MCB Recent Review

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Recent Review

Prima ballerina Pavlova stole the show

Pavlova makes others pale by comparison

Posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008

By Mark Lowry
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

FORT WORTH – Sometimes the closer of a particular performance is so strong you forget everything that came before it.

Such was the case with Paul Mejia's Violin Concerto, the third of three ballets in the Metropolitan Classical Ballet's Spring Repertory program Monday at Bass Hall.

Mejia has recast this piece, choreographed to the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, numerous times during his North Texas tenure, with what was formerly Fort Worth Dallas Ballet and then Ballet Arlington and its later incarnation, Metropolitan Classical Ballet.

Violin soloist Eric Grossman compellingly played the music (the orchestra was conducted by Bernard Rubenstein), but this piece was all about MCB's prima ballerina, Olga Pavlova, who far eclipsed her co-principal (and husband) Yevgeni Anfinogenov and the rest of the company. Honestly, many of the ensemble segments were marred by imperfect unisons, but whenever Pavlova was onstage, it was impossible to notice anyone else.

Olga Pavlova
Photo by Sharon K. Nolan

She has everything you desire from a star dancer -- the drama, the grace, the presence and impossibly perfect lines. When it was just her and Anfinogenov, he was pretty much her prop.

That couple was also the standout in the opening piece, Pas de Grand, a comical work by Mejia's co-artistic director Alexander Vetrov, using excerpts from Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 1 and Suite No. 2. Vetrov has a gift for comedy in his ballets, and Pavlova and Anfinogenov played up the idea of dancers who don't like each other working together. It was especially funny in the second movement, which you might call a faux pas de deux.

Again, the corps de ballet seemed a little off their game, or maybe the leads were so good that everything else paled.

In between was George Balanchine's fluffy Donizetti Variations, starring Marina Goshko and Andrey Prikhodko. This company has done Balanchine better technically, but it effectively captured its lighthearted spirit.

Mark Lowry is a staff writer for the Star-Telegram

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