Celebration David Hallberg and the Bolshoi Ballet

The only things more gold than the gilt curtain of the David H. Koch Theater still called the State Theater by a recalcitrant few were the sets it revealed during last night’s awesome performance by the Bolshoi Ballet. Bolshoi being Russian for grand, the preeminent Moscow-based dance troupe, which, for the first time, has been joined in a New York City summer sojourn by the Bolshoi opera, orchestra, and chorus as well, presented a rendition of Swan Lake that undeniably lived up to the company’s namesake.
 
For precision, majesty, and tradition, Americans will probably never encounter a better bevy of swans. Witnessing the soloist quartet execute Lev Ivanov’s 1895 choreography for Danse des petits Cygnes in the second scene, its four feathered heads seamlessly revolving around the auditorium in absolutely perfect sync, feet aflutter, was enough to send shivers through the aisles. The corps de ballet, which more than ever resembled a well-oiled military machine, was only outdone by Svetlana Zakharova, last night’s Odile and Odette. Positively avian, the prima ballerina was “not at all earthbound,” as Hamish Bowles would put it later on.

  For that, Zakharova has to thank a host of divine genetic gifts, endless training, and, perhaps most importantly, David Hallberg. In the role of Prince Siegfried, Hallberg, the first American principal with the Bolshoi, proved last night once and for all that he is one of the world’s greatest dance partners. As opposed to, say, Roberto Bolle, Hallberg’s genius is not his bravura in a solo moment, but rather his generosity in a pas de deux. At a post-performance dinner hosted across the plaza at Lincoln Ristorante, however, it was Hallberg that was the center of attention. Maria Baibakova, who conceived the evening, led the way in congratulations wearing a cream capelet minidress from Valentino. Joining her was an Eastern European coterie of cochairs like Anna Nikolayevsky and Nasiba Adilova, who at seven-months pregnant, glowed in knit Chanel.

In her introductory remarks, Baibakova was right to flatly address the far more pressing reason that Russia was in the news this morning, which was also the dinner’s inevitable cause célèbre. “It is in times like these that I am reminded of the healing power of the arts,” she said, before asking for a moment of silence in memory of the victims of yesterday’s tragic crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17.
 
Hallberg himself rallied the room by reminiscing how he and “Masha” (Baibakova) started planning the evening last October, while “gorging on blinis” in Moscow. He acknowledged Sergei Filin, the ballet director who only recently recovered from last year’s infamous acid attack and who was also in attendance. “It all started three years ago, when he looked across the table and said, ‘So, are you joining this company or not?’ ” Hallberg remembered.

Since Swan Lake didn’t even let out until after 10:30 p.m., guests only started in on their Michelin-starred food around what would be a reasonable time for breakfast in Moscow. “We’ll all be out of here by 5 or 6 a.m.,” joked Jed Bernstein, the president of Lincoln Center. And yet nobody was quick to depart. Ballerina turned Delpozo U.S. president Indre Rockefeller reminisced about the thrill of once playing Odette herself; Chloe Malle and Ophelie Guillermand modeled their appropriately feathered looks next to Prabal Gurung, who designed both; and the two Carloses (Mota and Souza) kept table 12 in stitches. Without ignoring the precarious moment that currently befalls Russo-American relations, the homecoming of a New York star in Moscow proved a common ground for celebration.