Dance
Spartacus in spandex
Laura Freeman
Spartacus
Royal Opera House, until 10 August
Swan Lake
Royal Opera House, until 14 August
It’s togas-a-go-go as the Bolshoi bring Yuri
Grigorovich’s 1956 ballet Spartacus to the
Royal Opera House. Oh dear, I did giggle.
This is Spartacus in spandex with gladiatori-
al G-strings and slave girls dressed for Thra-
cian strip shows. On comes Crassus (Artemy
Belyakov) in the Roman empire’s tiniest
tunic with a legion of soldiers swinging their
shields like Gucci manbags. But what danc-
ing: disciplined, muscular, nakedly heroic.
Very Soviet.
Denis Rodkin is a mighty Spartacus, all
vengeful savagery and outraged buttocks.
There isn’t a dancer in the Royal Ballet to
match his stamina, his power, his splits and
leaps, his reckless stretching beyond possible
endurance. True, there is more gurning than
acting, but naturalism has never been a hall-
mark of Russian ballet.
Anastasia Denisova as Phrygia, sweet-
heart to Spartacus, was fragile and uncertain.
Her lines are exquisite, her precision pains-
ence on opening night, have brought Rus-
sian orchestras, conductors, composers and
dancers to Britain. At a time of renewed
sanctions and ratcheting tensions, remem-
ber the man who held out a hand and invit-
ed Russia to dance.taking, but there was a gymslip gaucheness
to her performance that made you nerv-
ous on her behalf. Svetlana Zakharova as
Aegina, courtesan and lover to Crassus, not
only steals the show, but holds it captive
and demands a ransom. She shares with the
Royal Ballet’s Marianela Nunez a palpa-
ble happiness in dancing. Two years ago, I
interviewed Zakharova in Moscow and she
told me, her translator reaching for the right
word, that she loved to play ‘the hooligan’.
Her Aegina is imperious and impish, feline
and cruel. She is like a gorgeous cobra. Cras-
sus, coming over all Sid James, can’t keep his
hands off her. Zakharova is 40. See her while
you can.
Golden fleeces for the Three Shepherds
(Mikhail Kochan, Georgy Gusev and Alex-
ei Putinstev) who do for shepherd’s crooks
what Gene Kelly did for the umbrella in
Singin’ in the Rain. Who needs a female
partner when the props are this good? Silly,
yes. Practically pantomime, sure. But this is
a stellar Spartacus.
The best productions of Swan Lake run
a feather up your spine. They give you a
sinister, sensuous thrill. Despite a trans-
fixing performance by Olga Smirnova as
Odette/Odile, the Bolshoi’s Swan Lakemanaged only a tremor. As the white swan
Odette, Smirnova effects an extraordinary
transformation. She is fierce and fearful,
guarded and beckoning. Her serene exten-
sions and languid grace lend her Odette an
otherworldly hauteur. As Siegfried, Semy-
on Chudin is a fine dancer but a mimsy
Prince. Next to Smirnova’s swan, Chudin’s
distrait Siegfried is a bit of a goose.
This is not a pretty production. The court
scenes are set against a lurex backcloth of
dreary, slurried greens. The lords and her-
alds dress for Dungeons & Dragons and
wear weird Mick Jagger wigs. Some redemp-
tion comes in the second act with its ravish-
ing tableau of Siegfried’s five auditioning
brides. Hard to choose between them, but
Anna Tikhomirova as the peppy Neapoli-
tan and Victoria Yakusheva as the stately,
saintly Russian are just pipped by Daria
Bochkova’s swishy, seductive Spanish bride.
For Siegfried only Odile will do. As the
black swan Odile, Smirnova is transfixing.
We know she is bewitched and under her
icy control is a shiver of vulnerability. Dur-
ing her surpassingly brilliant throne-room
fouettés I’d swear that smoke came out of
her slippers. On my walk the next morning
I watched the swans on the Serpentine. Not
a patch on Smirnova.
The Bolshoi are here under the aegis
of Victor Hochhauser, who died in March
aged 95. For almost 70 years, Hochhauser
and his wife Lilian, who was in the audi-Zakharova as Aegina not only
steals the show – she holds it captive
and demands a ransomone section of the room for her installation
and video ‘OTHER FIBRES’, starring a
poodle called Gavin, while Lucian Freud’s
whippet, and both drawings and perfor-
mances by Joan Jonas, with her dogs Ozu
and Zina, also appear.
The second half of the gallery space is
housed in the Grade II-listed former Clare
College Mission Church; one of the earliest
examples of poured-concrete construction.
Now named the Dilston Gallery, it’s a venue
for large-scale contemporary art. The cen-
trepiece here is a rolling video installation
by Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed,
which doesn’t go down too well with a vis-
iting poodle who decides to bark at it until
he’s removed. Even the dog bowls are part
of the exhibition, designed by Rob Pruitt
and previously displayed on the streets of
New York as part of the Peanuts Global Art-
ist Collective.
An exhibition about dogs, curated by
dogs, might sound barking. But in reality, it
works. Don’t take my word for it; take your
pooch along yourself and see what they
think. You could even visit on the special
Day for Dogs on 31 August, which will fea-
ture half-hour slots for dog portraits with
Sally Muir, and a special interactive instal-
lation consisting of 1,000 squeaky dog toys.
I can’t quite decide if that sounds more like
heaven or hell, to be honest.
Radio
Two sides to every story
Kate Chisholm
Maybe the equality inspectors at the corpo-
ration didn’t get the chance to vet Richard
Littlejohn’s series for Radio 2, The Years
that Changed Britain Forever, before it was
broadcast on Sunday. Maybe the first pro-
gramme (produced by Jodie Keane) was an
accurate reflection of the year it focused
on, 1972. But the most striking thing about
it was not so much Littlejohn’s thesis, by
which he declared that politically, cultural-
ly and musically it was a pivotal year in our
national history, determining events that
followed much later. No, it was his selection
of music to accompany his thoughts about
how the miners’ strike of 1972 led to the
three day week, which led to the general
election that destroyed Edward Heath and
brought Arthur Scargill to national promi-
nence. Or that the events of Bloody Sunday,
30 January, in Derry, when British soldiers
shot at unarmed demonstrators, killing
14, made it inevitable that the violence in
Northern Ireland would go on for another
three decades.
All this recollecting and theorising was
accompanied by the bad boys of British
rock in full swagger — Jagger, Ferry, Clap-
ton, Stewart. Not a woman’s voice to be
heard. No Lulu, Dusty or Sandy Denny.
Instead, a lot of guitar riffs and male ago-
nising, to which Littlejohn responded, ‘the
music was great’. It was like being taken
back to that period on air when only the
valiant Annie Nightingale was allowed to
be heard talking about rock music, and she
was only given airtime because her voice,
husky and low, could have been taken for
a man’s anyway.
Why, too, begin with 1972? Littlejohn,
of course, is a Daily Mail columnist, and
1972 (do we need reminding?) was the year
we were eventually accepted for entrance
into the Common Market, and when just
eight MPs, as Littlejohn insisted, allowed
the European Communities Act through
parliament, Heath ‘signing away our sov-
ereignty and sacrificing our fishing waters’
along the way. Littlejohn didn’t seem to
think this in any way contradicted his ear-
lier assertion that at that time we were
thought of on the continent as ‘the sick man
of Europe’, suffering power cuts, terrible
economic stagnation, hyper-inflation and
super-high taxes, forcing groups like the