The Americanization of Don Q

By Martha Duffy

A bravura triumph for Baryshnikov and Kirkland

Whatever his private anguish at having left the Soviet Union may be, Mikhail Baryshnikov's professional motto must be "Don't look back." Last week, in an American Ballet Theater premiere at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center, he took Don Quixote, a favorite Russian ballet little known in this country, and turned it into--a classical vaudeville? A romantic comedy? A Broadway musical en pointe? The new Don Q is in part all of these, a marvel of speed, timing and razzle-dazzle. The setting is Spanish and the tradition Russian, but the flavor is distinctly American.

Don Q's subtitle, Kitri's Wedding, more accurately describes both the Russian and the Baryshnikov versions. It is based on an episode in the Cervantes novel in which an innkeeper's daughter, Kitri (danced by Gelsey Kirkland), manages to marry her true love, Basil the Barber (Baryshnikov), in defiance of her father, who has a richer son-in-law in mind. The visionary Don Quixote (Alexander Minz) and his faithful Sancho Panza (Enrique Martinez) are on the periphery of the raucous doings but play no real part.

It would be a mistake to stretch the comparison to an American musical too far. Don Q does have a purely classical dream sequence as well as the familiar wedding pas de deux. Many of the steps come from the century-old Marius Petipa choreography (as revised by Alexander Gorsky). It is in the brashness, polish and satirical twists that Don Q seems transplanted. As Jerome Robbins broke up the anonymity of the old musical chorus line, Baryshnikov has livened up the role played by the corps de ballet, giving many of the 50-odd dancers at least some individuality. Several brief solos, small ensembles or fleeting bits of stage business make for nearly nonstop action. For the A.B.T. corps it must be an exhilarating ballet to dance.

The most exuberant girl around, Kitri, makes a bravura triumph for Gelsey Kirkland. One tends to think of her playing an unearthly maiden in a romantic ballet. But despite her fragile body, she is a gutsy, bold dancer with almost palpable physical courage. She flings herself into the role of Kitri. Her foot hits the back of her head when she jumps (and she leaps the night away). Her attacks are almost stabbing. Her fan flips constantly -- unless she is using it to poke Basil. She so clearly relishes keeping him in line that one wonders if there isn't a bit of a shrew in his future.

The ballet should belong to Kitri-- and eventually it will as it enters the A.B.T. repertory and other men take Basil's part. Right now Baryshnikov's dynamism puts things off balance, much as Marlon Brando's Broadway perfo mance in A Streetcar Named Desire obscured the fact that the play was really about Blanche DuBois. Baryshnikov is the Figaro of Spanish barbers. He flirts recklessly, he fumes, he pouts. He does a wonderful bit with two mugs, leaping and drinking out of both at once. He has a hilarious, hollow-eyed mad scene in which he stabs himself-- a sort of male Giselle. No choreographer-dancer is more generous to his colleagues than Baryshnikov in Don Q, but his acting makes it Basil's story.

The part is interwoven into Baryshnikov's life. He danced the wedding pas de deux at his graduation recital at the Kirov Ballet school in Leningrad. Basil was his first full-length role, one he danced often. Playing it, he says, taught him a great deal: "Technical control, mime, how to use a cape, how to give a flower to a girl, how to be funny, touching, a lover . . . a lot." He is giving those gifts now to the A.B.T. dancers and, one suspects, a profligate present to the company at the box office as well.

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