Mikhailovsky Ballet: Giselle, Coliseum - dance review

A soaring show led by ethereal superstar Natalia Osipova
P13 Giselle ©Alastair Muir
©Alastair Muir
Lyndsey Winship30 March 2013

The dance world’s collective jaw dropped when hot young ballet couple Ivan Vasiliev and Natalia Osipova jumped ship from the Bolshoi Ballet to the lesser-known Mikhailovsky.

But with the horrific acid attack on Bolshoi director Sergei Filin revealing stories of seething rivalries at the Moscow institution, the pair’s decision to go with the star billing, big cheque and creative opportunities at the reborn St  Petersburg theatre looks canny.

This London tour is the first under Spanish director Nacho Duato. It’s also the last, as he is taking up a post in Berlin next year.

Duato has broadened the company’s horizons with new work in addition to the standards but this season opener is a classic slice of the 19th-century supernatural, Giselle, with Osipova in the lead.

Vasiliev may have the boyish appeal and big leaps but Osipova is something else. She’s the kind of dancer who’s so good that even when the rest of the cast is perfectly decent (which they are, bar a clumpy corps de ballet in the second act) you’re just twiddling your thumbs waiting for her to come back on.

Osipova is so technically adept she can alter her physicality with each emotion and has an ethereality that makes it look as if she’s moving in slo-mo even when she’s dead on the beat. She’s an intensely involved actress, whether it’s the complexity in her eyes as she’s enchanted by the gilded robes of her noblewoman love rival, or the way she dementedly re-enacts her whirlwind romance, zombified, when she realises she’s been betrayed, or when, later, she turns into the spookiest dead girl you’ve ever seen. It might as well be a one-woman show.

Until Friday. Season continues until April 7 (020 7845 9300, eno.org)

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in