Translated material
Nikolai Ogryzkov died
Ogryzkov was 55 - accordingly, his youth fell on the deeply Soviet years. Moiseev's ensemble toured the world, and in their short leisure hours, dashing gauchos and cheerful witches rushed around the shops, solving the eternal problem of Soviet business travelers abroad, what to buy with a modest daily allowance in order to sell their houses profitably. Ogryzkov also combed foreign cities, but in search of classes: he was interested in unfamiliar techniques, unprecedented styles. Spending currency on dancing? Many considered the dancer crazy. He was a fan of his work.
He created his school almost 20 years ago and built it according to completely rigorist rules. Almost all non-state schools in the country are forced to teach all dances at once - a little classical, a little jazz, and somewhere around belly dancing. Ogryzkov prepared his students (the number of girls who wanted to dance, as always, greatly exceeded the number of boys) for a strict professional career in the strict art of contemporary dance. Five hours of classes every day, and this is after secondary school; no, it is clear that the first two years are spent ensuring that the child and his parents understand whether they want to make dancing the work of this child’s life. But when they understood, monstrous work begins.
The result is wonderful, but not really needed by our native country. This is not France, where support for contemporary has been part of the policy of the Ministry of Culture for 30 years. In our country they prefer to support “classical” art - no matter how terrible the state some provincial troupes are in and no matter how much they disgrace this art. While still at school, Ogryzkov's students saw how their teacher was fighting for his school - the rehearsal hall in Starokonyushenny Lane is too attractive a place for the administration not to want to use it more profitably. Ogryzkov was on edge, coming up with all sorts of dirty tricks, like the requirement to take money from students for classes if these students do not live on the territory of a given administration (and the school had a different rule: talented but poor people studied for free, and the director was not interested in where the child was registered, We went to school from all over Moscow). The students watched and went abroad, where they were happily accepted into higher educational dance institutions, found work, and did not return.
So Ogryzkov worked for world contemporary dance, but the results of his work in the country were not particularly noticeable (however, some of his graduates themselves became teachers - maybe the second generation will grow up...). But something did work, and MAHU students also came to his classes, feeling that their home school was not giving them something important; some quite “classical” people asked him for numbers. (So, when finishing school, Maria Alexandrova performed Ogryzkov’s number Tutu at a ballet competition - about the love and hatred of a ballerina for a ballet tutu; read, for the profession in general). Something remained in our heads, something remained in our feet and, perhaps, will still influence the future of dance in our country. Ogryzkov, who was usually burned out by a long-term illness in less than a year, will no longer see this. He, still completely healthy, smiling, but still uncompromisingly strict in his profession, can now only be seen in Alexander Lyutenkov’s documentary “Modern in Starokonyushenny”. It would be nice if the Culture channel remembered this picture.