Children of the Dungeon

Petrozavodsk Ballet in the Golden Mask competition

Kirill Simonov’s production, which is competing for a national theater award in four categories (“Best Ballet”, “Best Choreographer’s Work”, “Best Actor” and “Best Actress”), enters not only into competition, but into direct polemics with Boris Eifman’s production , shown a few days earlier. Having crossed his seventh decade, Eifman in “Onegin” described the terrible morals of modern youth and showed what drunkenness and homosexuality (considered as two equivalent vices) can lead to; Simonov, who had not yet reached his mid-fifties, rushed to assert in “Romeo and Juliet” that and a healthy lifestyle in difficult times does not save you from major troubles.

In the ballet staged in Petrozavodsk, Romeo's (Anatoly Skuratov) day begins with morning exercises; Juliet (Alevtina Mukhortikova) jogs; The corps de ballet does aerobics and carries surfboards (once laying them on stage and trying to float dry). The obligatory program includes water procedures: the Veronese crowd fusses with basins around a large log trough, from which water is poured for everyone, and then enthusiastically washes and washes clothes in these basins at the same time.

The symbolism is simple: water equals life, when water disappears, death occurs. After a night of love, the young heroes take a shower together; when Juliet decides to die, she folds into the fetal position in the shower tray, and there is no longer water, but sand, dust, ashes. Water is equal to blood - in that long deck that acts as a water pipe, Romeo drowns Tybalt (Alexey Zaritsky) in a fight, and the deck tilts, the water flows out, and behind the body of Tybalt, who is being dragged across the stage by Romeo, stretches smeared - and it just seems that it is red, although nothing has been added to the water, is a trace. This is perhaps one of the few spectacular moments of the performance.

Simonov apparently has some ability for directing, but, unfortunately, no ability for composing choreography. The dances are monotonous and monotonous; Not a single character has his own choreographic language. Residents of Verona, leaving in a friendly crowd, twist their right leg, as if placing it in front of a shoe shiner, then their left and bend sharply, as if someone had kicked them in the lower back; and so on several times. The choreographer generally believes that the audience is not able to appreciate his ideas at first sight, and repeats situations, combinations and steps: Mercutio, who came to the ball at the Capulet house in a woman’s skirt (yes, this already happened in the play Radu Poklitaru at the Bolshoi, but here the age of postmodernism, therefore not plagiarism, but a quotation), twice jumps onto Tybalt’s arms; and Tybalt, before starting a fight with Romeo, pushes him off the stool twice.

Of Simonov's choreographic inventions, noteworthy is the scene when Romeo, who came to Juliet (by the way, immediately practically stripped down to his underpants) fights with his own right hand; his limbs intertwine, wriggle and twitch, as if a hand accustomed to a different fate were protesting against the appearance of a girl in the hero’s presence. The part of Mercutio (its performer Vladimir Varnava is nominated for “The Mask” together with the performer of the role of Juliet) is filled with running, jumping on Tybalt and flirtatious play with the folds of her skirt. For Juliet, nothing can be thought of except falling asleep in that shower tray, where the girl looks like a chicken carcass.

Yes, and all this is happening somewhere in the basement - tattered pillars are heading towards the ceiling, a rarefied light falls from above, as if breaking through holes. (The performance was designed by Emil Kapelyush.) A bomb shelter? But for war, the heroes do exercises and jog too regularly (and everyone - Juliet’s mother and the nurse). And yet, apparently, there is war: in the middle of the performance something booms and the pillars tilt menacingly, in the finale, before Romeo runs into the “crypt”, it thunders very close and the entire corps de ballet falls dead - so his beloved among the many corpses of Romeo and finds it. And he shoots himself, deciding that she is dead. The awakened Juliet also shoots herself. (It seems like the poor guy got hit in the stomach.)

Kirill Simonov's career began at the Mariinsky Theater - ten years ago, by the will of Valery Gergiev, the young corps de ballet dancer was appointed to compose choreography in The Nutcracker, which was produced by Mikhail Shemyakin. (Then Alexey Ratmansky refused the production, who did not agree on art with a lover of meat carcasses and fat flies on stage, and it was necessary to urgently throw someone into the embrasure.) This is how the great break the fate of mortals - if Simonov served in the corps de ballet, and he would have had a sparse, but decent biography of an artist of the Mariinsky Theater. But he was appointed choreographer; the artist believed that he was a choreographer; he received the corresponding diploma from the Academy of Russian Ballet (Vaganova School). Now watch and don't complain.

Anna GORDEEVA