Amazing Anastasia! This Royal Ballet production is both lyrical and narrative, a danced drama. It is unfortunately based on a made up fraud mostly, but takes the premise... what if... What if Anna Anderson, pretended Romanov Duchess Anastasia, really was a survivor of the Imperial Russian family massacre in 1917: what if she really was who she said she was and plagued by psychological phantoms and nightmares. And turns it into a ballet!
The dancing and story is superb; this a ballet with deckchairs, roller skates and wonderful characterisation, The three older sisters are like fluttering swans; Anastasia is danced brilliantly by Natalia Osipova is full of girlish mischief, always doing things she shouldn't whilst desperately trying to impress as a grown up lady and feeling left out when she can't do all that her adult sisters are doing. The devotion of her family is shown well, but the Tsarevich Alexei is far too sweet in this version - in reality he was more of a spoiled horror at times due to being cossetted from any hurt that could trigger his hidden Haemophilia.
The family's life is one of ease, leisure, beauty, officers! and familial love and devotion. The action moves from yacht to ballroom with some fabulous Old Russian costumes and Mazurkas - also forming dancing patterns - I don't know how they do this without crashing! Dancing revolutionary peasants are assembling in the darkness, utilising wonderful Russian dance steps - suddenly they sweep into the ballroom bringing everything crashing down.
It's psychological rather than historical so everything is seen through Anastasia's eyes - there's an odd bit where Rasputin and someone (a court lady?) are dancing with the Tsar and Tsarina. I think this suggests the politics of the time but it's hard to know what's going on. Rasputin is definitely the villain in this bringing all the trouble and demise of her family; his control of the Tsarina and evil possession of the Royal family is shown throughout the dances; even his possessive carrying of the more and more corpse like Tsarevich in the third act.
The third act is in a mental institution where Anna has been confined, and never has mental anguish been better portrayed with such truth in dance than this. There's a painful and impressive par-de-deux between Anna and her husband as he struggles with the mental and emotional disintegration of his wife; all the time she is haunted by the presence of her past with different characters entering and exiting her line of vision, the events of her life on endless, distracting replay. Rasputin becomes more and more menacing until he almost seems to attack or possess her, representing all the evil that has come upon her and her family. Again, through Anna's eyes, her husband is one dimensional - he could have been more strongly characterised - there's a hint of how she survived through his rescue here, but little more than that. The ending is ambiguous; Anna seems to have come to terms with who she is - but have we, has anyone else? Do we know?
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