Translated material
Memories Format
An evening in memory of Alexander Prokofiev was held at the Musical Theater
One of Russia's best ballet teachers died a year ago, the day before his 65th birthday. Recently he lived and worked in Germany - he left in the nineties, when the money for hellish work here began to pay too ridiculously. Before that, he trained a galaxy of excellent gentleman dancers. Actually, almost together with Pyotr Pestov, they then determined the future of Russian ballet: Pestov raised great egocentrics who incinerated the space around him with fans - Prokofiev spoke not about a great mission, but about work, what should be done in the best way, and released “hope and support” ballerinas Andris Liepa and Sergei Filin decided to remember their teacher a year after his departure - and organized a concert at the Musical Theater, whose ballet troupe Filin, who is ending his career at the Bolshoi Theater this season, has been directing for three months now.The concert was strict and homely at the same time - probably the best format for memories. Filin, performing on stage for the first time not only as a dancer, but also as a manager obliged to give speeches, apologized to the public that not all the artists announced on the poster were taking part in the evening (there were no Svetlana Lunkina and Nikolai Tsiskaridze, whom his native Bolshoi Theater urgently occupied also a memorial - dedicated to the memory of Natalia Bessmertnova - “Giselle”). The artist's debut as a speaker turned out to be very successful - exciting lively intonation. I must say that perhaps the general atmosphere of the evening had an impact - even the speech “from the sponsors” was modest and reasonable (the girl from Norilsk Nickel thanked her for the honor of supporting this project).
The concert was not short - a solid three hours, a rather large set of numbers. The last Russian students of Prokofiev are approaching the end of their careers, while the majority have already stopped dancing altogether. But they made good administrative careers: Irek Mukhamedov became the artistic director of the Athens ballet, Alexey Fadeechev headed the Rostov ballet, Viktor Eremenko ruled Kiev, Gyula Harangoso ruled Vienna. The dancers who became bosses appeared only in a documentary about Prokofiev, shown at the beginning of the second part. On the stage there were those who had not yet left the stage - both “ambassadors” from the students, and students of the students.
Yuri Klevtsov, who studied with Prokofiev, left as Spartak; Phrygia was Anna Antonicheva. A lyrical duet taken out of context always looks a little wild at concerts, where they love to perform it so much - the affectation of the characters in it is worthy of silent film actors. In the play, these convulsive embraces and majestic gestures look appropriate - two people, a rebel slave and his faithful girlfriend, seize a few minutes alone in a world that is about to finish them off with particular cruelty. There it seems that it is impossible to do otherwise, that if the movements are less “rumbling”, they will immediately disappear, drowned out by the fighting troops. But separately, right now, in the concert, it seemed that the artists were deliberately trying to be pathetic.
The second Prokofiev graduate, Sergei Filin, appeared in a duet from Russian Hamlet with Maria Alexandrova and made him regret his decision to end his dancing career this season. The spreading cranberry from the life of Catherine II, composed by Boris Eifman, was transformed by the artists into a duet that was both cheerful and cruel at the same time. In Eifman’s original there was not a drop of fun; there the mistress treated her favorite with sadomasochistic seriousness. Here Alexandrova was blazing with ironic excitement, her heroine was having fun, and it was not at all the stupid lust that the choreographer always gives to the heroines that led her forward, forced her to do push-ups on the hero’s outstretched leg and give him a hearty slap in the face. The eagle owl perfectly reproduced the state of stupefaction from this - impossible, unexpected, majestic and hooligan - woman: he collapsed on the floor, was all drawn to her (and as if he stopped himself: where is his pride?) and accepted the final slap in the face with humility and admiration (and again, no humiliation suggested by Eifman).
“Friendly messages” were the most unfortunate part of the evening - that Natalya Domracheva and Viktor Ischuk, who came from Kyiv, performed the grand pas from “Don Quixote” with the pressure of sunflower seeds traders and their own patented wit, that Olga Konoshenko and Narius Yushka, representing Andris Liepa’s enterprise , on the contrary, they strangled everything alive in the pas de deux from “Armida’s Pavilion” and turned it into a flirtatious and mannered dialogue. But even they were not able to ruin the evening, because there was also a gift from the Mariinsky Theater (Evgenia Obraztsova and Andrei Merkuryev roughly jumped into Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky’s pas de deux”), another Prokofiev student Aidar Akhmetov carefully, sadly and detachedly “sang” the melody Mahler's "Adagietto" (the partner swayed and swam in his arms, not caring about her own safety - as always, the girls of Prokofiev's students could not care about themselves and rely on their partner). And finally, the youngest of the dancers, who studied with the master already in Germany, Denis Cherevichko, was pleased.
It appeared in an issue dedicated to the fate of a Russian emigrant - “Istanbul. 1920”, composed by Vakil Usmanov a couple of decades ago. There were high boots on the stage, and a character in soldier's trousers and suspenders on a bare torso threw out dashing and defiant knees. Prowess and melancholy - and difficult tricks performed as if by chance. An extreme leap that appears as if by chance, just as the zigzags of a biography are random. A fairly clear number is slightly spoiled by the ending - the hero is about to hang himself and, to please the choreographer, who wants at all costs to remind us that we are watching a ballet (as if we could forget), tightens the noose on his legs, and not on his neck, which causes laughter in the hall.
Cherevichko represented the Vienna Opera and reminded the audience of what was not said at the evening. That Moscow lost its best teachers in the nineties (Pestov also left for Germany). And that when the last of their students leave the stage, the Bolshoi will shine with holes in the prime minister’s list. But such things are not discussed at formal gatherings.