Ballet, Big

The word “bolshoi” in Bolshoi Ballet means “big.” It describes the size of the stage on which the company dances in Moscow, the lavish productions it’s famous for and the composition of the troupe itself--some 212 dancers, 110 of whom are on its current American tour.

But the ballet, created the same year as the American Revolution, 1776, is only part of the Bolshoi Theatre. The rest consists of an opera company with 77 principal and secondary singers, a chorus of 196, a mime contingent of 78 artists, and an orchestra of more than 280 people. Add the administrative and technical staff and you get about 2,600 employees.

“Bolshoi,” indeed.

Making its Orange County debut this week at the Performing Arts Center, as part of its first Southern California visit in more than 10 years, the Bolshoi is dancing two full-length ballets.

Leonid Lavrosky’s famous 1940 production of “Romeo and Juliet,” based on Shakespeare’s perennial love story, is on tap today through Sunday. Earlier in the week, the company danced “Don Quixote,” loosely based on Cervantes’ groundbreaking novel.

On stage, ballet dancers are all elegance and apparent ease, the women defying gravity by going up on their toes, the men poised and aristocratic. But a backstage look hints at the effort that goes into it all. Even after years of effort at reshaping the body by stretching it upward and rotating the legs outward in the hip socket, dancers must spend hours every day in class, warming up and stretching to keep their bodies limber and lithe.

The shoes women dance in have reinforced tips that allow them to go up onto the pads of their toes. Laced on with satin ribbons, the shoes can take such a beating--roughly 10 times the dancer’s weight is focused on the tips when the dancer goes en pointe--that they can wear out after a single performance.

Tutus, the women’s signature ballet costume made up of 25 yards of tulle, can last considerably longer, up to 20 years if properly cared for.

Both cost plenty, and when you multiply the number of dancers in the company, you know that you also need a “bolshoi” budget to keep them on their toes.