Poland has banned all performances of anything Russian. No Tchaikovsky ballets and a planned season of Boris Godunov this coming April has been cancelled. The company’s Don Quixote has, however, survived the cull despite being decidedly Russian. The original ballet, with choreography by Marius Petipa and Alexander Gorsky, premiered in Moscow, in 1869. This version has been restaged by Alexei Fadeyechev, a great Bolshoi dancer, renowned for his partnership with Nina Ananiashvili; and the son of Nikolai, another great Bolshoi dancer.
Alexei Fadeyechev created a production of Don Quixote on the Bolshoi in 1999, which toured to London in 2019; but this Polish version is a co-production with Royal Ballet Flanders, where it premiered in May 2014. Perhaps those more recent origins (and the fact that Fadeyechev is now resident in Finland) has saved it from Poland’s understandable Russian exclusion zone.
In any staging, Don Quixote, perhaps alongside The Sleeping Beauty, is the ballet that truly exposes a company’s technical strength with such a plethora of solo roles spread over three long acts. It was a challenge that the Polish company, under the directorship of Krzysztof Pastor since 2009, met with alacrity and no shortage of charm and humour. It provided an evening of great skill and joyful entertainment that deservedly earned a full standing ovation from a delighted audience and an excess of curtain calls that genuinely seemed to embarrass the performers!
Fadeyechev’s staging is quite spartan in terms of set design. The first act town square has only two houses and a creased backdrop which rather spoiled the effect. The second act opens in a tavern scene before departing into the open countryside for Don Quixote’s tilt at the windmill and his subsequent dream of Dulcinea and the dryads. Instead of going back to the town square for the wedding festivities, they take place in a castle courtesy of benevolent local aristocracy. It creates a pacy narrative that rattles along.
The leading roles of Kitri/Dulcinea and Basilio were performed by Chinara Alizade and Vladimir Yaroshenko, two Russian dancers who have been with Polish National Ballet since 2015 and 2007 respectively. Both experienced dancers in their mid-30s, they performed the many facets of these difficult roles with confident equanimity. Yaroshenko has immense upper body strength put to great use in those long-held, one-arm presage lifts. There seemed to be several more, here, spread across first and third acts, one of which was held calmly for so long I wondered if the orchestra had gone for a drinks-break! Yaroshenko spins and jumps well and if any flaw was perceptible, it was only that he seemed to be rushing his fast footwork in Act 1 to keep up with the music. Alizade is a refined and expressive dancer, comfortable in both the feisty, back-bending jumps as Kitri and the elegant “white act” aesthetic as Dulcinea (the object of Don Quixote’s hallucinations). Together, Alizade and Yaroshenko had the necessary chemistry to make the Kitri/Basilio dynamic work with a rich mix of humour and romance.
The cast generally was well-suited to the familiar roles that we know and love. I particularly enjoyed the crisp attack of Anastasiia Bilokon as a dreamy Amor and a word of praise is also due to Antonio Lanzo, making his debut as a particularly clumsy, comedic and camp Gamache (dressed like an outrageous glam-rock 70s pop star), following an eighteen-month lay-off after a cruciate ligament injury. Kitri’s father, Lorenzo, was given a higher profile than is usually the case and Wojciech Ślezak brought his own impactful comedic motifs to the role. Fadeyechev gives a key role to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, portrayed very traditionally by Łukasz Tużnik and Paweł Koncewoj. The Don’s horse is always an interesting design choice and here Thomas Mika has gone for an effective life-size model in iron mesh, moved about on a wheeled platform.
Ryota Kitai and Karolina Kiermut ripped up the stage with their volatility as Espada and Mercedes and Daria Majewska was a sublimely regal Queen of the Dryads. As if Don Quixote is not already enough of a challenge, Fadeyechev requires even more with an energetic back-bending bolero (performed by Marta Fiedler and Maksim Woitul) and by inserting two additional variations into the grand pas de deux (danced delightfully by Natalia Pasiut and Hannah Cho).
Don Quixote is a lovely, sunny ballet that is difficult not to enjoy. Here the entertainment was further enlivened by a rousing orchestral performance topped off by the ebullience of conductor, Marta Kluczyńska. The orchestra pit at the Teatr Wielki is shallow and the whole of the conductor’s upper body is visible, so we could see that she put a dancer’s movement effort into her conducting.
