Translated material
It will go out, then it will go out
The Bolshoi danced “Flames of Paris”
Perhaps this is the first real failure of Alexei Ratmansky at the Bolshoi Theater.There were triumphs - both brilliantly instantaneous, like the passage of a blade in the air, “Dreams of Japan”, and the deceptively simple-minded “Bright Stream”. There were half-successes - like "Bolt", when it seemed that the choreographer was simply in too much of a hurry and therefore was choking in the flow of his own speech, that now everything would straighten out and fall into place, you just need to wait a little. But so - that in the entire performance, staged anew using the few surviving fragments of 1932, only these fragments deserve a kind word - this has not yet happened.
It's probably due to the absolute alienness of the material.
Composed by Vasily Vainonen in the early 30s, the ballet was a completely animal, pagan performance. The Marseillais marching towards Paris, who were moving to help the rebellious people, were possessed by a magnificent frenzy, which an intelligent man - the author of the ballet - looked at with horror and delight. (There was something in this similar to Cavalry, written, of course, six years earlier - well, ballet is always very late in reacting to the outside world.) This frenzy resulted in dances in which the artists did not spare themselves at all, and incredible, powerful energy that asserts its rightness by force can be seen from the few episodes captured on film. The heroes marched on Paris, the heroes smashed the royal palace to smithereens, the heroes celebrated their victory - and did not regret anything.
Despite the fact that the play had main characters (among the marching peasants were the most ardent rebels, Jeanne and Philip), as well as non-main characters (in the royal palace, court artists who secretly sympathized with the peasants performed for the monarch), the most important character in “The Flames of Paris” was people. That is why character dances were so important - their sequence held the action together. And it is not for nothing that this performance, first staged in Leningrad, really exploded only in Moscow, where there was a tradition of performing characteristic numbers, where such dances were known and loved. In that pre-war “Flame of Paris” there were no victims - the royalists killed minor characters, but their death was presented as a sublime, heroic death. Without fear. Without reflection.
Alexei Ratmansky radically expanded the plot and began to stage a play about a little man in the revolution.
The decisive peasant woman Zhanna remained in the ballet (Maria Alexandrova, as if remembering herself in the role of Juliet, again a kind of tomboy girl, angular and acquiring ballerina chic along with the victory of the revolution), her dear citizen Philip (Alexander Volchkov, alas, cannot stand comparison) has not disappeared anywhere with a recording of Alexei Ermolaev, even though on that tape the Moscow idol was already over forty). But the ideologically central characters were Jeanne’s brother Jerome (Denis Savin) and the previously non-existent Adelina (Nina Kaptsova), the daughter of the marquis, who fell in love with this same Jerome.
That is, before there were people. And the people moved towards Paris. (Now he runs around the stage in crowds for quite a long time, randomly and repeatedly.) The people were united, the heroes fell in love in their midst, and no problems arose because of this. Now a girl has appeared who left her family because of a peasant, and regrets it: first she witnesses how her father is led to the guillotine, then she herself goes to the chopping block (simply because she is an aristocrat by birth). And her young man cannot save her - he sits and sobs in the corner.
Ratmansky calls on us to think about the specific people who found themselves in this solemn meat grinder of the revolution - well, he can be understood. (It is not clear why they took “The Flame of Paris” for this purpose - it’s the same as using the material from “Two Captains” to start talking about the value of aviation records in Stalin’s time; the approach in “Nord-Ost” was still more correct). But the ballet resists, the music resists, and the overall picture refuses to come together.
It feels like the director hasn’t fully decided for himself whether he’s playing with postmodern toys or “seriously about suffering.” If these are games, then, of course, a huge cannon can be carried by one person, and an equestrian monument, when it becomes no longer unnecessary on the stage, can easily rise and fly into the heavens. But then why the desperate mise-en-scène when, after the execution, the Marseilles leaving for their next exploits actually trample the sobbing Jerome? There's no time for toys here. Besides, if we are in the age of postmodernism - well, then there may be obvious quotations from MacMillan's Manon. If not, then this, um, is called borrowing.
And, excuse me, here’s the scene in the palace (“ballet within a ballet”), which takes up most of the first act - what is this? If there is supposed irony in relation to the “court dances,” then this irony is somehow not manifested: it has been a long time since I’ve seen more melancholy mise-en-scenes. If it was an honest attempt to stylize lace dances of the 18th century, then it also failed.
It seems that the choreographer is “babbling” the entire first act, because this decision of Jeanne and Jerome to go with the rebels to Paris, and then the royal dances taking place in Paris are completely uninteresting to him. By the way, the character is also uninteresting: the king (Gennady Yanin) accepts the officers’ report, yawning impolitely into his palm; The aristocratic gentlemen were not given any intelligible dances, and the king generally jumped around stupidly. (Here it seems that the play was staged by a true revolutionary - the country definitely needs to get rid of such a wretched monarch.) The second act looks better - simply because fragments left over from Vainonen are inserted there. Basque dance is a perfect masterpiece, where the feet of the artists in characteristic shoes press heavily into the ground, assert their right to it, and their hands spread the air in front of them dreamily and anxiously. Pas de deux of Jeanne and Philippe - tortured at numerous ballet competitions, but still lively and exciting. They become the culmination of the ballet and make you regret that so little remains of Winona’s actual choreography.
What else is good about this ballet? Scenery by Ilya Utkin and Evgeny Monakhov, reproducing ancient French engravings. Costumes made by Elena Markovskaya (the outfits of the “furies” in the insert ballet are especially good - sort of bats with lanterns on their wings). The marquis going to the chopping block, depicted in small and very precise strokes by Vladimir Neporozhny. That's all.
“The Flames of Paris” is not the last work of Alexei Ratmansky at the Bolshoi Theater - “Russian Seasons” with music by Leonid Desyatnikov is expected in November. But these “Seasons” are a transfer from the New York City Ballet, where the choreographer staged them a couple of years ago; thus, “The Flames of Paris” is Ratmansky’s last special composition for the Bolshoi (the choreographer’s contract ends, as is known, on December 31, and then Yuri Burlaka takes over as artistic director of the ballet). Thus, “The Flames of Paris” is a kind of summing up of the choreographer’s five-year work at the Bolshoi.
The picture is clear and completely frank: the choreographer and the theater did not work together. Not because the dance composer was bad (there is still nothing better in Russia, and he had absolutely wonderful performances). But because he lives by different rules, thinks and feels differently. In the furious pagan world of the Bolshoi, where only those dancers who are ready to fall into the embrasure survive, and only those choreographers who are capable, so to speak, of setting up barrage detachments to ensure the success of their performance, a man appeared with completely Protestant ideas about life and service. What is possible and necessary - from ten to six, that dying at work is absolutely not required. It would be nice to just do your work on time and efficiently. No less, but no more. But the theater - this Russian theater, where everything is to tear the soul apart - did not accept precisely this view of things. He considered that the person was giving too little to the theater (either weak, or feeling sorry for himself), and did not forgive this.
It all ends with this “Flame of Paris”. Dull hand passes in the “court ballet”, chaotic and shredded folk dances. French revolutionary songs that once sounded from the stage in all their thunderous power, but are now dully audible from behind the stage - as if from a box or from a soundtrack. The choreographer packs up his things and leaves the country of eternal revolutions somewhere in warmer climes. Well, thank you for not executing or trampling.