The Big Ballet

Published Wednesday 26 March 2008 at 12:30 by Liz Arratoon

Started by the late Evgenii Panfilov to challenge the obsession with being thin and beautiful, The Big Ballet is back.

The first half lives up to its name - the female dancers are certainly big and they do perform a sort of ballet. It is an outsize parody of Swan Lake, in which a corps de ballet of hefty chickens dream of becoming elegant swans.

Other than Tchaikovsky’s music, its redeeming feature is prima ballerina Tatyana Galdkikh. Despite her size, she is graceful and can actually dance - sometimes en pointe - and executes impressive balletic moves such as the splits.

After the interval, the dancers are joined by the muscular young men of The Fighting Club dance company. It’s all a bit odd and rather dated as they take turns to do backing-dancer routines to diverse tracks sung in Russian, English - including a couple by the Pet Shop Boys and Robbie Williams - and French, as well as ensemble numbers to Russian folk and gypsy music.

A scene in a harem sees the ladies revealing their sparkly bras and huge stomachs. In another they sport black bikinis, while the boys cavort in silky boxers.

It must be truly liberating for these women to show that, fat or not, they can move about pretty freely and are not ashamed to strut about in scanty outfits, but who is it all for? Maybe fans of the Roly Polys. The Big Ballet, plain and simple, appears to be aimed at raising the self-esteem of the heavily overweight.