Dance & Music Reviews : Ayupova, Ivanova: Two Kirov Juliets

COSTA MESA — Zhanna Ayupova broke a lot of hearts Sunday afternoon during the final Kirov Ballet performance of “Romeo and Juliet” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Dancing opposite the previously reviewed Alexander Gulyayev, the long-limbed, baby-faced Ayupova took Juliet from an irrepressibly giggly opening scene with the Nurse through ever-deepening levels of passion to a powerful, almost maternal statement of grief and self-sacrifice in the final scene.

Emphasizing tenderness in lyrical passages and vulnerability in moments of pain, Ayupova always made the steps and body sculpture of the role come from an emotional base. In the Balcony Scene, you saw a young girl spinning in a happy daze, not a ballerina executing turns. Yes, the turns proved perfectly shaped, but Ayupova’s Juliet had other things on her mind than choreography.

In contrast, the coolly accomplished Veronika Ivanova approached the role primarily as a stylistic challenge in the Saturday afternoon performance. When this Juliet confronted her father, or threw herself into Romeo’s arms, the emotions involved seemed very feeble pretexts for a series of self-consciously exquisite technical effects.

Obsessed with the placement of her limbs, Ivanova’s Juliet scarcely noticed Romeo and never really died: As the lights faded, you saw her rearranging herself atop his corpse as if to make a better picture--tragedy as a branch of interior design.

Happily, the Saturday afternoon cast boasted the hottest, most virtuosic Romeo of the Kirov season, a second-rank (soloist-level), sullen-looking blond named Andrei Yakovlev. Initially callow, Yakovlev’s Romeo developed a sense of impending doom by the time Mercutio died--and a feeling of overwhelming loss in his final scene.

Effortful lifts and passages of rough partnering weakened the duets, but the freedom and ardor of Yakovlev’s solos gave them an excitement beyond their technical excellence.