Aurora didn't wake up

The original version of "The Sleeping Beauty", staged at the Yekaterinburg Municipal Ballet Theater with the participation of Russian and French dancers (Photo: Vladimir Lupovskoy )

The festival, which was held by the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater together with the French Cultural Center, was essentially a touring showing of the works of two very popular French choreographers. Joseph Nadj presented the play "Night Owls" based on the works of Kafka (see "Results" # 47, 2000 ), Karin Saporta - the original version of "The Sleeping Beauty", staged at the Yekaterinburg Municipal Ballet Theater (the performance features French and Russian dancers). Presenting these choreographers in one program is almost a provocative idea. Saporta and Naj are absolute antipodes, although they are birds of a feather.

Both began in the 80s, when professing one school, one direction of dance seemed almost indecent: in search of their own style, the directors of the “new wave” not only easily moved from the workshops of Japanese “butoh” dance to the classes of American modernism, but also seriously studied dramatic art, painting, circus and literature. Multiculturalism and polystylistics were welcomed: dancers were recognized as equal creators with the choreographer, and the choreographers themselves were valued for their marginality. Especially representatives of “another culture”, for example, such as the Albanian Preljocaj or the Hungarian Joseph Naj. In France in the mid-80s, it was customary to place “strangers” and “wrongs” at the head of choreographic centers. It was difficult to call those who were choreographers. It was then that the director, dancer, sculptor and actor Joseph Nudge headed the center in Orleans, and the philosopher, photographer and psychologist Karin Saporta headed the center in Caen.

By calling Nadja - almost at random - a choreographer, the French were not mistaken. Thanks to the choreographers of the “new wave,” he, who began his career as a dancer in the famous troupes of Diverres, Tompkins, and Verret, learned to look at artists as partners and co-authors. And he recruited not only dancers, but also actors, jugglers, and even singers into his troupe. He preferred people from Eastern Europe. Those with whom it was possible, as he put it, “to be silent together in our native language.” “Body memory” (personal and collective) are not empty words for Nudge. “Midnight Owls” is probably the most danceable of all his performances; he composed it together with the artists, starting from their plastic improvisations.

Karin Saporta, who always valued discipline, spectacular appearance and endurance in artists, sought something else. If Nudge tried to take dance out of the ballet reservation, Saporta stubbornly sought to return there.

In "Sleeping Beauty" she tells her story of dance: classics turn out to be a link between court minuets and democratic breaks. Aurora in a red revolutionary dress symbolizes the awakening of modern dance.

But the performance was a failure. For the first time, Karin Saporta was not saved by either luxurious scenery or sophisticated lighting effects - everything for which she was always forgiven for her choreographic inventiveness. She had previously had zombie dancers wander from performance to performance, monotonously, like clockwork dolls, repeating the same movements to minimalist music, which brought the audience to a hypnotic trance. But in “Sleeping” with Tchaikovsky’s music it all looked simply ridiculous. Especially when combined with the ill-quoted Petipa, the designated "godfather" of breakdancing.

It turned out that you can not be interested in the personality of the artist (like, for example, Magi Maren, who in her “Cinderella” hid the dancers in thick “false bodies” of toys - so as not to express themselves), but at the same time be a talented choreographer. You can make a dance performance from the improvisations of the dancers themselves, but you still cannot do without a choreographer and dancers. As well as crossing despotic classics with pluralistic and democratic contemporary dance.