Mikhailovsky Ballet: Triple Bill, Coliseum - dance review

It’s been a triumphant visit to London for St Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Ballet these past two weeks but so far it’s been all about the starry headline dancers. You might think they were disguising a second-rate troupe with a few big signings but it turns out that’s not the case. This final show, a triple bill of works by the Mikhailovsky’s artistic director, Nacho Duato, is a great showcase for the company’s elegant dancing.

Spanish contemporary choreographer Duato joined the Mikhailovsky in 2011 and leaves next year but in his short tenure has produced a lot of new work. It’s very much in the school of Jirí Kylián: less classical than effortlessly classy, with ballet’s beauty minus the prissiness and pointe shoes, tasteful music, flattering lighting, long legs showing off their splits and the odd choreographic quirk. So maybe it looks a little familiar — but it also looks bloody gorgeous.

The Schubert-set Without Words is full of silkily legato dancing, the cast of eight in constant motion like a stream of consciousness but with an underlying stillness. Arvo Pärt’s choral harmonies give the second piece, Nunc Dimittis, a sense of hushed gravity, with a strong performance at its centre from Ekaterina Borchenko.

The finale, however, takes a different tack. Prelude is an expression of the choreographer’s experience of bringing contemporary dance to a classical company. It’s a meeting of mismatched styles and scenarios, as if dancers have wandered into each other’s ballets. He chops up music by Handel, Beethoven and Britten and evokes courtly, contemporary and classical tropes.

One minute there’s a bare stage, backdrop raised to reveal ladders and lighting rigs, the next the sets come down and we’re in a fairytale forest with corps de ballet girls in luxuriously meringue-like chiffon skirts (Carrie Bradshaw would be jealous).

But unlike their Romantic counterparts, these neo-sylphs lift their skirts over their heads, lie on the floor and freeze in twisted gestures.

Elsewhere, a modern(ish) couple get in a tangle, there’s buoyant jumping from the company’s men, more sleek moves from Borchenko and ex-Mariinsky dancer Leonid Sarafanov making a convincing leading man. In the classical vs contemporary debate, it’s only a gentle questioning, nothing groundbreaking, but that hardly matters when it’s so lovely to look at.