There’s a reason Balanchine suggested we name all ballets “Swan Lake.” American Ballet Theatre acquired Alexei Ratmansky’s 2003 “The Bright Stream” last year, and it would be a smash hit with a more familiar title. Tuesday’s delightful performance showed why.
“The Bright Stream” isn’t something your urologist looks for. It’s the name of the Soviet collective farm where the story unfolds to Shostakovich’s tuneful score, itself condemned after its 1935 premiere.
An unnamed ballerina and her dance partner visit the farm to entertain. Pyotr, a married student, crushes on the ballerina, but she knows his wife, Zina, as her classmate from dancing school. The women decide to teach Pyotr a lesson about romantic liaisons in the dark that ropes in the whole farm.
The company’s original cast has only gotten better. David Hallberg spent last year as the first American principal at Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet. He might have spent it in the Catskills, since his timing’s as good as a Borscht Belt comic’s.
As the ballerina’s partner, he disguises himself in her costume — pointe shoes and all — and knows exactly when to give a look for a laugh, when to float like a sylph and when to clunk to the floor.
As the grand ballerina, Gillian Murphy is gentler in her humor, but still powerful: She leaps in splits around the stage like a fighter plane.
Marcelo Gomes is just as mighty as Pyotr, one half of the country couple. Playing the Soviet hero, he jumps, turns and jumps again. The role of his wife, Zina, is one of Paloma Herrera’s best: No matter how delicate her dancing, she’s a real woman, not a ballerina or a princess. You can feel her frustration when her husband falls for her childhood friend.
It takes an artist to tell a story about infidelity with warmth and grace. Ratmansky’s kind to his characters, even when they’re foolish. He can paint a personality using only movement — such as the doddering but turned-in shuffle of the “inspectors of quality.”
Four casts alternate, but this piece is like a magic coat that seems to fit every dancer. A light comedy about life under Stalin won’t get an A in history class, but even viewing the Soviet Union through rose-colored glasses, this is a marvelous spectacle — a “Bright Stream” that shouldn’t stay unseen.