The face is simpler

One after another, two leading ballet troupes of Moscow presented important premieres: the Bolshoi Theater showed Romeo and Juliet Alexei Ratmansky, at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko musical theater, four ballets of the XX-XXXI centuries were performed. Comments Sofya Dymova.

Big: familiar, linear, cozy

Premieres in opera-ballet theaters are usually divided into two categories-those that satisfy the internal needs (employment of artists, updating the repertoire, cash desk), and “breakthrough”, designed, first of all, for the external effect and agitation. “Romeo and Juliet” on the new scene are not a breakthrough and not at all new products, but the transfer of the 2011 performance from Toronto, but its role is doubtful inside the theater: in the repertoire there is already one “Romeo” in the production of Yuri Grigorovich, and he goes to the historical scene allocated to tourists - and will go there until the end of time.

The author of the Premier “Romeo” still has an unspoken status of the main Russian choreographer, his beloved child and the desired guest, but he puts on our scenes unforgivably-so, at first glance, it may seem strange that the leadership of the Ratmansky’s proposal to compose a new ballet and insisted on the transfer of “Romeo”. Maybe the desire to “start some thick thing” played a role-to get another play with great passions and strong characters in the repertoire, which is always so kind to the public: the program directorate in the last seasons is pedantically collected by the ballet library-“Lady with Camellias”, “Onegin”, “Taming of our time”, “Hero of our time”, “Hero of our time”, “Hero of our time” . "Anna Karenina."

It may be necessary to give high -calorie food to the artists, especially those who are not caressed with stellar roles. Then the calculation worked - in a new performance there are several excellent works: Alexander Vodopetov in the Tibald party is not a fierce macho, how it is customary to portray it, but a difficult teenager who pouting his cheeks, as if not to take revenge, but was offended by the whole world; Mercutio Arthur Mkrtchyan - Alter Ego of the choreographer, an intellectual and clever, who even grows with great delicacy in the square; Nino Asatiani (Signora Capuletti) went to one of the most expressive mise-en-scenes of the performance: at the time of the desperation of her daughter, who was married to the unloved, she suddenly leaves the role of an iron parent and slides helplessly on the canopy in sobbing-perhaps remembering that he was once given by force.

Next, you can delve into the subtleties of the misansen and the psychological development of each batch - but it is obvious that nothing fundamental to Ratmansky in the territory of Romeo and Juliet was invented. This can annoy the sophisticated viewer, who saw more than one version of Prokofiev’s ballet and waiting for a big theater gesture from the choreographer, a stage paradox, but the same property contributes to the easy assimilation of the performance by the so -called simple audience: it is familiar, linearly, comfortable. Therefore, it is incorrect to review the performance of Ratmansky in the categories of “succeeded -“ well -bad ”: the ballet put by order from Toronto is worked out masterfully and soundly, with knowledge of the laws of the composition and desires of the consumer, no less, but no more.

The action adheres to the initial libretto, close to the play by Leonid Lavrovsky in 1940 , the first and canonical version of Romeo, except that Juliet (Anastasia Stashkevich) wakes up from Ratmansky earlier than the poison he had drunk on Romeo (Vyacheslav Lopatin). But otherwise, everything is as usual: who is needed - stab, who owes - drank poison. The people are dancing, the heroes are beating on the rapiers, Capuletti cope with a magnificent ball in the Palazzo. The characters were drawn from the popular paintings of the Renaissance-this is how the artist Peter Williams in 1940 was also with the artist. Romeo in a white shirt elevates in support, Juliet, dressed in Bely Hiton, and the starry sky above them.

The only large find of Ratmansky is the switching of the point of view and falling out of household reality, that which in the Soviet drama could not be by definition. The somnambulic pas-de-katra in the bedroom, where zombie parents and the hated groom drive round dance with Juliet, we see the eyes of the heroine paralyzed horror. In the same logic - the vision of Juliet to the distraught Romeo, who has long doubts whether to avenge Tibald for the murdered Mercutio, as well as an episode of running, when Juliet in a faceless male crowd is maniced maniacally out of Verona, and finally encounters his ghost.

A favorable difference from the performance of Lavrovsky is in choreographic saturation and rejection of strict alternation of pantomime and dance scenes. In Ratmansky, everything is dancing everywhere, and playing sciences often serve as the backdrop for dance, as natural as possible, devoid of fake ballet gestures. No monumentality: the cor deucadian, which existed in the Soviet Romeo with a single dense mass, is split into several small ensembles acting in a complex dance counterpoint.

The choreographic text is written out by the recognizable handwriting of Ratmansky: classic PA, but with the most mobile corps; an uneven pace inside the dance ligaments-constant accelerations-knitting; A collision in one combination of the canonical large PA and several small ones, which are given a hard -haired color (atypical positions of the hands or wrapped legs). On a marvelous logical and coherent dance flow, the performance fills the performance in an even layer - but very soon this continuity begins to play against the result: the stage time slows down almost to the stop. There is a gap between the household realism of the action, the conventionality of space (the scenography of Richard Hudson - terracotta walls and a blue screen) and the convention of the dance language; Add here heavy “historical” costumes (the same Hudson) with endless cloaks and drapery that kill choreographic plastic.

Romeo Ratmansky - a performance of exceptional calm, where even the climax - Tibald's fights with Mercutio and Romeo - is devoid of a high degree. This is almost a chamber representation with a quiet pathos, and the author does not want to read morality or declare artistic manifestos. Most likely, it was this property of Romeo that attracted the leadership of a large one, whose repertoire policies of recent years - to “suit”, as is supposed in the era of stagnation, but peacefully drink tea with jam (exceptions like “Nureyev” only confirms the rule). Quiet time is quiet songs.

