Mariinskij Ballet:
"Swan Lake" and "Fokine" Programmes
The Royal Theatre Copenhagen
January 13 - 19 2014
If I look back to the performances I have seen with The Mariinskij Ballet over the last years, very few have been the heritage repertoire. Instead I have seen the company moving toward a more international repertoire. Two years ago the their London performances included three works also done by the Royal Danish Ballet: "In the Night", "Ballet Imperial" and Ratmansky's "Anna Karenina" choreographed for the RDB. The programme also included "Scotch Symphony", although never done by RDB but a work with a strong Bournonville link.
It is an ongoing trend that the major ballet companies gravitates to the same repertoire. I have earlier seen Mariinskij and Paris Opera Ballet in "Jewels". This season I caught Royal Ballets production and it has been announced that RDB will perform the work within the next couple of years. So everybody is more or less doing the same repertoire. There are two reasons behind the trend. The major one is that there are few good choreographers around and secondly each company want to shake their claim to the international classics. "Jewels" in particular is seen as the test of a truly great company with strong soloists and corps. It is more and more regarded as the ballet that define the upper layer in the market.