Stars of the Great Russian Ballet Companies at the Aotea Centre

By BERNADETTE RAE

They arrived in Auckland from Moscow after three days of intense and difficult travel, just hours before Saturday evening's opening performance, delayed by the crisis in the planet's troubled skies. Galina Stepanenko, the star with the biggest reputation, who had to travel from Turkey, did not arrive.

A lesser troupe might well have given the Saturday night performance away.

There were signs of the understandable jetlag in the "stars" but only a slight hesitation here and there, a balance not quite perfectly captured for as long as was needed, a masculine leap or two that showed more than a quiver of strain.

The corps de ballet was significantly off at times, giving the appearance of having their shoes on the wrong feet - or somebody else's shoes. Maybe they did, in the rush.

The spotlight also had trouble in tracking the action.

But these were insignificant and understandable quibbles compared to the beauty and strength and artistry and superb technique we also saw.

Tatyana Shanina and Alexei Shanin, from the St Petersburg Ballet, were stunning in their pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty: she blonde and unbelievably slender with long legs and an other-worldly perfection of line and lyricism; he blond and most elegant in form.

Nina Semizorova - surely a grande dame at 45 years - and Mark Peretokin, from the Bolshoi Ballet, led a 30-minute segment from Swan Lake exquisitely. A quartet of cygnets also shone out of the corps with distinct brilliance when their time came.

Dmitri Bougaev and Anna Kostina, from the Russian Classical Ballet, delivered a gorgeous Harlequinade in the second half, which also featured Nina Semizorova's rendition of the Dying Swan, for which she has the most expressive and evocative arms.

Ruslan Pronin presented a too brief but exciting solo in Gopak. And the Bolshoi's Irina Pyatkina with Mark Peretokin and a devilish Pronin took the lead in a bizarrely stylish excerpt from Faust, which concluded the programme.

Even jet-lagged this group has it all - tradition, guts, artistry and super-thin thighs. It might even have Stepanenko on subsequent nights.