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Jason Gagliardi

Don Quixote

American Ballet Theatre

Cultural Centre Grand Theatre

Ends tomorrow

The Cultural Centre has played host to some world class dance acts in the past couple of years - but nothing quite in the league of American Ballet Theatre.

The erstwhile home of dance legend Mikhael Baryshnikov, now ably helmed by artistic director Kevin McKenzie, ABT has a cast of truly stellar dancers who pulled out all the stops to wow Hong Kong last night.

Each of the three acts had moments where the crowd could not contain its whoops and gasps of sheer exuberance, as if it couldn't quite believe the quality of the dancing on show.

With their Spanish blood, Paloma Herrera and Angel Corella were perfectly cast as the cheeky lovers Kitri and Basilio, with longtime principal dancer Victor Barbee putting in a restrained and touching turn as the crumbling, star-crossed knight errant and Vladislav Kalinin a bumbling - if unusually paunch-free - Sancho Panza.

From the moment the curtain goes up to reveal a giant fan painted with scenes from a bullfight, in turn ceding to a soaring Spanish courtyard, and as the strains of Ludwig Minkus' bravura score ring out, we know we are in for a treat.

Act One is rollicking good fun and the company got some unexpected laughs thanks to a dagger which refused all efforts to embed it in the floor during the matadors' dance. Act Two, where the lovers flee to a gypsy camp, is dark and dreamy, as the Don tilts at a truly monstrous windmill and dreams of Dulcinea.

But it is Act Three, Kitrie's wedding, where ABT makes Don Quixote  its own, with a sublime pas de deux  by Herrera and Corella. Each has a magnetic stage presence but together the sparks fly. The one-handed presages were breathtaking, her balances superglue solid. Herrera nailed the difficult series of fouettes in the coda, but was almost upstaged by Corella's turns in second position, pulled into an ice-skater's spin.

Beware: there are but two chances left to catch Don Quixote.



Hot step it to this Don Quixote