Perhaps it isn’t surprising that there’s a retro feel to Kyiv City Ballet’s Edinburgh show. The company, which had begun a tour to France just the day before the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year, reflects its yearning for home in A Tribute to Peace. It’s a throwback, because they long to go back.
Even so, this collection of sweet-tooth vignettes choreographed by Ivan Kozlov, the company’s director, is dismayingly undemanding. The troupe’s repertoire includes tragic classics (Swan Lake, Giselle), but Kozlov’s aim here, he says in his onstage welcome, is “good stories with happy endings”.
Against colourfully naive projected backdrops, the slender, intertwined love stories include an idealistic poet and a woman in floaty white; vain ladies in fascinators, romantic lads in waistcoats. There are cute touches – the tramp taken up by a beautiful woman shrugs mid-dance like he can’t believe his luck. The action, set to Elgar, is a mixture of flirt and gentle farce, and the piece offers bright costumes with jolly checks, swooning violins, a duet under the moon – things to lift the heart.
That the company, stranded abroad since the invasion, has devised anything new is impressive under these circumstances. Before the show begins, associate director Ekaterina Kozlova encourages us to clap whenever we like – the dancers will enjoy seeing us smile, she says. People applaud each lift and moderately acrobatic feat – but the unambitious choreography doesn’t stretch or showcase the young dancers.
After a montage of postcard-perfect scenes of Kyiv – staunch public statues, old town buildings with scalloped roofs – this 50-minute show ends with the enjoyably extrovert Men of Kyiv. In Pavlo Virsky’s brief folk dance piece, men in blue and saffron shirts give their best bounce and stomp. Everything is sharper than in the classical opener: the tilting runs and intricate squatting kicks, the buoyant heels and cartwheeling panache. The dancers will have seen the audience beaming.
At Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, until 28 August
