| New performance by John Neumeier "Songs of the Night", the Hamburg Ballet's just premiered, consists of two parts - "Nocturnes" and "Night Journey". In fact, on the playbill is Two Ballets by John Neumeier; each movement has different music (Chopin's nocturnes and Mahler's Seventh Symphony, respectively), different artists are involved in them, and in general they differ exactly as much as Chopin can differ from Mahler. But it is still unlikely that two small performances will ever appear in the repertoire separately; they are united by several details (tea cups appearing in the hands of the characters, for example), and most importantly, they complement each other perfectly. Both of them are John Neumeier's look into today's gloomy world (not the pre-dawn, but the pre-dawn - a man for whom the war in Vietnam became a personal, deep-seated internal catastrophe, does not expect anything good from the beginning of the century). At the same time, today's beginning night is depicted in the twilight of the twentieth century: both “Nocturnes” and “Night Journey” are about the premonition of the First World War.
“Nocturnes” is the world that will be destroyed by the First World War, itself gradually crumbling at its core, but still surprisingly alive, the world of Chekhov (Neumeier, an attentive researcher and connoisseur of Russian culture, author of the best production of “The Seagull” in the world, calls Anton Pavlovich's name in the booklet). The orchestra pit is dark; the piano stands right on the stage, to the left near the backdrop. When the curtain opened, there was silence and a freeze frame: the artists froze, some with cups in their hands, as if someone had clicked a camera at a large family tea party. Well, not exactly a family one, but, let’s say, a big dacha, evening; guests, but all well known, without any special ceremony. An intellectual of about forty in a carefully discreet suit (Lloyd Riggins - the characters have no names or any other designations, the program lists only the names of the performers) froze with a book in his hands; he is one of those Chekhov heroes who have already refused to fight life, but do their work every day and thus are alive. At the feet of the obvious - tired, stately, thoughtlessly arrogant - Ranevskaya (Anna Polikarpova) stood the obvious (slightly disheveled, manly, devoted) Lopakhin (Ivan Urban). The rest of the characters, and the obvious Anya and Petya (Helen Boucher, Thiago Borden), and either Treplev in two persons, or the same Treplev with Trigorin, who is similar to him in everything except luck (twin brothers Jiri and Otto Bubenchik), while just a frozen picture. The freeze frame is destroyed by the sound of a cup placed by Polikarpova on a saucer; the cups begin to rattle, as if a train is passing nearby, aha, “people are having lunch - life is passing by” - and a series of duets begins.
Here are Riggins and Silvia Azzoni - a man with a measured life and a young woman suddenly appearing next to him. That is, here is a head lowered into a book, a habit of not causing inconvenience to anyone (that’s why no big gestures - God forbid you hurt someone!) and an automatically traveling spoon in a tea cup; and here is a creature of about twenty-five jumping out with a completely stupid coquetry (consciously putting your foot on your heel in ballet - well, like in ordinary life, shooting your eyes “at the corner - at the nose - at the object”), caressing his cheek with his own hand and crouching deeply with a dramatic sigh. And so the hero (doctor? manager?) - he understands everything about her, but this is the last, last, impossible love, and the book falls from his hands, and a heart-rending, fantastic duet begins, when a man, seemingly having forgotten about all sorts of nonsense, always carefully taking small steps, suddenly begins to take off in large leaps (at the same time, next to her). And when the woman, of course, leaves him, simply slips out of her hands, the man breaks, folds down like a costume rag, as if there is no body inside at all. But he collects himself, and this is one of the most significant fragments of the performance: how a man grows out of this rag again, how his hands rest on his knees and his legs stand straight again; how the hand then straightens the shoulder; life falls into place. But there would be too much pathos in the play and too little Chekhov if the duet ended with this - the woman runs up, takes the book from the hero’s hands and decisively rips out a page from it; Riggins' hand is pressed to his heart; you won't forget; not return.
They run around, not noticing those around them and not noticing the music, that they are Chopin, Helen Boucher and Thiago Borden. (And this is not a reproach to the artists - this was how it was done both evenings in a row: Anya and Petya will compose their own music). They are tender, spinning around each other, and suddenly Polikarpova begins to walk towards them from the corner with a quiet step; and the girl is still running, and the boy has already frozen, and he is looking only at the woman walking towards him, and it seems that something in the plot is about to explode, the “children’s” duet will be destroyed, but “Ranevskaya”, “the hostess”, “the adult lady” lets go of the boy's gaze, almost reaches him, and the girl, who had not noticed anything, gets the opportunity to jump on her partner's back and remain unreasonably happy.
“Nocturnes” are sketches of refusals, partings, quietly broken hearts; everything that happens in the outer world will be in Mahler; here there is only the inner world. In the finale, the freeze frame will reassemble as it was: that’s it, it’s already the past, a photo album.
And after the interval the planet is already roaring: Mahler begins. On a bench, wrapped in a sheet, lies a black-haired girl (Joelle Boulogne). Her lover (Alexander Ryabko) is carried away by the aggressive music of war and is brought into the fold by the soldiers. The girl, judging by her costume, is most likely a child of the Jewish ghetto; soldiers of all eras, from Napoleonic uniforms through English gray jackets to modern spotted uniforms (Neumeier designs his performances himself). Again, you can’t hold back, you can’t bring back: all the men obey only the lashing music, and just as it carries it in waves, now small, now large, now stormy, so the “military” corps de ballet carries across the stage from left to right and from right to left, the people here are literally just pebbles in the wave . In the middle of the “war”, a small duet of a modest teacher with a book in his hands and a girl in a widow’s hat: they will meet again in the finale, already at the closing of the curtain: Ryabko, the deceased hero, will go into the wings, the girl will go to the teacher. This girl is more than love - she is life; and the “message” of this torn, painful, crowded ballet people is obvious: life goes not to the heroes, but to the teachers.
Quite a gloomy way of looking at things. But we were warned. Anna GORDEEVA |
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