Moscow City Ballet's Giselle

The Moscow City Ballet are at the Royal Centre this week bringing three performances of popular works in the classical style; Sleeping Beauty,  Giselle and the Nutcracker.

The MCB are no strangers to Nottingham, or indeed most towns with a theatre. They are prolific tourers especially here in the UK with 1417 performances since 1988!

They are an extremely hard working company, whose amazingly athletic dancers perform a punishing calendar of dates to meet the popular demand for Russian Ballet, which is generally assumed to be the best, especially in Britain.

The technical standard of the MCB is very high with well disciplined choreography and a strong standard from the corps de ballet. This is placed within a strict conventional format, all under the eye of the artistic director, and founder of the company, Victor Smirnov-Golovanov who in his day was a principal dancer with the Bolshoi.

Giselle itself was written in 1841 by a French composer Adolphe Charles Adam for the famed Paris Opera and was his most famous work. Giselle is not the fastest paced of pieces with a formulaic love story, which is on the thinner side of things, cue Germanic folktale...

The principal dancers were excellent to watch, and their solo and duo dances were very accomplished, I never cease to be amazed by their levels of fitness and physical prowess. Of particular note were the costumes, which were beautifully presented and colourful, think of 1930s early technicolour films in the Errol Flynn style! Combined with the technically impressive dancing it was a beautiful spectacle. If you are wanting something innovative and a bit different from regular ballet then this is not for you, if you want to see a sumptuous classical presentation of a fairy tale love story then get down to the Theatre Royal - the next performance is the Nutcracker a particular favourite.

The Moscow City Ballet are playing at the Royal Centre until 5th February.

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