View large image
|
|
A Great Ballet Classic Available At Last On DVD!, September 16, 2007
By J. M WILINSKY (Teaneck, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
The Armenian born, Soviet composer, Aram Khachaturian, created music for the ballet, Gayne (also transliterated as Gayane and Gayaneh, taken from the Armenian, a female name meaning lovely and elegant--it is pronounced guy-yah-NEH, with the stess on the last syllable) in the first half of the twentieth century. He actually created two versions: a long version and a shorter one. The performance on this DVD is actually the shorter one, but it is still 81 minutes long (this DVD also includes 47 minutes of extras, so don't worry, you'll get your money's worth!). Gayne has only been seen rarely in the West, but is very popular in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union. One scene from Gayne actually is well known everywhere, and that is the famous Sabre Dance. Yes, the Sabre Dance is from Gayne! The importance of this ballet in the history of ballet makes this DVD all the more welcome.
This version is choreographed by Boris Eifman and performed by the Latvian Opera And Ballet Company. The choreography is wonderfully intense and impressive, danced to perfection by this Latvian company. In the typical style of Soviet ballet in the twentieth century, Gayne contains an abundance of male dancing, perhaps even more than female, but there is plenty of female dancing, mostly on pointe.
This performance was recorded live, in 1980, at the Bolshoi Theatre (yes, companies other than the Bolshoi perform at the Bolshoi Theatre, even the Kirov Ballet!). The image quality is not as good as today's, but it is quite good, nevertheless, and in color. The sound is in mono, but of good quality. The lighting is also typically Russian, with a rather dark, colorful background and spotlights on individual dancers and dancer combinations.
All the curtain calls are included, and they have prepared a little choreography for some of them, which is rather charming. Surprisingly (actually, VAI, the studio that produces this DVD, is often generous with their extras!), 47 minutes of extras are included. The first one is an older, black and white segment, with remarkably excellent mono sound, of the entire last act of the longer version of Gayne (yet another version of the Sabre Dance is in this segment--this version has the Sabre Dance in the last act, whereas the Latvian performance has it in the second act, which seems to make more sense in terms of the story), performed by the Bolshoi Ballet and conducted by Khachaturian, himself. There is yet another extra from an older Gayne, and also two segments from the Spartacus ballet (also by Khachaturian), all performed by the Bolshoi Ballet, and all in black and white, except for the last one of Spartacus, which is in color.
With all this DVD has to offer, this really deserves to be in any serious ballet video collection.
|
