Winner

Julio Bocca brought his show to Moscow

Moscow saw the Argentine in the days of his first triumph - twenty-two years ago, a debutant from South America won the Moscow Ballet Competition. Following this, Mikhail Baryshnikov, who then ruled the American Ballet Theater, invited the artist to join the troupe, which gathered stars from all over the world, and the dancer’s fees soared so high that our ballet producers could not afford his visits. Three years ago, Moscow saw him again - Bocca did not hide that he was tired, that he was going to leave classical ballet, but when he appeared on the Bolshoi stage in Don Quixote, he danced so that all the talk about retirement began to look like ridiculous coquetry. Now something like retirement has arrived - Bocca hardly dances the classics, occasionally appearing in his native Colon Theater. And the show “Bocca Tango” brought to Moscow is something like entertainment for a retired hero. It’s as if a jet aircraft designer took up model aircraft in his spare time.

Yeah, I'm busy. And he built a model that easily flew into the stratosphere.

A live orchestra playing Piazzola's melodies (but not only - Vergilio Esposito and Carlos Gardel are there). An excellent singer Gisela Sara, who amazingly combines arrogance and soulfulness in her melodies; exemplary “Latin” singer Esteban Riera (black patent leather shoes reflected in hair gel - and vice versa). And an hour and a half of dancing choreographed by Ana Maria Stekelman. In which either Bocca tells stories solo, or leads a duet with Cecilia Figaredo, or the stage is occupied by four young people, proving that tango is not only about love passions, but also about competition, fights, and stabbings.

This tango can hardly be called “authentic” - the dance is so ennobled by the infusion of classical technique and classical manners. Bocca is not going to give up the previous two decades of his life - and the text includes completely balletic take-offs into the air (because of which Bocca was once called the “new Vasiliev” - by the way, Vladimir Viktorovich came to watch his colleague dance), rotations in air, rapid revolutions on the ground. It’s as if all the roughness and brutality of the dance that was born in the ports, which was the pastime of sailors and prostitutes, was taken out of tango. The openness of emotions is gone, that is, not completely gone, it is again on stage when the youth accompanying the hero appears there, but the restraint characteristic of classical dance still triumphs in the show. And when in the first dance Bocca writhes at the lonely table, suffers from anticipation, impatiently grabs the tabletop with her hands, wraps her around, strokes the table leg (and the woman, about whom the hero is quite clearly thinking, appears only for a second, looks at his suffering and with a light step goes into backstage), and when in the last dance he rushes up the stepladder, flows between its steps, finds himself almost crucified between its two parts (an elementary, but working story about work, about role, about age) - nowhere is Bocca crosses the line, does not splash out the strain. And it turns out that his show is about winning. However, Moscow learned that Bocca was the winner back in 1985.

Anna GORDEEVA