No problem telling which composer is which. Hérold is witty, winsome, and hard to forget, from the Dance of the Chickens to the Ribbon Dance for Lise and Colas to the Lancashire Clog Dance; Hertel is so pallid and generic, so second-rate 19th-century ballet, he’s impossible to remember. And Spoerli’s choreography is never as funny, as romantic, or as particular as Ashton’s. Valentina Kozlova is a glowing if diva-ish Lise, but she looks at her capable and attentive Colas, Chris Jensen, as if he were the stand-in she’s dancing with while waiting for her prince charming to fly in from Moscow. Otto Ris, in drag as Lise’s mother, might be all right in a theater but is too hammy for the TV camera; Martin Schläpfer’s Alain, here with a red kite instead of the red umbrella Ashton gives him, is one-dimensional and has little to do. There’s some French Revolution flavor — the curtain rises on sleeping soldiers who later march off as the villagers salute — but no dancing chickens. The 1981 Royal Ballet performance of the Ashton Fille, with Lesley Collier and Michael Coleman, is available on a Kultur DVD; there’s also the 1989 Australian Ballet performance on a Kultur videotape.
But the company connection? Check out the cheeky fellow in the rust vest and dun breeches, one of the friends of Lise and Colas, the one with the chipmunky smile that recalls Walter Koenig as Chekov on the original Star Trek. On track six, he has a brief solo that ends with a well-executed double tour; on track 16, he tries to keep Lise’s clogging mother upright, winds up grabbing her breasts, and gets slapped for his pains, after which he turns to his fellows with a priceless look of injured innocence. Yes, it’s Boston Ballet artistic director Mikko Nissinen. His career is no mystery: he was a principal at San Francisco Ballet for 10 years and danced with the Dutch National Ballet and the Basel Ballet before that. But this is the first time any actual footage of his dancing has turned up. Will loyal BB subscribers clamor for more?
Related:
L’Allegro, fuss and feathers, and the ICA blues, Moonbeams, Dark victory, More 
- L’Allegro, fuss and feathers, and the ICA blues
This year we were looking forward to dance performances at the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater in the new ICA.
- Moonbeams
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a dizzy dance of a drama, meandering mystifyingly between May Eve and Midsummer Eve under a moon that goes from new to full swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow.
- Dark victory
It’s a good pairing: together, Serenade and La Sylphide write an essay on doomed love
- Dreaming and remembrance
Two momentous revivals in town showed us how big the category of classical ballet really is.
- State of the art
Maybe it’s the economy, but Boston Ballet’s third-annual season-opening gala was a sober evening, without the orchestral overture that graced the first two affairs.
- New Orleans story
When the Royal Ballet touches down at the Wang Theatre this month, quash any visions you might have of tea-and-crumpets decorum.
- Dancing across the city
The ICA’s Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater, with its sprung wood dance floor and wrap-around windows framing the harbor, is positioned to become Boston dance’s most significant venue.
- Slideshow: Boston Ballet's Jewels
Photos from George Balanchine's Jewels, performed by the Boston Ballet.
- Balancing act
It’s been quite a year for Boston Ballet.
- Pensées mal gardées
Boston Ballet’s second production of Frederick Ashton’s La Fille Mal Gardée made it clearer than ever what a fractured fairy tale this is. The pastoral scrim that’s revealed when the curtain goes up sports a surly Demeter bearing a sheaf of grain and bare breasts — no danger of her being badly watched.
- Up and down
Dance is all about direction.
- Less
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Dance
, Entertainment, Science and Technology, Rie Ichikawa, More
, Entertainment, Science and Technology, Rie Ichikawa, Ballet Theatre Foundation Inc., Carlos Molina, Erica Cornejo, Doris Duke, John Rockwell, Soft Drinks, Val Caniparoli, Less
