The fate of the Wanderers

The Classical Ballet Theater opened its 39th season

Their building on Skakovaya has been under construction, under construction and under construction for twenty years in a row - a kind of record in today's Moscow, where houses are growing quickly. That’s why every new season is on the set that we managed to film. In the history of the theater there are dances on the New Stage of the Bolshoi Theater, in the Kremlin Palace, in the Rossiya Concert Hall and in the Taganka Theater. Now the International House of Music has given shelter to the theater of Kasatkina and Vasiliev - and it turns out that the ballet season in Moscow is opened not by the Bolshoi Theater (its first Swan Lake will take place only on September 14), but by this traveling company.

The season starts with a classic. "Giselle" - "The Nutcracker" - "Don Quixote" - "Romeo and Juliet". In the last decade, the theater, which in its time became famous for its original choreography (when in the seventies and eighties everyone edited the classics, which was both financially profitable and morally safer, “KasVasy,” as they are called in the ballet world, fought their way through censorship and composed their own texts) , deals mainly with proven titles that the public is guaranteed to go for. During nomadism there is no time for experiments. (But the repertoire also retains its own classic - “The Creation of the World”, a play in which Baryshnikov once shone and which was then transferred to six dozen theaters around the world.) However, “KasVasy” would not be “KasVasy” if their own style did not shine through the classical repertoire.

Their style is an interest in male dance, the ability to choreograph and perform it. The Classical Ballet Theater is perhaps the only troupe in the country, besides the Bolshoi Theater, in which the dancers work more interestingly and brightly than the ballerinas. This does not mean that ballerinas are bad - it’s just that when Kasatkina and Vasilev add dances to classical performances, they add specifically male dances - and the guys, inspired by the opportunities that have opened up, give the best of what they are capable of.

Not all purely staged ideas can be considered successful - for example, when in “Don Quixote” a street dancer must dance between knives stuck into the stage, in “KasVasov” she dances between bullfighters’ cocked hats neatly laid out in the same order - which removes the effect of virtuosity. Everyone understands, of course, that you can’t cut yourself on a fake knife - but blades are one thing, crumpled hats are another. No, it’s clear that no one will stick anything into the precious linoleum (a flooring suitable for dancing costs crazy amounts of money), but in other theaters these knives are simply carefully placed on the floor on an inconspicuous but stable base...

But these are trifles, and in the hands of the dancer in the quixotic “Zucchini” there are live and skillful castanets. And in the coffee dance the soloist is Vilina Savkina - and I have never seen a better “Coffee”, although Vainona’s version of “The Nutcracker” is performed throughout the former Soviet Union. And in “Don Quixote” there is also a marvelous, languid and funny part of Gamache (Vladimir Muravlev), done at KasVasov almost like a ballerina’s part - with a high, purely feminine opening of the legs. And the precision-trained Chimney Sweep in “The Nutcracker” (Artur Gasparyan), with the precision of his dance, reminds us that this is a French doll. And an excellent six guys in the gypsy dance - the envy of the Bolshoi Theater. And of course, Basil in “Don Quixote” is the dexterous and crafty Ion Kurosu, who performs all the steps with that slight imposingness that implies an unspent reserve of strength even after the most difficult tricks.

They are on the MMDM stage until the end of this week. Then we hit the road again. The traveling theater will again perform high-quality and completely tireless performances in the vastness of our homeland and far from it. They would have finished building the building for them, after all. Without waiting until they live to see the anniversary, they will get tired and receive some kind of medal.

Anna GORDEEVA