The Bolshoi Theater closed its 2013-2014 season of ballet earlier this month with a brand-new work based on William Shakespeare’s comedy “The Taming of the Shrew,” in a staging by Jean-Christophe Maillot, director of Monaco’s Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo and one of the world’s most sought-after choreographers.
During his two decades as head of the Monte Carlo troupe, Maillot had previously refused all offers to create a new ballet for any other company. But the persuasive powers of the Bolshoi, principally in the person of its ballet artistic director, Sergei Filin, finally caused him to make an exception.
In an interview published in the Bolshoi’s program book, Maillot added another reason for his change of heart. “No matter how long you have been working with your own company,” he said, “when you are over 50 … you realize that there is less ahead than there is behind. It makes you regret not being more adventurous. Working with a new, unfamiliar company was a challenge I needed.”
Maillot met the challenge superbly, creating for the Bolshoi some 90 minutes or so of nonstop, often breathtaking dance unlike any other to be seen on the theater’s stages.
Maillot’s brief excursion through what is probably the most erotic and “politically incorrect” of Shakespeare’s plays reduces its complicated plot to focus mainly on the central characters: the ill-tempered, aggressive Katherina………..
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