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November 2003
Daria Pavlenko
The Kirov-Mariinski Ballet
She gradually came up through the ranks, never much publicized by her company. She is obviously not one of those sky-kicking gymnasts, and basically remains a star in spite of herself. Yet in the last couple of years Daria Pavlenko gave such ample proof of her artistic potential, her reliability and versatility, that her place among the top ballerinas of her generation is now firmly secured. Physically gifted, if (a stunning face excepted) with rather traditional, non-spectacular bodily features, it is essentially by sticking to the old virtues of classical ballet—the beauty of her plastique, the quality of her movement, her musicality, her sense of style and colour of the ballet—that Daria Pavlenko stands out.
Her performances in leading roles of ballets like Swan Lake, La Bayadère, The Sleeping Beauty (as Lilac Fairy in K. Sergeyev’s version) and Raymonda are steeped in the grand classical manner, emphasizing the qualities of choreography and music rather than the technical prowess of the dancer. With her convincing portrayals of the hapless Mekhmene Banu in Grigorovich’s Legend of Love, the calculating Siren in Balanchine’s The Prodigal Son, the incarnation of feminine self-awareness in Petit’s Le jeune homme et la mort, or when moving in the gloomy regions of Ratmansky’s Middle Duet, Pavlenko moreover displayed her dramatic abilities. During the US tour of the Kirov Ballet, Pavlenko’s performances in Jewels have been proven revelatory to many and it is significant that a Russian dancer harvests such kudos from American critics and balletomanes for her interpretation of the Balanchine repertory.
Born in Moscow in 1978, Daria Pavlenko trained at the Vaganova Academy in then Leningrad. She completed the full eight-year course with Olga Iskanderova and for the last three years with Elena Evteyeva. Upon graduation in June 1996 she joined the Mariinsky Ballet as a member of the corps de ballet. Unlike some of her generation who were made principals virtually overnight, Pavlenko followed the slower, more traditional path and took advantage of regular corps de ballet work before the more important assignments. So far she has been working with two of the Kirov’s most distinguished coaches, former ballerinas Gabriella Komleva and Elena Evteyeva. Although Komleva was without doubt essential in Pavlenko’s formative years, Evteyeva proved the better match, both stylistically and temperamentally.
Considering her place inside the Mariinsky, I always thought of Daria Pavlenko as a welcome relief to the seemingly endless wave of hyperflex and hyperstretch dancing favoured by the management in the last decades of Mariinsky history. As one London balletomane who first laid eyes on Pavlenko in performance last summer, exclaimed not without a fair amount of surprise: “My, that’s a true Kirov ballerina!” —Marc Haegeman
[Editor's Note: For news, background information and some terrific photographs about the Kirov and Bolshoi Ballets and their dancers, visit Marc Haegeman's site, For Ballet Lovers Only.]