The Great Lady and other funny people

Balletomanes will not be bored

In the first summer week in Moscow there are two events that are important for lovers of modern dance. Firstly, on June 2 and 3, Carolyn Carlson’s play “Tigers in the Tea House” will be shown on the stage of the Youth Theater; secondly, from June 1 to 6, the Pushkin Theater will give its stage to the international festival “Moscow Footlights”.

Caroline Carlson is an absolutely legendary person. The American, who was a star of Alvin Nicolai's avant-garde troupe in the 1960s, went to Paris at the end of the glorious decade and began composing dances herself. She did this so successfully that she, the first of the rebels who broke the classical canons of dance, was invited to work at the Paris Opera. The position of etoile choreographer was specially created for her (by analogy with etoile dancers - the highest level in the career of an opera artist), and she headed the theater research group at the theater. She was the first to open the doors - talented outsiders had the opportunity to stage opera; as a result, the theater’s current diverse repertoire is the merit of Carlson, although she has not been in charge there for more than twenty years.

In the “post-revolutionary” era, Carlson directed the ballet of the Venetian theater La Fenice, returned to Paris at the Theater de la Ville, headed the Finnish opera for a couple of years (her parents were Finns who moved to America) and finally built her own studio in the Bois de Vincennes, combining a philosophical seminar, a theater troupe and a dance class. Plus, for the last two years, she has been heading the national choreographic center of Roubaix Nord - the current tour is taking place under its brand. The performance that Carolyn Carlson brings to us is the 87th of the ones she composed.

"Tigers in the Tea House" was made for three dancers - one of them is Chinese, another is Japanese, the third is Korean; everyone is familiar with the traditional martial arts of their country. Carlson is seriously interested in Zen Buddhism and calligraphy and prefers to call his latest works visual poetry rather than choreography. The current performance, which manages to fuse the dancers’ violent flashes of energy into a completely peaceful picture, is described by Western colleagues who have already seen it in terms suitable for Chinese painting and Japanese poems.

Simultaneously with the performance, the grand dames of modern dance in the capital will be showing works by interesting but much less famous people - the “Moscow Footlight” is coming. The festival will present one to three performances per evening depending on volume. Let's start with the Slovenian entertainers from Fico ballet who have already come to us: last time they crossed dance with sports, enthusiastically mocking both human activities, now they are bringing a performance called Confi-dance. The festival will continue with a performance by the South African Ballet - a troupe that is actually completely classical (at home in June-July they perform Coppelia, for example), but not alien to the creative searches of their native choreographers. Then it will be the turn of Canadians who are fond of Japanese butoh dance (a duet called Butoh-a-go-go is performing the play “Working title: Vancouver”; the last performance in Moscow of these masters of art was remembered for the meditative voyage of two naked dancers across the entire stage) and the troupe of the temperamental Swede Claire Parsons (in her last performance, women conducted sensual dialogues with household items).

The Spanish Carmen Werner in the play “Skin” will “explore the awakening of the sexual instinct in people, regardless of age, gender, class, skin color or religion,” and the German Wee-dance-company and the Dutch Dance works Rotterdam, as always, will demonstrate class movement without overloading the audience with the plot (reasonably assuming that different styles of movement are already a plot). One of the most interesting points of the program may be the tour of the Polish dance theater from Poznan: the European famous troupe (two years ago they were special guests of the Lyon Dance Biennale) will bring a set of three small performances: Zefirum (a prototype of the word zero, variations on Buddhist themes, choreography - Virpi Pakinen), “Baroque” (Bach as presented by Jacek Przybylovsky) and Wo-man in tomatoes (Yossi Berg’s nostalgia for the times of Edith Piaf and Nancy Sinatra). And at the finale of the festival the hosts will appear - “Russian Chamber Ballet Moscow”. For their modern troupe, Daria Buzovkina staged the play Post factum.

Anna GORDEEVA