaws, responds that she’s too precise in her movements—a humble-brag that would be annoying if it weren’t totally accurate. We expect perfection from ballerinas, but the 30-year-old Vanstone, who was recently promoted to principal dancer at the National Ballet, takes that ideal to an extreme. Though she can look a little out of place executing Twyla Tharp–style dance steps, put her in a starched tulle tutu and a pair of toe shoes and she’s an old-fashioned prima ballerina in the vein of Evelyn Hart or Karen Kain. She was picked by the British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon for the title role in last year’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which required her to be onstage for most of the show’s three-hour running time. That performance prompted Kain, the National Ballet’s artistic director, to award Vanstone its highest rank. This month, she dances the lead in La Fille mal gardée, the pastoral classic about a plucky country girl pressured into an arranged marriage. It’s a sign of how far she’s come: in the National Ballet’s 2002 production, she played a chicken. La Fille also happens to contain the kind of demanding classical choreography she lives for, with virtuoso solos and fast, complex footwork. Later in the month, she’ll play Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty—the most athletically demanding part in the canon (performers have been known to wear out as many as three pairs of pointe shoes in a single night). Vanstone always dances the part with flawless poise, laying waste to the notion that nobody’s perfect.
Since it was first staged more than four years ago, War Horse has enjoyed the kind of success that’s usually reserved for Disney extravaganzas and jukebox musicals. The show, adapted from a 30-year-old children’s novel by the British author Michael Morpurgo, is about Joey, a spirited, rust-coloured stallion sold to the British cavalry during the First World War, and the valiant quest of his young former owner to retrieve him. After premiering at London’s National Theatre in 2007 and shattering box office records, it quickly moved to the West End and then to Broadway, earning the Tony Award for best play last spring.
