'Spartacus' by the Bolshoi Ballet at the Royal Opera House

Every couple of years the Bolshoi Ballet takes over the Royal Opera House stage to perform a short summer season of ballets from its repertoire. This year they're doing 'Spartacus', a ballet that had it's greatest success with its 1968 performances when student demonstrations swept across the world, the government of France was threatened by popular revolt and more serious revolt in places like Czechoslovakia. So what better tale to tell than that of the original Roman rebel?

'Spartacus' is by Aram Khachaturian (music) and Yuri Grigorovich (choreography) and was first performed in 1968 that made it popular and now a standard of Russian ballet. As with all ballets, it takes liberties with the facts of the story but that doesn't really matter since this is about love and war, freedom against slavery and grand gestures and spectacle. The staging is minimal but someone's obviously been playing with the rather spectacular and atmospheric lighting.

The ballet opens with the triumphant return to Rome of Crassus after his successful war against the pagans and there's  greta scene when he, basically, shows off and lauds it over the mere soldiers that won his victory, flashing his staff of authority all over the place and leaping into the air flourishing his sword. Yes, I get it, you won. Then, as an entertainment, he has Phrygia (Spartacus's wife) dance for him and has Spartacus fight and kill his friend. This is too much for our hero who starts a rebellion and the slave escape into the countryside of Italy.

Rallying his new army, Spartacus leads an assault on Rome and Crassus's estate to free the slave women, including his own wife. Cue an extended pas de deux between them to celebrate their love and reunion. It doesn't all go smoothly, however, and Crassus finds out where they're encamped and attacks, wins and traps Spartacus in a very dramatic scene where he ends up with dozens of spears in his chest lifting him off the ground as his life ebbs away. That image is repeated at the end on his funeral pyre when his followers hands mimic the spears reaching up to him as a hero - that's a very dramatic ending.

Phew! There's dancing and leaping, there's height and speed, romantic interludes and very masculine attacking dancing, it's all in there somewhere and, being the Bolshoi, there's some right old show off segments where the stars get to do their stuff. The last time I saw the Bolshoi I'd have said it was their 'B' team, that is, the dancers weren't fully synchronised and weren't their best, but this time the dancing was far better. This is what you'd expect from the Bolshoi.

The two male leads clearly had their own special skills - Denis Rodkin as Spartacus seemed to specialise in running leaps and Artemy Belyakov as Crassus did lots of spinning round and stopping dead still. We also had Eleanora Sevenard as Phrygia and Yulia Stepanova as Aegina, Crassus's courtesan. They were all technically excellent but strangely cold and not very engaging.

During one of the sword fights I couldn't help but compare them to the Royal Ballet, thinking of the Bolshoi as an early cubist painting by Braque and the Royal Ballet as a warm Titian full of colour and movement. I particularly thought of the sword fencing scenes in MacMillan's 'Romeo & Juliet', that premiered just a few years before this ballet, with the dancers leaping around in a synchronised sword fight with rapiers flashing and slashing at each other.  I don't know if 'Spartacus' is in the Royal Ballet's repertoire but I suspect their version of this ballet would be much more engaging. On the other hand, I'm probably biased in favour of the Royal Ballet whose stage the Bolshoi were dancing on.

So there you have it, the Bolshoi in London again and it's great to see a visiting company put on some of its signature dances, especially one I've never seen before. It was good to see the dancers and the production - and I can only admire Belyakov's ability to spin round and round and stop dead still on a pin. While aspects of the production were technically amazing I missed the warmth and passion I expected (and hoped) to see.