The magic of numbers

Compositional triads in new performances of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theater

The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater prepared a very interesting premiere at the end of the season - if all three one-act acts included in the “Choreographic Masterpieces of the 20th Century” program are danced as they should, the evening will become one of the main ballet events of this year. On July 24 and 25, Musical will invite Muscovites to get acquainted with the Spaniard Nacho Duato (Na floresta), who has never shown his performances in Russia before, nod as an old but rarely appears on the horizon acquaintance, the Englishman Frederick Ashton (Margarita and Arman), and remember Dmitry Bryantsev, that he directed the ballet of the Musical Theater for 20 years until his tragic death in 2004 (“The Phantom Ball”).

Of the many performances by Bryantsev, who actually preferred to do large performances, taking famous plays as a basis (from “An Optimistic Tragedy” to “The Taming of the Shrew” through Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” which became his “Galatea”), this is the one chosen for this evening , the most atypical. Melancholic one-act; no clashes of passions and no grotesque, which was so loved by the choreographer. Ghosts descended from paintings in an ancient castle dance gentle dances to Chopin's music - and even though sometimes there is a little anguish and regret about the past time, the overall intonation is very calm. It is at this performance that one remembers that before his Moscow career, Bryantsev graduated from the Vaganova School - because here one can trace the St. Petersburg “choreographic pedigree”, which is not very noticeable in his other works.

“Margarita and Armand,” on the contrary, is one of the most typical works of Sir Frederick Ashton, who created things that were courtly and sentimental, good-natured and punctual, and one of the most famous in Russia. No, this small play with the music of Franz Liszt and the plot of “Lady with Camellias” has never appeared in the repertoire of Russian theaters (of the entire legacy of one of the founders of English ballet, only “Vain Precaution” was bought from us, which is now occasionally performed at the Bolshoi). It is known in absentia - thanks to Nureyev, for whom it was staged. More precisely, for him and for Margot Fonteyn - and this legend about the impudent boy pacified by the Great Lady, who meekly faded into the background for the sake of the famous ballerina, glorified “Margarita and Armand.” For a long time, the performance was associated only with Fonteyn, then another grand ballerina Sylvie Guillem dared to take it into the repertoire, and now the Musical Theater principal Tatyana Chernobrovkina has to master it. The appearance of “Margarita and Armand” in the repertoire of “Stasik”, as the theater is affectionately called by balletomanes, became possible thanks to the Covent Garden Theater - it is on the production going on there that the one that will be shown in Moscow is based.

But the main event of the evening should still be the third ballet, namely Na floresta. A special press conference at the Musical Theater was dedicated to this production. The name is translated from Portuguese - “In the forest”, and the Portuguese comes from the fact that this is not just a forest, but an Amazonian jungle. This small performance (23 minutes) with music by Villa-Lobos was composed by Nacho Duato in 1990. Duato, who then experienced his first real success, became a world celebrity and has since headed the National Dance Company of Spain (in the Pyrenees, everything is somehow confusing - the National Ballet of Spain dances only flamenco, and the theater whose name says “dance” , does ballet). Duato, who in his youth traveled to the theaters of Eck and Bejart, Kilian and Alvin Ailey, and now composes sensual and fragile performances, creating a completely non-Euclidean geometry of complex dances, is certainly one of the five choreographers who now determine the life of the ballet world. Over the past 20 years, both the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky Theater tried to get Duato to perform in the production, but were never able to sign a contract. (One of the former directors of the Bolshoi Ballet, I remember, complained about the choreographer’s unaffordable fees; Duato himself claims that it was simply the Russian theaters and he who were unable to agree on terms that suited both parties.)

At the press conference of the choreographer, who almost always stages only plotless ballets, Russian journalists, as usual, questioned him about the plot of Na floresta. Duato said that the play consists of three parts, three songs, and the first of them is about the moon, which flickers between the branches of trees, the second is about a bird flying from branch to branch. (The third remained a mystery.) At rehearsals, he inspired the artists that they should feel like “a small butterfly on a thin sheet floating on water.” Here it must be said that the performance with the artists of the Musical Theater was rehearsed by the master’s assistants, Kevin Irving and Eva Lopez Crevillen, the choreographer himself arrived only on the eve of the premiere to check if everything was in order and bring everything to perfection; Duato told reporters that his staff “know and love his writing more than he does.” At the end of the press conference, Irina Chernomirova, who heads the department for foreign relations at the theater, expressed her conviction that this ballet will not end the collaboration between the Musical and Nacho Duato (“We don’t like short relationships, casual connections. Our theater falls in love for a long time, and most importantly - doesn’t fall in love by accident”), but she left specific plans secret. Duato himself promised to bring his troupe on tour to the Bolshoi next June, and before that, in February, to release the premiere of a ballet based on Chekhov in his native Spain. This is a special order from the Chekhov Festival, and Moscow will be able to see this ballet in a year in July.

Anna GORDEEVA