DANCE REVIEW : Maximova, Vasiliev, ‘Stars of Bolshoi’ at UCLA

If there is such a thing as poetic justice it was mightily served Saturday at Royce Hall, UCLA. Ekaterina Maximova and Vladimir Vasiliev, celebrated artist-dissenters within the Bolshoi Ballet these past 17 years and thus absent from interim tours to the West, finally returned to Los Angeles.

Now in their 50s, the married duo--leading a little contingent called “Stars of the Bolshoi”--boasts an allure that needs no Klieg lights.

She, the epitome of Russian soulfulness, still looks remarkably girlish and dances with a matchless ecstasy, a honed articulation. He, a Spartacus of a hero who exuded idealism and humanity as few dancers ever have, still does. True, he no longer attempts anything on that former soaring scale. But his simplest gesture, in a program featuring his own choreography, seemed to explode in passion.

Together Maximova and Vasiliev looked like the hand-in-glove partnership they are--he a hulk of a protective figure enveloping her, she, all fragile tendrils clinging to and unfurling from him. In their duet from “Anyuta,” they etched something akin to the pathos of a Chaplin or Fellini. In another from “Suite Nostalgique,” he even pulled off that old Bolshoi stunt, a one-arm lift.

But the brand of Expressionism his choreography typically espouses has little to do with feats. Rooted in dramatic narrative, it deals with human motives.

Even the above-named piece, an homage to Galina Ulanova that begins as a classroom exercise, breaks down to vignettes of chaste melancholy--especially the duets and solos (to mazurkas and nocturnes of Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev a la Chopin, courtesy of Bolshoi pianist Emma Lippa).

An evocation of the Romantic spirit, it is rife with fugitive visions and lusty exuberance.

Elsewhere, a great variety of themes--from the villainy of “Macbeth” to the sorrow of a Chekhov story to a caractere showpiece (for bravura dancer Gennady Yanin)--attested to the strengths of Vasiliev’s story-oriented, non-steppy choreography.

The nine other superb dancers, each made familiar through an astutely programmed evening that surely would not have satisfied a dyed-in-the-wool Balanchinian, found grateful opportunities.