Gesture and tin

Finnish modern dance was shown at the Territory festival

Finnish dancer and choreographer Tero Saarinen brought two solo performances to Moscow - “The Man in the Room” and “The Hunt”. The first is a composition by Caroline Carlson, the legendary civil engineer of French modern dance, art matriarch (music - Apocalyptica, Gavin Bryers). The second is Saarinen's own production, his version of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. The two half-hour one-act plays are similar in theme - in each of them Saarinen deals with ballet myths and the capabilities of his own body.

These possibilities seem limitless. It’s as if there are no bones, no rigid attachments - the limbs can twist at any angle; the muscles provide both incredible smoothness and suicidal sharpness. “Territory” this year exists under the motto “The Body in the City” - and the performance was chosen exemplarily under this motto. Saarinen commands his own body like a dictator and a soldier, listens to it like a musician and - occasionally - laughs a little at him, like at an old friend. In the monologue invented by Carlson, a man defines the boundaries of the space in which he is destined to be, and is horrified by defining these boundaries; The plastic hysteria is emphasized by manipulations with colorful tubes - at certain intervals the actor smears paints all over himself. Along the carotid artery - down to the chest, along the arms, along the back. The replacement blood is voluptuously rubbed into the skin - look, I'm all artificial, it's all cranberry juice. Ballet is a strange activity, an unnatural activity, I chose it (at a fairly old age - at seventeen years old) and now I exist according to different laws. And in the text - half-thinking, half-scream - the pose of the Faun, the memory of Nijinsky, is clearly recorded. A man with whose appearance in the history of dance the role of men on stage changed - “in the ancestors,” in the artistic predecessors.

Carlson's play was staged seven years ago for the Venice Biennale, and in the same Venice two years later Saarinen first showed The Hunt.

As a continuation, as a development of the theme. To the music of “The Rite of Spring,” Saarinen alternates between becoming a dying swan (another symbol of the new ballet era) and then becoming a screen for the projection of whirling patterns (in the booklet there is text from the choreographer that “we are oppressed by the media, but are forced to interact with them”) . In the music of The Rite of Spring, Saarinen heard only repetition, endless repetition, and did not find the development of the theme and its resolution. (Perhaps because at the beginning of the twentieth century, history was still seen by some people as a path to progress, but now many see it as a scattering of dull suffering.) Therefore - a set of pictures, impressive, but not collected together; and monstrous aggression towards the audience - sharply flickering light, unexpected blows to the eyes (the organizers were honest and posted a warning in front of the entrance that it is not recommended to watch the performance for those people whose health all this could harm; in fact, in my opinion, This kind of stuff hurts everyone.) And Faun is designated in this text as well; his classic profile pose. Saarinen talks about the kinship of any dancer with the eternal myth. He has the right. But it would be better without a strobe. Nijinsky somehow managed without him.

Anna GORDEEVA