In contemporary dance we are accustomed to seeing dancers more earthbound, falling into the floor or working on it with ease and grace, but when ballet succumbs to gravity it looks incredibly awkward. The ballerina suffers a similar humiliation to that of the dying swan. Another convincing “ballerina bird” was Irma Nioradze, who gave a dazzling performance as the impulsive scarlet Firebird in Fokine’s surreal ballet of the same name. For here, the ballerina (on Thursday, Uliana Lopatkina) in a white feathered tutu with absurdly elongated rippling limbs and neck, does look uncanningly like a swam struggling for its life. The sudden collapse of the torso in standing position, followed by the desperate undulations through the body as it is folded over one straight leg on the floor, was remarkable for its time, when the body of the ballerina, in contemptuous defiance of gravity, was always held straight and erect. Although the music is a somewhat hackneyed favourite Top 20 classic, some of the movement is definitely surprising. The whole dance resembles a Broadway chorus line clashing with rave dancers in its full- on noise and action.

Its concoction of Cossack dancing, high kicks and body gyrations liberates the stiff ballet vocabulary, while the colourful baggy Turkish trousers and loose tunic tops free both male and female dancers from their usual tedious bondage.
Fokine’s golden oldie The Dying Swan, created for Anna Pavlova in 1905, is probably the dance that is most true to its subject matter. But it was with the Polovtsian Dances, a short danced act made for Alexander Borodin’s opera Prince Igor, with which Fokine most stirred up the old classical- dance regime. In this work he democratised the format of the ballet spectacle by shortening it to one act, having it danced en masse, attaching equal importance to all the roles, incorporating gutsy Russian folk-dancing, and abandoning the standard pointe-shoes, tutus, and “men in tights”. Le Spectre de la rose is a steamy little fantasy which brings the male dancer into the limelight – and gently shoves the formerly worshipped ballerina into the wings. Originally danced by Nijinsky in 1911, the role of the rose who metamorphoses into a seductive lover in the dreams of his female owner was yesterday performed by the Kirov’s head boy, Farouk Ruzimatov, a dancer of supreme elegance.

Fokine believed that ballet had lost expression, soul and relevance to the changing world around it (still a dilemma for ballet today), in its rigid pursuit of virtuosic technique. His aim was to reinvest dance with meaning, thus enabling a ballet to mirror its subject-matter more closely, and to reflect visually on the time and place in which it was meant to be set. The first Fokine programme presented by the Kirov this week summarises some of his evolutions, and while these works are certainly not revolutionary for London audiences of the Nineties, I couldn’t help thinking that they may still be for this most antiquarian ballet company and its Russian audience. From this pragmatic premise, he went on to create pieces that were to alter the whole face of Russian ballet, considered by many at the turn of the century to be stale and outmoded. Mikhail Fokine, the daring and innovative choreographer of the Ballets Russes, believed that there could only be evolution and not revolution in art. Main Fringe venues: Assembly Rms, 226 2428; Pleasance, 556 6550; Gilded Balloon, 226 2151; Flux: 557 6969 Film Festival: 229 2550 All nos are (0131)..

Robin BussInternational Festival Box Office, for Theatre, Dance, Concerts & Opera: 473 2000 Fringe Box Office, for Theatre & Comedy: 226 5138. Includes a programme of music and screenings of the work of two major Russian animated film-makers, Yuri Norstein and Nikolai Serebriakov. Nor-stein’s The Tale of Tales has been described as the best animated film ever made; his (still incomplete) version of Gogol’s The Overcoat was shown at last month’s Moscow Film Festival. Serebriakov is one of the most inventive of Russian animators and a larger- than-life personality Both will be attending the festival.

Matthew SweetDOM Festival of Art, Music and Animation (Augustine United Church, 0131 226 5138, 11-30 Aug). (A scene in which Bela Lugosi cackles down through a laboratory skylight at a disfigured Boris Karloff is one of the most striking of these stars’ twinned careers.) Ulmer’s daughter, actress Arianne Ulmer Cipes, will be on hand to discuss her father’s work: more celebrated visitors include Gillo Pontecorvo, director of The Battle of Algiers (12 Aug), granting an audience on 13 Aug, and Alan Rickman delivering this year’s Bafta lecture (21 Aug). Who he? Well, Girls in Chains (18 Aug), Daughter of Dr Jekyll (13 Aug) and The Man from Planet X (15 Aug) are all on his CV, as is his startling body-horror movie, The Black Cat (12&14 Aug). Other notables include Mike Leigh’s Career Girls (17 Aug), starring Katrin Cartlidge, queen of last year’s Festival, Antonia Bird’s thriller Face (15&22 Aug), with Robert Carlyle and Damon Albarn, and Peter Cattaneo’s The Full Monty (17&19 Aug), a smart comedy in which a gang of redundant steelworkers turn to stripping to make ends meet.There’s also the usual quota of British costume drama: Nick Willing’s Photographing Fairies, an ectoplasmic Edwardian drama with Ben Kingsley (no date yet); John Madden’s Mrs Brown (16&17, 19 Aug), about Queen Victoria (Judi Dench) and her ghillie, John Brown (Billy Connolly); and Stephen Fry in Brian Gilbert’s Wilde (23 Aug).Rougher, more independent-minded cinema goes under the “Rosebud” umbrella: the undisputed highlight is Gary Oldman’s directorial debut, Nil by Mouth (12, 16&22 Aug), the film that finally got Kathy Burke recognised as a British actress on a par with the Denches and Stevensons.The “Retrospective” section is an annual resurrection of a half-forgotten talent, this year focusing on director Edgar G Ulmer. Initially a fascinating show of Danish portraiture in the late-18th century, but it gets steadily worse as we approach the present day, mainly conveyed via photography.Gerhard Richter (Fruitmarket Gallery, 0131 225 2383, to 27 Sept). Multiples – ie works made in editions for commercial purposes – done by the German artist between 1965-97.