| The festival in honor of Maya Plisetskaya ended with a gala concert The gala was called "Don Quixote" - the directors, Alexei Ratmansky and Dmitry Chernyakov, took an old performance and sprinkled a considerable number of surprises and jokes into it. That is, at first - here it is, a familiar square in Barcelona, on the balcony a girl fans herself with a fan, two “Kitri’s friends” fly out, but after them there is not one main character, but three, representing three countries: Bolshoi star Maria Alexandrova, the best Covent Garden ballerina Alina Cojocaru, Cuban guest Viense Valdes. But the ballet still rolls along the usual path, Don Quixote rides out on a live horse and Sancho Panza on a donkey nearby, and the Toreador hotly twirls his cape (only by lowering your eyes to the program, you can understand that this is the usually arrogantly languid premiere of the Berlin Ballet Artem Shpilevsky) . But soon the smooth movement of the performance is decisively disrupted: Plisetskaya comes on stage and offers to look at what “Don Quixote” might look like not from one hundred and fifty years ago, but from today. And the breakers take the stage.
At first you gasp: do these teenagers in baggy pants, making a propeller out of their own legs, like the great ballerina? And then you understand: yes, of course, because Plisetskaya has been doing exactly this all her life. She spun the fouette on her head, broke her ideas about what is “possible” and what is “not allowed” on what stage, and obviously, if she were even a little younger, she would have joined these boys. The new, unusual, defiant pulled her towards him - and pulled her out of the cage of “state ballerinas”.
The fact that she was still a “state ballerina” is recorded by the chronicle shown at the gala. Times, the country's leaders and the title fonts of "News of the Day" are changing - Plisetskaya dances "Swan Lake". Here Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi are watching it - Bulganin is receiving them; Khrushchev and Castro; Khrushchev and the King of Laos; Joseph Broz Tito and Voroshilov. When on the screen the next government delegation went backstage, the audience burst out laughing, the staging and expressions of the official commentators were so identical. And this, by the way, is a very accurately found move by the directors, because Maya was the first ballet dancer to laugh at the Soviet regime. (Resisting is not the first, laughing is yes.)
At the anniversary, one cannot do without greetings - like “talking heads” on the screen (a touching congratulation from Lyudmila Zykina, who recalled how Plisetskaya gave her a piece of fabric for her dress - what a time those were, that for Zykina this became an event!), so and ballet dancers on stage. These greetings were included in the scenery of the daring, quixotic “Tavern” and looked somewhat strange in it (Covent Garden envoys Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg danced a “bed” duet from “Manon”, “Russian Germans” Polina Semionova and Artem Shpilevsky - tragic graphics Lindentraum, and the Mariinsky guests Diana Vishneva and Igor Kolb are a sensual and also space-free “Tavern” duet from Bezharov’s “Bhakti”).
Then Joaquin Cortez came on stage. The flamenco dancer, who turned courageous dance into glossy entertainment, occupied the space for a long time and seriously. A stout, middle-aged man who fancied himself a sex symbol puffed out his chest like a turkey, moved his chin as if he was always looking in the mirror, and after a few kicks of his heels, begged applause from the audience with the smile of a drooling baby. They clapped for him out of pity - he started again; he was clearly sure that this was his personal celebration, and did not pay attention to the fact that at the twentieth minute of his incendiary solo, people began to jump out of the hall, and at the fortieth minute they poured out in droves. To remove him from the stage, Maya Mikhailovna had to go out after him herself.
This is how the first part ended tragically.
On the second, everything suddenly came together, started working and turned on. And the ballerinas began to be announced at their entrance (otherwise people were highlighting the programs with cell phones and lighters), and the imagination of the directors became better visible. The dryads dreamed of by Don Quixote were replaced by Shaolin monks - to the familiar music they soared in impossible jumps and broke sticks on each other’s backs, arms and heads, and a kaleidoscope of variations from the now extinct ballets in which Plisetskaya danced was included in the scenery of the “gypsy camp” - only instead of gypsies, the actresses were surrounded by dancers of the Alexandrov ensemble dressed as Cossacks. In kubankas and burkas, they looked enchanted at the dances of the Bacchae (Anastasia Yatsenko), the “Russian motifs” of the Tsar Maiden (Svetlana Lunkina), the suffering of Zarema (Maria Allash) and the dance-rebellion of Laurencia (Maria Alexandrova). They sympathized, shook hands as they bowed, and Don Quixote leisurely talked with the Cossack commander. After which the Cossacks themselves danced, performing a set of squats and fencing techniques with checkers, from which natural sparks flew.
The undoubted success of the concert was the appearance of the employees at the Bolshoi - those who carried out baskets of flowers and brought them to Plisetskaya during the entire period of her service, probably several tons. The venerable ladies in blue uniforms solemnly marched across the palace stage, displaying grace and the necessary musicality. And in the finale, the heroine of the evening appeared in Bejart’s small number “Ave, Maya” - in heels, in her hands two fans, and only these fantastic hands slightly waving the fans are visible - as a reminder of how Plisetskaya once danced “Bolero” .
And flowers fell from the grates - just as they fell from the upper tiers during her performances. And she stood and smiled. Her lips were trembling. And the audience screamed as they once did at her Don Quixote. From which balletomanes keep an audio recording - occasionally breaking music and a continuous cry of the people. Eighty years. It can't be. Anna GORDEEVA |
|
