Mikhail Fokine's Firebird presents a peculiar challenge to its ballerina's authority. In a role where she is required to dominate the stage for the first 10 minutes, retire for the next 20 in order to let the story's love interest develop, then return to work her final magic on the cast, the dancer has to be able to impose her will and personality on the ballet in seconds.
Mara Galeazzi, dancing Firebird for the first time on Tuesday, knew exactly the kind of power she wanted to wield. Giving a ferocious forward thrust to the jetés with which she claims the stage, she flares into the ballet like a bird of prey. This Firebird is not a creature of flickering mystery but of almost viciously glamorous snap. With her long, radically jointed limbs Galeazzi defines a glittering geometry within the choreography, tensing her arms into extreme angles that frame a face of dark-eyed fury. The harshness of her interpretation is given nuance, though, by her attentive ear to the music and by the dramatic abruptness with which she surrenders to capture. When Galeazzi's spirit is broken, her body is left shockingly limp.
In Agon, the ballet that follows Firebird in the Royal Ballet's triumphant Stravinsky programme, Galeazzi's spirit is more than matched by Zenaida Yanowsky. The austere lines of Yanowsky's face and body give her a heroine quality and, in this most raptly assertive of roles, her motive is less erotic (as many dancers read it) than the exercise of pure will. Yanowsky's body is her own weapon, and she phrases her moves so pristinely that they flash in the air like steel catching light. The feisty Carlos Acosta looks intriguingly in thrall to her; when he briefly asserts himself the two dancers move so fast and furiously within each other's orbit that sparks fly.
This is possibly Yanowksy's greatest performance to date; Les Noces, the final work, may be one of the company's greatest. The dancers, musicians and singers generate a high-calibre intensity that never flags. There are no stars, no story and no real tunes, and yet it seemed as if the entire spellbound audience never blinked.
