Russian Ballet Icons Gala 2018 review: A masterclass in showboats and seduction

Think tutus and you’re almost certainly thinking Marius Petipa.

As well as creating box-office favourites The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, his fingerprints are all over Giselle, Coppélia and Le Corsaire. Petipa may have been born in Marseilles and trained in Brussels, but to many he is Russian ballet.

This year’s Icons Gala commemorates the 200th anniversary of that great choreographer’s birth. Not that you’d be able to guess from a quick glance at the line-up. Other than a few nods to the 19th-century classics, the bill is packed with modern showboats and light divertissements. Luckily, it’s all danced so beautifully it’s hard to care.

The loudest cheers were reserved for Bolshoi stars Maria Alexandrova and Vladislav Lantratov, who provided a masterclass in how to pull off Don Quixote’s firecracker virtuosity with a wink and a flirtatious smile. Ekaterina Krysanova and Kimin Kim also made an easy meal of Le Corsaire’s fiendishly difficult grand pas de deux and coda, with its soaring jetés, impeccable balances and lightning-fast footwork.

The Royal Ballet’s Francesca Hayward— having made her debut in the role two weeks ago —proved again that she is an exquisite Giselle, soft and lyrical, melting into the arms of Federico Bonelli.

Elsewhere, Viktoria Tereshkina expertly seduced her prince Xander Parish with her flawless fouettés from Swan Lake, while Alexei Orlenco as Bach played the great Polina Semionova like a cello.

There was also the chance to glimpse an extract from Yuri Possokhov’s controversial new ballet Nureyev (verdict: interesting) and new ballets A Flashback (lovely) and Warrior Of Light (terrible).