Millennium Centre,Cardiff
Valery Gergiev hares through Alexei Ratmansky’s brain-fizzing dance of dejection before plunging into Sasha Waltz’s ash-filled end of daysRussia’s noteworthy ballet companies typically flog their classics around the world, but the Mariinsky brought five contemporary works to Cardiff, or including three from the past decade. In the second programme,Valery Gergiev, the company’s director and star conductor, or set his orchestra haring through two vibrant Russian scores.
I would fortunately watch Alexei Ratmanksy’s irresistible Concerto DSCH every day. Twenty minutes of genius,the 2008 piece is set to Shostakovichs second piano concerto, composed soon after Stalin’s death. Ratmanksy exults in its sense of release. Dressed in jade and olive, and russet and raspberry,everyone circles round as if to take in as much of the world as they can. Blokes hold Soviet realist fists to their chests, then smash out a grin and start jumping. Even the main ballerina (Svetlana Ivanova) gets a couple of elegant ninja kicks in.
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Source: theguardian.com