Summit at Kothurny

International Ballet Festival took place in Berlin

The official name of these two weeks, which at the end of the season gathers dance lovers from all over the world in the capital of Germany, is International Dance Summit Berlin 2006. The annual festival is as open to the audience as possible: its program includes not only premieres and tours, but also “open-door matinees” “, when balletomanes can attend morning classes of artists, free lectures by art historians and presentations of ballet books (this time a huge photo album dedicated to Vladimir Malakhov’s “Sleeping Beauty” made this season). Still, there were two main events: the premiere of the ballet Tchaikovsky, transferred by Boris Eifman to Berlin from his own troupe, and the tour of the Tokyo ballet.

The artistic director of the entire Berlin ballet (under his leadership, the city authorities united the troupes of three classical theaters) and the main star of the German capital, Vladimir Malakhov, had long wanted to dance this heartbreaking story about a composer tormented by the demon of homosexuality - and he got it. But in order to balance the intensity of passions, the festival simply needed Bejar. Bezhar harmonious, Bezhar smooth, Bezhar complex - performances of the “golden period”, precisely those that once so shocked the imagination of a young Soviet choreographer that he built all his signature plasticity under the influence of the great Frenchman - however, adding to the performances the eternally sobbing intonation. That is, after the “absentee student” his “teacher” was presented. You could feel the difference.

Bejar was danced by the Tokyo Ballet - the Japanese bought the rights to the best performances from the master. They say that it costs a lot of money - well, the residents of the eastern islands know what not to skimp on. They brought three performances - “Greek Dances” to the music of Mikis Theodorakis, a composition from 1983, “The Firebird” staged in 1970, and “The Rite of Spring” from 1959 (both by Stravinsky). They played in exactly this - retrospective - order.

And this is what happened. Greek laziness, Greek smoothness, Greek bliss turned out to be alien to the Japanese. The central male duet - here two guys just come out, a couple of sirtaki movements (hands on each other’s shoulders), then they diverge for several meters and are sometimes synchronous, sometimes “uttered” with a small time shift; legs seem to be walking in sunny shallow water, hands are holding a net (no, no, no everyday copying of movements - so, an easy designation of daily non-conveyor, living, slightly lazy labor) - so this duet has simply turned into an almost military showdown . On the stage there were, if not two enemies, then certainly two rivals; the muscles tensed as if to strike, the legs furiously slammed into the floor, and the glances with which the artists measured each other could set the curtain on fire. With such an inner feeling, it is clear why this troupe was more successful in “The Firebird”: in the still unreconciled, unconquered seventies, Bejart made a Maoist anthem to the music of Stravinsky. From the crowd of partisans in a standard gray uniform, a Leader in scarlet robes appears, he leads the people behind him (his movements are echoed), he is almost God (the followers are on their knees around the leader, and he “pours” into them handfuls of the invisible soul taken from himself). The leader leads the people and suffers for them, but his strength is not unlimited (a tired young man writhes in a slow convulsion on the proscenium). Like death? But a new leader emerges from the crowd in the same scarlet pants, the previous one is resurrected, and they merge into one kind of two-headed bird. In general, one falcon is Lenin, the other falcon is Stalin; but fantastically beautiful, soaring upward, arching in the fight against an invisible enemy, solo “leaders”... but that excellent friendly fury that the Bezharov corps de ballet needs... Something touched the modern Tokyo dancers in this story, something coincided - - “Firebird” turned out to be quite good.

But still, “The Rite of Spring” came out best. A frank manifesto of the long-standing sexual revolution (a man and a woman are pathetic and hunched over alone in the surrounding aggressive crowd; when mated together, denoting the act of love in a completely unambiguous way, they become happy, free and beautiful) the Japanese danced with such fervor, pleasure and understanding of the matter that it became clear: this young ballet (and the art of classical dance appeared in Japan only after the war) simply does not yet feel the dances of fatigue and impending disappointment, the dances of the eighties. For them, everything is just beginning. Spring is sacred.

Anna GORDEEVA