The Kirov Shrinks To Fit

Amplitude traditionally been the keynote of Kirov Ballet style, but amplitude was not easily possible Tuesday night at the opening of the company's three-week City Center season. City Center has never been an ideal space for ballet, and certainly not on the grand scale for which the Kirov is famous. The stage here is drastically smaller than at the Kirov's home, the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, or the Metropolitan Opera, where it has customarily performed in New York since its debut here in 1961. At City Center on Tuesday, the ranks of dancers on stage and musicians in the pit (so my ears told me) had been reduced, and scenery was stripped down. Even so, the company seemed to be fighting for every inch of yardage. But they performed valiantly and professionally.

The company performed an all-Petipa program that began with the celebratory final act of "Raymonda." The Kirov's character dancers showed panache in the Polish Mazurka and Hungarian Czardas. In "Raymonda," the classical landscape is beguilingly inflected with some flavor of the Czardas. Uliana Lopatkina was queen of the realm here, in full and majestic control of her very long limbs. Ms. Lopatkina could be called the Catherine Deneuve of classical ballet by virtue of the minimalist style she distills from its airs and graces. Her take can sometimes be a bit futuristic and too cold, but on Tuesday she was mellow and charming. Swirls and swoons interested her as much as right angles. During her solo, she interacted playfully with the accompanying piano. The very tall and greyhound-sleek Danila Korsuntsev gave a clean and springy performance, less lackadaisical than the way I've seen him perform recently in Russia.

In the Grand Pas from "Paquita," Petipa's surviving 1881 addition to his ballet first prepared for St. Petersburg in 1847, there isn't character dance per se, but a tincture of Spanish style to the classicism. On Tuesday, "Paquita" was led by Diana Vishneva and Andrian Fadeyev. New York has never before seen Ms. Vishneva in "Paquita," and it's one of her best roles. Tuesday night, she seemed rattled by the stage's confines, and no one could blame her: The price of letting her leg stretch fully into arabesque was at one point a glancing collision with a scenery flat. She wasn't at her most centered or stable technically, but a less-than-peak performance from her is still a major contribution. This ballet can awaken in a virtuoso performer such as Ms. Vishneva a temptation to oversell or overflounce, yet she resisted. Mr. Fadeyev was his personable balletic self and, all things considered, in very good shape technically. But although these two have danced together many times over the past decade, they were certainly not at their most relaxed or connected. The five soloist variations were danced by Alina Somova, Ekaterina Kondaurova, Valeria Martynyuk, Ekaterina Osmolkina, and Victoria Tereshkina. They were for the most part correct and classical.

In the final act, the Kingdom of the Shades from "La Bayadère," the Kirov omitted scenery altogether in order to give room to the ensemble, reduced here to 24 women. The company appeared to put the very same cast of corps women onstage in all three ballets. Their stamina was extraordinary, despite the fact that almost everyone in this company — both men and women — is now too thin. In this kind of situation, strength takes precedence over any other consideration, and the corps women managed to be not only secure but in possession of a good deal of their expressive and stylistic faculties.

Ms. Somova, having danced a solo variation in "Paquita," now returned as Nikiya. In "Paquita," she had been every bit as guilty of exaggerating her extensions as she has been in the past. She just didn't seem to care how much her silhouette and alignment were disturbed as a result. As Nikiya, she curbed her extensions so that they were acceptable. But she would do better to forget about height altogether until she has been able to bring more warmth, legato, and sensuality into those extensions.

I was of several minds about Leonid Sarafanov's Solor. Mr. Sarafanov is in his mid-20s, but his body and face still look adolescent: Visually, he is improbable in the role of Solor, who is both warrior and spiritual sojourner, seeking the ghost of his beloved in a hallucinogenic Nirvana. On the one hand, Mr. Sarafanov has improved over the past five years that I've seen him dance this hero. He is more actively present for his ballerina, and he has toned down some of his showboating mannerisms. On the other hand, he is still allowed to add his own choreography, whereas the last thing a technician like him needs to do is to dance any additional steps. He can turn and jump to anyone's satisfaction; in his variation and, to a lesser degree, his coda, he was exciting without resorting to flinging the steps around as he sometimes does. Mechanically, his partnership with Ms. Somova worked most of the time, but they failed to generate mystery or poetry in their dialogue together.