| Yuri Grigorovich showed Krasnodar ballet to St. Petersburg Background
A week before the Krasnodar theater's tour to St. Petersburg, two Moscow newspapers reported: Valery Gergiev invited Yuri Grigorovich (he now reigns in Krasnodar) to lead the Mariinsky Ballet; he refused, but agreed to stage three performances. It smelled like a sensation: it turned out that the Mariinsky Theater, which had been a leader in Russia for ten years, having mastered the styles of Balanchine, Neumeier and Forsyth, was returning to the big-headed Soviet ballet. Moreover, it is worn out: for the last twenty years, Grigorovich has not staged a single original performance; wherever he was invited (Yakutsk or Istanbul), he made copies. Three premieres make up a full season; three premieres taken out of the murky past are the suicide of the theater, the disintegration of the troupe, a return to the era when talented people secretly left the theater on foreign tours. (A couple of years ago in the States, a group of dancers from Krasnodar recalled that wild time - secretly, because in the best Soviet traditions, passports were kept by the authorities.) Shuddering, she grabbed the phone: theater, is it true that you decided to do this? For what?
In response, the press secretary was bewildered: plans for the season will be announced in October, but Grigorovich is not in them. A neat girl calls maestro Gergiev (he, as always, crosses half the world on a plane) and says: there was not even a conversation with an offer to become an artistic director. That is, my colleagues were mistaken. Phew, we can take a breath. And think: well, they didn’t come up with this themselves?
The Bolshoi Theater freed itself from Grigorovich's rule ten years ago. There were different years - the naive reign of Vladimir Vasiliev, the growing core of ballet manager Alexei Fadeyechev under him, who tried to demand power, but was forced to leave, the hysterical outburst of Gennady Rozhdestvensky, the lackluster plowing of Boris Akimov, the approach to the theater and the inauguration of Alexei Ratmansky (lesser work goes to the head of the troupe -- Gennady Yanin). Each of the bosses had - and still has - good intentions, each of them had - and still has - mistakes and sins. But Grigorovich’s “old guard” (mostly a well-fed clique, arranged by mannered TV aesthetes from among his personal friends) had been muttering all these ten years that the great choreographer should return to the Bolshoi, that no one could hold a candle to him. Bubnezh slowly turned into an anecdote: when Ratmansky undertook to stage “The Bright Stream,” Vitaly Wulf announced that Grigorovich was composing “The Bright Stream” in Krasnodar; when “Bolt” appeared in the Bolshoi’s plans... That’s right, that’s what Grigorovich will (someday) do, we were told. But “Bright Stream” was staged by Ratmansky long ago; Bolt will be released on February 25th. And Grigorovich... well, a person cannot compose more. Happens. But his “friends”, who are spreading misinformation about upcoming prime ministers and appointments, do not understand that they are making fun of their idol.
His destiny
Did the idol deserve it?
He was a very talented person. He started in St. Petersburg - studied at the Vaganovsky Theater, danced at the Mariinsky Theater. I started staging it in St. Petersburg. That he is not a craftsman, but an artist, breaking through mossy traditions, building his own world, was understood precisely at the Mariinsky Theater, after “The Legend of Love” (1961). His world was unusually cruel for a ballet still gravitating toward fairy tales; people on stage were torn apart by splits and complex feelings; critics started talking about psychologism; From the play about the queen, who gave up her beauty for the life of her sister and fell hopelessly in love with the guy who chose her beautiful sister, such a dark, powerful and desperate force was scurrying about, which could not have existed before in the kingdom of ephemeral sylphs. Grigorovich was made the main choreographer of the Bolshoi.
There were several happy years - working, successful ones. That is, there was no happiness in the performances - happiness is not Grigorovich’s territory; the sun, the clear sky - these are not his colors. But the expectation of happiness, albeit undermined by anxiety, rang in “The Nutcracker”; and in “Spartacus” the duets of the protagonist with his beloved were tender and clear - even if they began and ended with defiantly protective poses (Spartacus’s hands above Phrygia’s head... as if one could protect oneself from the advancing legions with one’s bare hands). Then there was 1968, the defeat of “Swan” (Furtseva demanded an optimistic ending - the choreographer remade the performance). And - a breakdown. To “Ivan the Terrible” and “Angara”, to the hymn to the wise tsar who strangled the boyars with his bare hands (1975 - the turn towards the rehabilitation of Stalinism began), and concrete construction apotheoses. Towards the secondary nature of artistic decisions and repressions against dissidents. To a situation where the artistic director did not produce plays for years and did not allow anyone to stage them. In the last years of his reign there was a complete absence of new productions and endless editing of classics...
