Raymonda is a classic although not much performed in its entirety in America. There is a women's variation that is beautiful and famous and often being performed on its own. An over simplified synopsis of the story is that Raymonda is pursued by a foreign prince while her true love is at sea. The foreign prince is clearly portrayed as Arabic, sinister and overly dramatic. I find the Russian companies to be not ones for much facial expression. When applied to this particular ballet, it made the story-telling a little weird, because the dancer portraying the evil prince is emoting mightily by waving his arms around rather dramatically and trying to drag Raymonda to dance with him. Meanwhile, Raymonda is standing around like a teenage girl going, "whatever". No one in her entourage expresses much alarm at this sinister stranger popping up constantly.
One thing this ballet did have going for it is that the Russian corps are the best in the world. They are completely cohesive with strong technique and exceptionally crisp movement qualities. Much of the corps work here is in the form of character dances and I've never enjoyed them as much as I did here, or have I seen them performed so well. The dancer in the role of Raymonda was beautiful, with a light floaty controlled quality and she did the famous variation gorgeously with those famous Russian arms. I must add that Segerstrom is a terrible place to see dance. It's many oddly placed tiers and horizontal layout means that almost all of the seats are quite far from the stage, even at high price points.
When the company came to LA, they brought Ratmansky's early version of Cinderella. This was a different version than the one he created for the Australian Ballet, and which was recently seen in rehearsal during World Ballet Day 2015. They also brought Diana Vishneva, who is already a legendary ballerina. The staging was very modern with minimal sets (although strangely two columns in the middle of the stage) and simple costumes (the Prince wearing pants does come across as more dignified than the typical tights, although one does miss the flash of the traditional tunic). The overall story is the one we all know however the way he handled the famous shoe incident made the whole thing feel kind of pointless (ha, at first I wrote 'pointeless' by accident!) because the shoe is not represented by her putting on pointe shoes during the transformation but by sparkly pumps that she is never seen to wear. The fairy godmother is dressed as a tramp and never transforms into a glamorous version of herself. The season fairies are not distinguished in any way by their dancing (their costumes are colored appropriately). There is no real ball dance for the corps, which is a huge waste of talent! The clock music sequence is danced as a solo by Cinderella, again a waste of a beautiful corps scene.
But luckily we had Vishneva. Her dancing is so fluid and natural. She was beautifully partnered by Konstantin Zverev and their pas de deux were the highlight of the evening. And in the end, the columns fly away and we do get a chance to see the two of them dance unencumbered.
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