Mamt: without loud words

In the theater, on Bolshaya Dmitrovka, in the new season they abandoned “characters, fate and conversations”: the ballets-peshs like “Mayerling” and “Manon” left the repertoire (according to rumors-temporarily), promised at the closure of the Nureyevsky “Don Quixote” of the genre, still not a tragedy, but right now is actively replenished with short-term scenes little things. In the poster of the current premiere - the name of four authors at once, and although three of them were debuted on the Russian stage at once, the theater was furnished without a pump - and won.

To warm up the public, George Balanchin was exhibited, whose choreography today will not surprise anyone in Russia - especially if we are talking about the Serenade already performed by three domestic troupes. She needed Mamtu for therapeutic purposes: dancers - for the development of coordination and as a vaccine from the vulgar "acting"; To the audience-to learn to perceive an abstract musical and chokeraeographic form. It will still have to wait for the necessary effect in the Muztera: it has not been possible to get rid of the sweeping work of hands and negligence of the feet, as a result - there is no necessary compact to rebuild, but in the famous slow finale, “elegy”, too many literary emotions, which only harms.

The "halo" Paul Taylor represented tricks of a different kind. The American cunning and mockingbird, Taylor often likes to pretend to be Ivanushka-Durachk: this is evidence and tone of the program article “Why I put dancing” (it is published in the premiere booklet), and the “Oreopo” itself. Three girls and two boys in a white uniform without a stop jump and rush along the stage of a blank, like Balanchin, a scene. In the plastic text, you can guess the Balanchinsky ligaments of the classic PA, but they look like in the performance of an amateur circle: instead of rounded positions of the hands - houses, positions of the legs are approximate, knees forward, and when jumping heels are never placed on the floor - for which the examination of the attitude is so easy to get a dual of the crediting.

But that is the catch of the pseudo -classical “halo”, which is actually belonging to the tradition of American dance Modern: the choreography is monstrously complex for professional artists, naivety and clumsy are false, otherwise the artistic quality that the critic Marina Borisova once defined as “major idiocy” is cultivated quite meaningfully. The five brave artists Mamt idiocy with American modern was shy: the hands were habitually rounded, and the heels were honestly placed on the floor - which is why the “halo” effect on the standard record of the Danish ballet is somewhat faded.

In the dry residue is a pure art, and this is a very big result.

The final ballet of the program finally clarified its key plot: metamorphoses of the classic ballet-from the inspirational-seriously presentation in the "Serenade" Balanchin to the parody of the "Tul" Alexander Ekman. The second plot of the evening also manifested itself - the gradual disappearance of the ballet itself. The work of the Swede-visitor of Ekman in equal proportions consist of dance and conversational scenes, use a mass of props and large-scale special effects-like a tablet flooded with water in a “swan lake” or a hay ton in a “sleep on a summer night” . But there is only choreography as such in its performances: instead of a coherent plastic text, which is expanded in time - brutings of air, instead of the movement itself - static and fixed mechanical actions: walking, poppy, tributaries, let it be rhythmically organized.

This is precisely the case of “Tulya” - despite the fact that the performance seems to be dedicated to classical dance. Ekman composed the carnival ode to the ballet, or rather, an ode to its inexperienced viewer. Everything that is for Profan is lovely in the ballet - fouete and tricks, air packs (in fact, tulle - the material from which the packs are sewn) and stories about the hard work of the ballerinas are carefully collected, pushed into one notebook and fat was overwhelmed with a felt -tip pen. The artists, dressed by swans and princes,, like the leaders, repeat school PA and nervously count aloud, as at rehearsals. A crowd of young artists sprisens something conditionally virtuoso (they like to arrange a “scourge”), and the clown-down pair flies out in the finals of the bite and the clang of the plates and gives out the most abundant and ostentatious and ravybrous in the finals of the tags and the most abolished and okyuhabous in the finals of the taggers and the most abolished and broken-shaped sounds). Truks - that Oksana Kardash and Dmitry Sobolevsky are doing excellent and with self -irony.

If you know the later works of Ekman, the “tulle” no longer seems so witty, and all these carnival sketches do not form whole drama. But that there are disadvantages of the composition, if artists catch a high from the opportunity to sneak over the craft in which they boil from the age of ten, and the audience seducing these jokes, arranging a standing ovation at the end.

The only part of the evening that did not fit into the general plot is the old -fashioned "Onis" Jacques Garnier. Three young men (newcomers of the troupe are engaged in the blending of the accordions: Evgeny Zhukov, Georgi Smilevsky Jr., Innokenty Yuldashev) portray the fishermen of the French province of Onis: they are relaxed, they suddenly shoot in large academic jumps, groaned-they still carefully and not carefully, as Garnier expected . Onis once again confirmed that the more ingenuous form and more modestly the conclusion of the choreographer, the more joyfully the audience accepts what is happening on the stage: be easier - and people will reach for you.

In Russian repertoire practice, it so happened that evenings of one -act ballets are always perceived by declarations about intentions, a parade of large ambitions and a jump above the head. Mamta’s programs inspired by the new artistic director Loran Iler , whether it be the Summer Troita Lifar/Forsyt/Kilian, the current project or the next premiere , again a set of monotherapists - do not look like loud applications and manifestations. Such evenings for the musical theater become food of everyday life, a kind of creative routine - in the best sense of these words. And if something is related by such non-future November premieres in Moscow, then it is the lack of additional load that they have-ideological, political and any other. They do not oblige anyone to anything and do not require deep reasoning about the ways of developing choreography. In the dry residue is a pure art, and this is a very big result.