When he moved to Krasnodar eight years ago, hope flared up. He was humiliated - it was thought that anger would motivate him to write something. Yes, anger - the most spectacular forces in Grigorovich’s performances have always been the dark forces (even in “Swan” the part of the Evil Genius is more interesting than the part of the Prince). There were rumors about The Master and Margarita, but they melted into thin air. In the corpulent, devoted province, and not in the demanding, nervous Moscow, the choreographer did the same thing - sorting out old works and selling their versions to third-rate theaters. It became clear that there would be no new performances.
St. Petersburg tour
The arrival of the Krasnodar troupe to the theater where Grigorovich began was intended to prove that everything was still ahead.
But here’s what’s amazing: with the author alive (he sat in the stalls, came out to bow, everything was as it should be), they danced his best ballet (the tour opened with Spartacus) as if two hundred years had already passed, the text had been erased and one choreographer’s work could not be distinguished from another. Denis Vladimirov played not Spartak, but Ivan the Terrible. A leader not convinced of his rightness, but a petty, bloody hysteric: the monologue after the murder of a comrade in the arena was especially expressive - where the energy of rebellion should grow out of grief, this Spartacus fussily waved away some ghosts not provided for in the libretto. Physical characteristics worked against this Spartacus: a small step did not allow him to move through the space in the famous diagonals; it seemed that the dancer’s legs were tied. The hero who personifies freedom was not free himself - he turned out to be some kind of hunted little man at the head of the rebel army, and not Spartacus.
Another misfortune befell Aegina (a Roman heterosexual, Crassus’s friend): the role was given to Anastasia Volochkova. She has no problems with her step: her leg shoots 180 degrees at any moment. But there is another problem - there are several seconds in the performance when Aegina and Crassus are given the same movements: it is clear that against the background of Crassus, who personifies Roman power, Aegina should rustle with serpentine softness, in which the same strength would be felt. And Volochkova walked like an exemplary legionnaire: woodenly erect, with stiff hands, an upturned chin - a soldier, not a hetaera. And even in a completely frank scene of seducing Spartacus’s comrades, she threads a shepherd’s crook between her legs and crawls along it, like girls in strip bars. The dancer is cold and imperturbable - as if she was doing morning exercises, and not rousing a crowd of men. As for physical fitness, everything is the same. The girl gets up on the bridge with difficulty (her waist pulls toward the ground), she can’t really jump, and in order for someone to lift her, the theater had to call Mark Peretokin to play the role of Crassus. He tries - but after the support he no longer has the strength to dance on his own. The couple was helped by conductor Alexander Lavrenyuk, who at the beginning drove the orchestra so that the lamentations of the captive slaves were at a cheerful, almost jazz tempo; at the moment of the duet, he turned the music into sounds emitted by a tape recorder chewing on tape. The heartbreaking spectacle (will the dancer get injured? - the audience wondered) was accompanied by equally heartbreaking music.
The only one you could look at without pity and disgust was Phrygia, performed by Elena Knyazkova. A sweet, well-trained girl with a quiet demeanor and a quiet demeanor - just a friend, not a wife, the kind who bandages wounds and lets them die - did not save the performance, but modestly did her job. Surrounded by enthusiastic, but short-legged and scary slaves, among assorted Romans recruited from provincial choreographic schools, for tourists who filled the hall, many of whom did not distinguish the Krasnodar theater from the Mariinsky Theater. But the stoic Phrygia was never Grigorovich’s heroine - that’s why she was given few dances.
Phrygia was once danced by the wonderful ballerina Natalya Bessmertnova, who was also Grigorovich’s wife. And when from the third tier one of the old balletomanes who still remembered her dances shouted “Natalya Bessmertnova, bravo!”, Grigorovich stood up and bowed.
That's it, the era is over. The tragedy turned into a farce. Anna GORDEEVA, St. Petersburg - Moscow |
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