Royal Ballet Principals Matthew Golding and

Natalia Osipova in rehearsal for Onegin 

Natalia Osipova in Onegin, Convent Garden: review: 'extraordinary' The Russian ballerina Natalia Osipova is simply phenomenal as the heroine Tatiana, says Laura Thompson

A week into the current run of John Cranko's Onegin, the former Bolshoi star Natalia Osipova made her debut in the role of Tatania, and received the 

kind of roaring, heel-drumming curtain call that I've not heard at Convent 

Garden in a long time.

The Royal has taken a series of body blows in the past few years, losing

some of its most glorious assets-Tamara Rojo, Sergei Polunin, Alina Cojarocaru, 

Johan Kobborg, Sylvie Guillem-and appearing to face a

Manchester United-style eclipse.

Yet this has been averted by the retention of dancers like Marianela Nunez

and Lauren Cuthbertson: the emergence of new talent such as Itziar Mendizabal; 

and a couple of acquisitions worth many millions in any

metaphorical transfer market, Vadim Muntagirov and Osipova.

The latter is an extraordinary dancer, surely the most phenomenal since

Guillem. She has the ability, like Guillem, to make shapes best described as cubist.

Her most disorientating aerial quality gave her Giselle the strange beauty

of a Richard Dadd painting. What really compels is the pull between

Osipova's dynamic physicality and her withdrawn, white-faced, tragic

appearance. Unlike Guillem, she does not look like a force of nature. She

looks like a ballerina of the pre-Diaghilev era, a Spessivtzeva or a Tagloni,

impossibly romantic and ethereal, lost entirely in the world or art.

This is not quite in tune with the Royal Ballet, which emphasized precise, 

believable acting and personalities that communicate with the audience.

Osipova has said she is seeking to adapt to the company style  - a

remarkably humble statement, given her ability - and in Onegin she is

surrounded by three high-level performances of the familiar Royal type.

Olga and Lensky (Tatiana's flirtatious sister and her idealistic lover) are 

wonderfully realized by Yasmine Naghdi and Matthew Ball. Naghdi is

sprightly and clueless as a baby animal, Ball poignantly trapped in a futile

dream of poetic honour. Both dancers are products of the Royal Ballet

School, and both are rich with talent.

The bored, clever, casually callous Onegin is danced by Canadian 

Matthew Golding, who invests the role with extreme subtlety. Conversely,

Osipova herself is less nuanced in her portrayal than the other Tatianas I've

seen in this run (Nunez and Mendizabal).

She creates a force field so intense a to overwhelm the detailed progress

of the character. She does not act, so much as hurl herself from emotion to

emotion.

But she has genius. She has that quality for which on prays in a theatre: she can carry one to a place where reality is an irrelevance, where what is on show is so powerful that it resists analysis.

See her, at any cost.