Mergaliyev Ballet
Opera House, Manchester
January 15-19, 2025
The Mergaliyev Ballet company was the creation, in 2023, of husband and wife team Yassaui and Sophie Mergaliyev, he a classical dancer from Kazakhstan, she a British dancer who now mainly teaches.
Companies such as this can be a massive success, driven by the passion of the founders; or they can be a vanity project. This is appears to be one of the latter, though the relative youth of the company suggests it might still be finding its niche in a fairly crowded world of small ballet companies.
There are very strong individual dancers in the company's current production of Swan Lake: Nilay Tahiroglu as Odette is wondrous, while Siegrfried (Christo Prunes) is a forceful presence throughout. The jester (Kadir Okurer, all black and red stripes), makes the most of the comedy in Tchaikovsky.
But the production itself is pretty much all at sea. From the start of the performance I saw it was clear the orchestra was having an off day. Strings were thin and weary, so the dancers had to offer the evening's driving force. As a scratch group, this put too large a burden on the ensemble, which tried hard but made me never more aware of why ballerinas suffer hammer toes. The pounding their feet receive is horrendous: a health and safety audit on the corps de ballet would see its members sue the company for substantial compensation.
The major attraction of the production for parents with ballet-passionate children is that every style of dance move is paraded before us. One after the other the swans (big and small) go through their moves. After seeing this production, any child not well aware of how to perform the individual dances will never make it on to the big stage.
Another problem is the Mathew Bourne effect: after seeing his testosterone and humour-charged works, most other ballets seem a bit lifeless and tired to a non-technical audience.
Yes, the costumes in this production are fine; yes, the dancing is of a high order. But the production lacks that essential element; audience appeal.
More info and tickets here