The Bolshoi Ballet is back at the Royal Opera House for a short season with some of its most popular productions. The company opened with the spectacular Spartacus, and continued with Swan Lake (The Bright Stream and Don Quixote are also due to be performed).

All the performances are dedicated to Victor Hochhauser, who died earlier this year. He, together with his wife Lilian, was instrumental is bringing Russian ballet to the West and this season is a fitting tribute to his love of the art.   

Swan Lake is always a crowd-pleaser, but Yuri Grigorovich’s version is not a traditional reading.  Under the Soviet regime, Swan Lake had to have a happy ending, but thankfully that narrow-minded artistic edict no longer applies. This production reinstates a sad ending but it is less a tragic fairytale and more of an examination of Prince Siegfried’s troubled mind, with Von Rothbart replaced by “The Evil Genius”.

Much of the famous Petipa/Ivanov choreography remains, but Grigorovich takes some liberties with Tchaikovsky’s score, chopping and changing the order of some of the dances and scrapping the final magnificent climax.The final scene with Prince Siegfried standing alone clearly does not work - we need to see the Prince and his beloved Odette together in their feathery heaven, while the orchestra blasts out those dramatic final bars of Tchaikovsky's magnificent score.

The dancing is impressive: the corps de ballet are well drilled and sublime as the swans in the lakeside scenes. The Russian style is broad and expansive, with legs curving ever upwards en attitude; arms exotic and luscious.

In the ballroom scene, the national dances were led by various princesses who, together with their retinues, danced their variations en pointe. They performed beautifully, but there is nothing like heeled boots and some real stomping for giving  those character dances, well…some character.

Georgy Gusev stole the show at the performance I saw, defying gravity as The Fool, with a series of breathtaking jumps and pirouettes. Yulia Stepanova was a touching Odette and a sparking, sexy Odile, while Artem Ovcharenko looked suitably pained as Siegfried.

This version of Swan Lake may not please the purists, but the dancing is something to behold.