Dance and music share the spotlight - News - Vladimir Vasiliev, Mstislav Rostropovich and the Lithuanian National Ballet in England - Brief Article

Dance Magazine, July, 2002 by Margaret Willis

"Music and dance are one," said Bolshoi principal-turned-choreographer Vladimir Vasiliev at a roundtable talk on Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet in London's Barbican Concert Hall this March. "You have to visualize music, and when it unites with dancing, it's a miracle happening." That evening, he proved his point.

The Bolshoi legend was in England to join forces with another Russian great, Mstislav Rostropovich, the famed cellist and conductor who, for many years, directed the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. Rostropovich was in town to celebrate his 75th birthday in concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra. But for three evenings the two Russians combined their talents in a rare visual and aural delight--the full score of Prokofiev's most famous ballet, conducted by the maestro, with Vasiliev's ingenious choreography, danced by the Lithuanian National Ballet.

In this version, Vasiliev sees the musicians and dancers as equal protagonists and the conductor as the main hero, around whom the story evolves. So he has divided the stage into three levels, with the orchestra in the middle circling the conductor. The action-packed choreography takes place on all three tiers, moving from the raised back stage, through the musicians, to the lowest one in front. (The Barbican's three-jete-width apron proved somewhat challenging for the athletic dancers.) The staging was especially effective when the two families, each on a different level, feuded with each other before pitching themselves into a melee of movement using all three sections.

The two Russian superstars originally planned to stage the ballet in Italy's Arena di Verona, but this was never realized. It was premiered by the Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet in 1990, and for ten years it has been in the repertoire of the Lithuanian company, where, according to director Tatjana Sedunova, it has proved a "phenomenal success." The Baltic company, whose roots go back to the sixteenth century, has been to Britain only once before, in 1935.

Under Rostropovich's authoritative conducting, the LSO played with great passion and force. But the evening was his. In the final bars of the piece, the maestro lay down his baton and moved to front where the doomed lovers lay. There he knelt, and as the music came to its conclusion, he tenderly joined their hands.