Leila Guchmazova. Selection

Selection
Velvet revolution of Russian contemporary dance

Leila Guchmazova

Publication date: December 28, 2000

“Will the stubby girls be lying around the stage again?” - this is approximately how advanced people react to modern dance. Even a one-site colleague, avoiding tautology, called it “avant-garde ballet . ” Meanwhile, in Russian modern dance (or, as it is commonly called in the West, contemporary dance), a situation has already arisen where the upper classes cannot, and the lower classes do not want to. With the clarity of the children's magazine Funny Pictures, this fact was demonstrated by two contemporary dance festivals in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Dance Petersburg is like your London. The air is filled with the snobbery of the prestigious Lords' Club ( Mariinsky Theatre ) and the eerie detachment of the inhabitants of the working slums (Center for Contemporary Art "Another Dance"). If they are mixed, the result is the International Festival "Exercise". The festival is famous for the fact that all organizational and artistic issues are resolved by ballet “mastodons”. They have a unique idea of ​​contemporary art in general and the level of its development in Russia in particular. Add to this the immense pretensions of St. Petersburg (if not for academicism, then for good taste) - this is the physiognomy of “Exersis”.

Master classes, a scientific conference, performances of foreign and native troupes in one bottle have a devastating effect on each other. After the first “Russian Evening” in the golden-velvet Alexandrinsky Theater, the visiting teachers, who had started teaching, interrupted the course and returned to the basics. It is difficult to teach the Russians anything if on stage there are ladies' handicrafts from what was at hand and heroic folk choreodrama. In the second Russian “Evening of Young Choreographers” they mixed truffles with radishes in the manner of a Stroganov cook: a pinch of contact improvisation, a little modern dance, a bit of “modern ballet”, unsurpassed in its idiotic pathos. I am a passionate viewer, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the torn tights of the artists.

Foreign producers who arrived in large numbers have so far assessed the prospects of the Russian market from hearsay. You should have seen their faces after watching! It’s quite enough for an injection of patriotism, and I tried to explain to them that in Russia there is something: “Provincial Dances” and the Kinetic Theater , “Rebels” and the Chelyabinsk Theater of Contemporary Dance , festivals in Vitebsk, Yekaterinburg, Yaroslavl. I don't know if they believed it.

And at a scientific conference, a blind person (foreign criticism) and a deaf person (domestic criticism) discussed Russian modern dance for two full days. During the performance of our specialists, sacred banners with the names of Stanislavsky and Ulanova fluttered. Foreign people said something about types of thinking and ways of using them in dance. The feeling of unreality of the performances was emphasized by the interior: the windows of the attic of the Mussorgsky Theater looked out exactly under the tails of Apollo's quadriga, and the people sat on scarlet plastic Coca-Cola chairs.

This time Moscow distinguished itself for the better. The Vortex School of Contemporary Dance, located in the outskirts, the Center for Contemporary Art and the Center for Contemporary Choreography "Tsekh" joined forces and held the Moscow festival of modern dance "Trajectory" . For three evenings, if not the eyes, then the mind and heart were in harmony. The organizers said “but pasaran!” to ballet imitations of contemporary dance, having collected into the program all the best that exists today in this genre in the capital.

The Kinetic Theater of Sasha Pepelyaev danced Kharms (a performance nominated for the Golden Mask ), the Minima Theater danced the glorious Chunga-Changa. Scattered among foreign projects, the Saira Blanche Theater thoughtfully improvised. The famous son of Anatoly Vasilyev, Gennady Abramov, can live in peace: he pushed for his own search for good artists, which made up a fair portion of “Trajectory”. Former Abramov's "Apartment #5" deftly dealt with the "Kama Sutra" and endlessly returned to "Beginning", Vasya Yushchenko ("Landscape", clear blue eyes, red beard), covering his shameful place with a bowler hat, nonchalantly talked about life.

"Trajectory" is essentially the first Moscow festival of modern dance without officialdom and compromise. You can close your eyes for a couple of pop numbers: for now it doesn’t look as dreary as inverted ballet legs - and even “inverted” ballet thinking. While Western “help” is merging with Russian officialdom, the battered pioneers are finally uniting. Putting up with professional competition and each other's shortcomings. While the capital hosts foreign dance festivals to the drumbeat of sponsorship, our genre professionals are turning into phantoms, tightening their tour schedule.