Bolshoi's Roman spectacular!

If art is meant to ruffle feathers, stir controversy and make you think, then the Bolshoi Ballet has succeeded in spades.

Tutu-and-tiara troupes don't usually rock boats, but this week at the Opera House the Bolshoi's modern-day version of Romeo And Juliet prompted booing and set the ballet establishment and the dance theatre rebels at each other's throats.

There were no pointe shoes, no floaty dresses and no grand arabesques. The traditionalists loathed it; the radicals saw it as a liberation from the shackles of convention.

But, while they slug it out, the Bolshoi is starting its own battle in a three-night run of Spartacus, Yuri Grigorovich's sword-and-sandals epic which tracks the slave uprising against Roman authority.

Spartacus is a colossal ballet, a three-and-a-bit hour spectacular with huge themes, big music, and awesome dancing. It caused a sensation when first performed in London in 1969, and at last night's opener the scale and volume of the dancing still left you reeling. Endless solos, huge leaps, one-arm lifts, more leaps, rolling turns, and spins so numerous they blur before your eyes.

The dancers seem to drive on and on, the men barely breaking sweat, the women knocking off lengthy variations as cool and foxy as cocktails at dusk.

Galina Stepanenko was especially convincing as the courtesan Aegina, a plump, racy dancer who slinks over Crassus with voluptuous allure. She is also ruthless and scheming, and entraps the gladiators with vino and whores.

Anna Antonicheva is suitably demure as Phrygia, Spartacus's elegant, virtuous sweetheart who stays loyal until his unhappy end.

That comes at the hands of Crassus, the leader of the Roman army, danced with convincing brutality by the long-legged Vladimir Neporozhny. However, it is Dmitri Belogolovtsev as the eponymous hero who knocks spots off, his dancing fine-tuned, his energy endless and his acting sensitive given the rough-hewn nature of the role.

Spartacus is a heroic-romantic take on the gladiator story, plus an allegory of the peasants rising up against Czarist tyranny.