KVT – Review on Don Quixote

Quixotic Dilemma

The ballet, Don Quixote, is a great old war horse trotted out by good ballet companies all over the world to show off the talents of dancers in their youthful primes when they can leap as light as air and imbue the entertaining, if incoherent, plot line, with youthful zest and the highlights of their good classical training. Over the past couple of years it’s been staged to great acclaim by brilliant companies as diverse as the Bolshoi, The American Ballet Theater, and Ballet Nacional De Cuba.
Set to the music of Ludwig Minkus, the ballet was originally choreographed for the Bolshoi by Marius Petipa in 1869 and has been an essential part of their repertoire since then.

The variation we saw at the Opera House over the weekend was a youthful and earnest production by, mainly, ballet students and produced by The Discovery Ballet Company… which appears to be funded by a couple of philanthropists determined to give young dancers a chance to show their developing classical dance skills.

As soon as I saw the name of Vietnam’s finest ballet talent, Cao Chi Thanh, on the publicity blurb I was determined to get a seat. In act one, Thanh showed his diverse abilities and was replaced by tall, lithe and developing, Nguyen Van Nam for the pivotal last acts. As energetic as Nam was, especially in the lift and twist pas de deux with Quynh Lien as the flirtatious Dulcinea who fearlessly hurled herself over meters of air into his arms, I’d have loved to see Thanh curving space into symmetrical lines in the final and pivotal Pas de Deux.

The dancers were not really up to the demands of the ballet though, as usual, the young men showed that they will be able to leap and twirl with the best of them in the not too distant future. The females, as usual, seem not to be able to be as light as air. But it is not the ability to dance a classical ballet that is important but the fact that the dancers are receiving a competent and sometimes brilliant classical training.

I’ve long said that I believe that the sooner Vietnam has a contemporary dance company, the better the reputation of Vietnamese dancers will shine on the world stage. A very solid and thorough classical underpinning is necessary for all great contemporary dance companies and these young people, male and female, have that. I’d rather see money spent in engaging good, modern choreographers and mounting new, shorter pieces rather than in the staging of sometimes impossibly demanding classical works.

That said, there will always be a local audience for classical performances no matter how unsuited the dancers are and Quixote was somehow saved by the somewhat gorgeous, if sometimes inappropriate costumes, by flickerings of brilliance, by a couple of great circus performers, by the young nymphettes who were chubbily cute if nothing else, and by a very loud sound system that drowned out the chatterers nearby.

Next weekend sees an evening of Ballet by members of The National Ballet Company and, either being an inveterate balletomane or a glutton for punishment, I’ve booked a best seat… and as has been the case with Don Quixote and Dao Anh Khanh’s disappointing ‘Tree of life’, it’s the anticipation of what may be that buoys me along.