The greatest one- woman circus on pointe came to town Tuesday night. Fresh from the Bolshoi, Natalia Osipova rocked the Met in “Don Quixote” and had the audience whooping with delight.
Her Kitri is the performance dance lovers have waited for all season. The 24-year-old ballerina has been causing a sensation in the role for five years — but she’s only now dancing it in New York.
In most ballets of “Don Quixote,” the Man of La Mancha is actually a minor character. The main story is the love affair between the spitfire Kitri and the penniless barber Basilio. The plot — which includes Gypsy dances, a windmill fight and a faked suicide with a comically huge razor — is nothing more than an excuse for nonstop dancing. It works best when you turn the dial to 11.
Osipova turns it to 12. Her megawatt grin and energy could power all of Spain. Her big trick is her jumping: She’s got a man’s strength in a long-legged, ballerina body and takes off like an Aeroflot jet.
Her Basilio, Jose Manuel Carreno, just turned 42 but keeps up with her just fine, with perfectly centered turns that corkscrew slowly to a standstill.
Daniil Simkin pulled out the stops as a Gypsy trickster, and the rest of the cast did better than their best. Still, with a top leading couple like this, American Ballet Theatre would have been smarter to bump up the rest of the casting a notch with principals in the soloist roles.
You’ll have another chance to catch Osipova tonight in a gala for the legendary Cuban ballerina Alicia Alonso. They’re doing a tag-team performance of “Don Quixote” with a different pair in each of the three acts; Osipova and Carreno close.
Of course, Osipova’s performance is vulgar — and so much fun. She can also dance a great Giselle, but if you’re going to let your hair down, this is how you do it.