Jewels on the Town

THE KIROV BALLET DAZZLES D.C. AND NEW YORK

I he tiny dancer in the velvet jewel box is not just a little girl’s delight; it is truth. Ballet companies guard their ballerinas as if they were precious gems, national treasures. When George Balanchine choreographed Jewels, a massive threepart masterpiece that looms like a castle in mist, he was celebrating many aspects of ballet: the three great schools of classical dancing (French, American, Russian), the poetic power of ballet’s cut-crystal technique, but, most of all, ballerinas—the emeralds, rubies, and diamonds of ballet. It takes at least three phenomenal women to do justice to Jewels. Today, this kind of wealth is beyond most companies. Which makes the Kirov Ballet’s smashing success in Jewels—performances that wowed even the snooty Brits!—all the more intoxicating and important. In full renaissance under the blazing leadership of Valery Gergiev and ballet director Makhar Vasiev, Russia’s premier ballet company is now an embarrassment of riches, its ballerinas sweeping through the vaults and forests of Jewels as if born there. Veronika Part has the face and figure of Ava Gardner. Diana Vishneva is as plush as a couplet from Pushkin. And queen of them all, Uliana Lopatkina. In Act III, “Diamonds,” she’s like something out of a stem fairy tale, icy and melting at once, her phrasing regal, deeply musical, yet touched at the pulses with fire. Among those who’ve danced “Diamonds” after Suzanne Farrell, the role’s originator, Lopatkina alone has possessed it. The Kirov Ballet brings its crown jewels to the Kennedy Center in Washington this February and to the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in July. Be warned: these glittering tickets will go fast. -LAURA JACOBS

LAURA JACOBS