Translated material
Victory is for the heterosexual
“Spartak” was restored at the Mariinsky Theater
The Roman squares are almost life-size. Colosseum Arena. Interiors of Roman palaces. In the very first minutes of the performance, legions march onto the stage in a solemn march - one, two, three. They are greeted by a colorful crowd. The simple-minded viewer falls into an enthusiastic stupor at the sight of this painted architecture, personifying the power of the great empire, and these handsome men in armor - much like the collective farmers of the late 30s froze in admiration when they got to the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, which later became VDNKh, and rejoiced military parades. The comparison is not accidental: “Spartacus,” staged by Leonid Yakobson in 1956 and now restored at the Mariinsky Theater by Vyacheslav Khomyakov, is flesh and blood of that era.Everything, of course, is not easy, and Leonid Yakobson, persecuted all his life by the Soviet authorities because of the “fifth point” (so much so that there were times when even his name was banned and he was forced to feed on anonymous hack work in outlying national dance ensembles), least of all can be called a Stalinist. He could rather even be considered a dissident - to the extent that this is possible in ballet, where “working at the table” is unthinkable. He took off the ballerinas' pointe shoes, forced them to walk straight up (that is, like ordinary people), experimented with plastic, fought with prudes for the possibility of eroticism on stage - and all this terribly irritated the curators of the Kirov Theater. Actually, he only took a “step to the side” (in the same 1956 there was already Bejart in France, and this is still an innovation of a fundamentally different level), but they unleashed dogs on him as if he had created a full-fledged escape. But beaten and bent, only at the end of his not too long life, who received his own small theater, the choreographer breathed the air of his time - simply because there was no other air. And the play he composed about a slave uprising belonged to this very slave time.
This time is characterized by stillness, sculpturality, and scale. And Jacobson was interested in the theme of “revived sculpture” (he has a charming cycle of miniatures on the themes of Rodin’s masterpieces). But the sculpture not only came to life, but also froze again, and this moment of freezing, freezing, passing away of living life is the most terrible thing that now exists in the restored performance.
The whole ballet is staged like this: a scene takes place, and at the end all the characters freeze. An intermediate curtain falls in front of them, and on this curtain there is a projection of a bas-relief composed of the same figures. It was as if people had turned to stone. And this is staged as a moment of triumph, such a shocking emphasis: this stone is more important than a person. And some scenes generally consist only of living bas-reliefs: the curtain rose, we were shown a sculptural group, the curtain fell. The scene of the last battle is striking: one freeze frame, curtain, two freeze frames, curtain, and only then some kind of movement begins, which, however, quickly ends - that’s it, Spartak has already been killed.
The entire first act is divided into two parts: the procession (the legions of Crassus return victorious to Rome) and the battles in the gladiatorial arena (one of the doomed is Spartacus). Both are impressive parts of the performance, but the performance, strictly speaking, is not ballet. To participate in both parts, artists do not need to suffer at the ballet barre from childhood - quite well-trained physically young people, for example, cadets of a police school. The two fragments are separated by a scene at the slave market, again almost motionless: everyone is frozen, only one young slave arches into the bridge and crawls her butt on the floor. Her elderly mother, sitting next to her, clutches her head at her daughter’s behavior, apparently not approving of the way she decided to settle in life. When a Roman pays attention to the girl and buys her, the sufferer who has just arched erotically begins to fight in hysterics: “No, no, not that.” It looks very funny.
But the gladiator fights are quite authentic and very cruel. No, of course, there are plenty of moments when one of the artists slows down instead of hitting the hesitant opponent, but they do not determine the battle. A battle of three gladiators, in which only one must survive, a duel between a fighter armed with a trident and a net and one with a shield and sword, a “line-on-line” battle - all this looks very impressive. And the deaths are very expressive: no one falls just like that, everyone who is hit with a sword (and there are many such characters, as you might guess), crawls across the stage, writhes, trembles and does not calm down for a long time. In the second act, the owner of the gladiator school is hung by the hands of the rebellious slaves from the school fence, and in all this indifferent expressiveness the imprint of time is visible more than in anything else. However, the choreographer didn’t even trust plastic arts one hundred percent: when they kill Harmodius (a comrade-in-arms of Spartacus, who left the camp of the rebels because of a traitorous hetaera) and plunge a knife into his back, red paint is poured generously onto the artist’s white tunic.
The second act is richer in dances: the meeting of Spartacus and his beloved Phrygia, who was sold to another mistress, in the Roman square; the meeting there of the naively ardent Harmodius and the Roman hetaera Aegina; Spartacus's monologue is a call for rebellion. At the same time, men in love duets move so little that women have to take the initiative: Aegina does it better, Phrygia a little worse.
Here we must finally say something about the artists. For this performance, the Mariinsky Theater again called Igor Zelensky to its stage, having left the St. Petersburg theater to direct the Novosibirsk ballet. The role of Spartacus was given to him, and this seems a monstrous injustice: even having crossed the 40-year mark, the dancer Zelensky is more agile, faster and more charming than this Spartacus, who is turning into a monument before our eyes. Victoria Tereshkina was assigned to Phrygia, she was also unlucky: her part seems to have been composed by Jacobson according to the general principle “if only it’s not the same as in life.” Now, if the movement doesn’t look like an ordinary one, that’s already wonderful. Therefore, poor Phrygia has some wild reactions: for example, in the final scene, near the corpse of Spartacus, she sits on her knees, her arms bent at the elbows behind her back. And so, mourning her beloved, she quickly jerks her elbows back and forth several times, as if doing exercises. Yuri Smekalov in the role of Harmodius is somewhat over the top with affectation (the dancer left Boris Eifman's ballet a long time ago, but bad habits are hard to break), and only Ekaterina Kondaurova in the role of Aegina is absolutely flawless.
Fluid plasticity, a vine entwining a man, not a drop of vulgarity, no direct challenge, but still an appeal to the hero - “I exist on my own, but why don’t you pay attention to me?” It’s as if there are no knees and elbows, there is one continuous wave, lulling, enveloping, bewitching. She attracts men not with open sensuality, but with a secret, a quietly spoken vague promise. Next to such people, a man wants to be a knight, a protector; the possible danger seems ridiculous; when Harmodius, whom she brought, is captured by Roman soldiers, she turns away from him without a trace of emotion on her face. No contempt, no triumph, no momentary regret - she is no longer interested in him.
But Aegina alone cannot save the performance called “Spartacus”. After all, what will remain in the memory is not only that, but a tedious series of dead bas-reliefs, a pathetic scene of the gladiators’ night escape (in 1956 they probably ran across a dark stage with torches, now with flashlights, and it all looks like an orienteering competition) and the leader the Romans Crassus, who is carried on a stand like a statue (he does not dance at all). Well, of course, there are two more live horses in the military camp (animals always cause excitement in the hall). And decorations, decorations, decorations. And suits, suits, suits. Two thousand props made for the performance. Exhibition of achievements of the ballet industry in 1956. A sad and instructive sight.