About love

"Japanese Autumn" began with a ballet

The traditional festival of the Land of the Rising Sun in Moscow this year, as always, offers a varied and interesting program. Until December, the Library of Foreign Literature is showing Japanese silent films; Contemporary cinema is shown at the Central House of Artists until October 10, and in November at the 35 MM cinema. For the last five days of September, a trial store with goods from the outer islands will be open at the Atrium on Kurskaya; in December, a drummer ensemble will appear in the Kremlin, and an exhibition of samurai engravings will appear at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. And this is only a small part of the program - every week something Japanese will happen in Moscow. But the festival opened with ballet - the least traditional art for Japan and the most beloved.

Our eastern neighbors, who acquired their own ballet schools only after the war, treat classical dance with such respect and affection that trips to Japan have become an indispensable part of the annual schedule of every self-respecting troupe. The Paris Opera and the Hamburg Ballet, the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky Theater, Vladimir Malakhov and Sylvie Guillem are all excited about the Tokyo tour. Excellent fees and an enthusiastic, grateful audience (one of our not-so-star dancers said that the line for his autograph stood for four hours - he had never held a pen in his hand that long in his entire life). Naturally, the Japanese not only watch other people's performances, but also want to dance themselves, and in every decent Russian school several people are sure to study. Then most of them return home (in the Bolshoi the diligent and intelligent dancer Morihiro Iwata is the first soloist, in the Moscow ballet there is a Japanese couple, and that’s all; in Europe, every troupe has these hard workers and fans) and work in local theaters. And last weekend we got the opportunity to take a look at how this imported art has taken root in Japan.

The ballet of the New National Theater of Tokyo has arrived in Moscow - however, it is more often called “Ballet Asami Maki”, named after the director of the troupe. They brought us “The Lady of the Camellias” - the choreographer staged this performance two years ago to the music of Hector Berlioz (arranged by Ermanno Florio) especially for the invited prima of her theater. Prima - Svetlana Zakharova; This is our ballerina’s second place of work besides the Bolshoi (the third is La Scala). Therefore, on the first evening of the tour, it was our artist who danced the main role in the Japanese ballet (her partner was Mariinsky resident Denis Matvienko), and only on the second day the story invented by Dumas the son was told in dance by native Tokyo residents Jun Horiguchi and Ryuji Yamamoto.

This ballet undoubtedly spoke about love, but not about the love of the French courtesan Marguerite Gautier for the respectable young man Armand Duval, but about the pathetic feeling that the Japanese feel for classical ballet, for its traditions, patterns and habits. Moreover, to many traditions and many authors at once: to Marius Petipa, and to Kenneth MacMillan, and to John Neumeier. Of course, a characteristic divertissement familiar to the “Russian Bolshoi Ballet” includes the appearance of a traveling troupe in a Parisian mansion, which amuses the audience with a minuet, csardas and tarantella. The duets of the main characters refer to the ballet of John Neumeier, who once retold this story in dance. And “dying memories” - directly to “Manon” by Kenneth MacMillan.

The fact that the part of the main character was invented for Svetlana Zakharova is immediately obvious: there are so many languid arabesques and graceful high kicks of the legs - the choreographer clearly admired the endless limbs of the ballerina in the process of composing the text. But the story of the lady with the camellias is, first of all, a sentimental, sensitive story, but it is precisely the acting abilities that are the weak point of our prima. Her best parts are pure dance, when you don’t have to pretend to be anything on stage. Denis Matvienko does not shine as an actor either, and as a result, on stage there was not a pair of lovers, but a pair of diligent dancers, carefully reproducing the text. The next day, much less famous in the world, Jun Horiguchi and Ryuji Yamamoto easily outplayed them: I wanted to admire Zakharova-Margarita’s impeccable dance form, and I sympathized with the fragile, meek and selfless Margarita-Horiguchi to the point of tears. Matvienko measured out big jumps around the stage - Yamamoto (who did not forget about technique at all) pressed his hand to his heart, and it became clear that his hero was on the verge of despair.

The corps de ballet was diligent, all the small roles (from the maid to Margarita's former lover) were played clearly. In the citadel of the art they idolize, the Japanese showed themselves with dignity. Of course, it would be much more interesting to see the interweaving of their national subjects with the classical technique - not careful reproduction of samples, but their own discoveries. But “Japanese Autumn” is not the last - maybe we’ll see it again.

Anna GORDEEVA