Translated material
Intersection point
Guests from Berlin and New York performed at the Mariinsky Festival
The Mariinsky Festival saved the visits of the most curious guests for last - Marcelo Gomez appeared in “Giselle” on the penultimate day of the festival, Polina Semionova danced “La Bayadère” the day before. It’s unlikely that this happened on purpose (it is clear that the invited stars were chosen based on the quality of their dance, and the dates of performances depended on their employment in their home theaters), but the soloist of the American Ballet Theater and the prima of the Berlin Ballet not only demonstrated high-class art, but made us remember the details of their extremely different and at the same time similar biographies in very important things.Semionova graduated from a Moscow school seven years ago and in the year of graduation she appeared at the St. Petersburg student competition Vaganova-prix. And the students of the Vaganova Academy won it (well, it’s as if our football team beat the Brazilians, and in Brazil - this actually doesn’t happen). She was invited to work at the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky Theater at the same time, but she chose not our sacred monsters, but the Berlin Opera, whose artistic director Vladimir Malakhov immediately offered her the position of leading ballerina. And she was right: now she dances whatever she wants and wherever she wants, traveling from Italy to Japan, and in Berlin receiving Bejart, Balanchine, and Forsythe in her repertoire.
Marcelo Gomez, now 29, began studying ballet in a modest Brazilian dance studio, was invited to the Harid Conservatory in Florida at twelve (the teenager went alone to study on another continent), and at 16 won the famous apprentice competition in Lausanne. The prize was an internship at one of the European schools, and Gomez chose the Paris Opera school. That is, after the victory, he was immediately offered a contract at ABT, but he thought about it and decided to study some more. And only a year later he jumped onto the American ballet Olympus, receiving roles in performances by all the leading choreographers of the past and present - from Martha Graham and Mikhail Fokin to Christopher Wheeldon.
Nothing in common, right? Well, except for moving from your home country at a fairly young age. In fact, the commonality lies in the changes in style.
At graduation, Semionova was a ballerina of the Moscow school - with her classic attacking style and a black nerve beating under the skin: to break through and win - that was what the dance sounded like. Now a quiet European girl with soft plasticity has appeared on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater next to Igor Zelensky, who has not spoiled his signature role (it is clear that Malakhov himself worked with her - there is even a documentary about how he prepares “La Bayadère” with her ), with deep peace of mind. And this was so unexpected in the suffering story composed 130 years ago by Marius Petipa about an Indian temple dancer abandoned by a great warrior for the sake of the rajah’s daughter - and so rightly so! Yes, in the “dance with the snake” (the heroine’s dying monologue) resentment flared up and triumph broke out, but there was not a drop of self-pity and not a drop of hysteria; in general, the most important dance of the play, this very monologue with a basket in his hands in which a viper is hiding, has ceased to be the main dance. More important was the peaceful bayadère, the happy bayadère: blissfully floating across the stage in the first act, when her beloved had not yet abandoned her; disembodied soaring in his hands in the last act, when she is already, strictly speaking, a ghost. (And the theme of revenge disappeared from the plot: this girl came from the afterlife not to settle scores, just to see the young man again - and who’s to blame that he won’t survive after such a meeting).
Temperament, intensity, and virtuosity are always expected from South American dancers, and Gomez’s American Ballet Theater colleagues who came to us always met these expectations. The current guest has everything in order with his temperament, and there are no problems with virtuosity (except he doesn’t flaunt it at all, he doesn’t present every movement as a circus trick). The year spent as a dancer at the Paris Opera school added to him what his illustrious colleagues lacked - a sense of nobility on stage. And “Giselle,” in which his partner was Diana Vishneva (not a weak test - to be next to a ballerina who always offers a desperate, expressionistic interpretation of the role), showed him precisely as a danseur noble.
His Count Albert was a count to his fingertips - he disdainfully did not notice Giselle’s friends with whom she wanted to introduce him (not because he wanted to offend, but “automatically”, because, having dressed as a peasant, he did not change at all internally), he knelt down and kissed the girl’s hand in such a way that only the inattention of the girl in love can explain the fact that she did not think about the real origin of the admirer. And most importantly - the entire first act (before his exposure, until Giselle's death) in every movement there was that feeling that there was nowhere to rush, which distinguishes aristocrats. Not imposing, not laziness - oh, I don’t know what to call it, because all such words in Russian have a negative connotation. Centuries slide past noble families - and this feeling of being embedded in a family portrait gallery was always present on the scene with this Albert.
And then - r-time! - and everything broke. And the second act began to hiss and unwind, preparing for an explosion, and Albert’s movements unusually quickened for him - he must have run for the first time in his life when he came to the cemetery to see Giselle. And - the breakdown into sobbing, into flight, into the feeling that time has been interrupted and nothing else will happen - in the brilliant technique of Gomez, it became that real desperate cry that should be in Albert’s monologues in the second act.
The girl left Moscow. The boy left Brazil. They didn’t turn up their noses, proud of their natural and school achievements (which both domestic graduates abroad and South Americans often do). We studied. And they became European artists (yes, a European artist in ABT - it turns out that this is possible). And, having arrived at the Mariinsky Festival, they proved with their performances that it is not pride, but the ability to learn that makes world stars out of boys and girls.