An Evening of Ballet of the Mariinsky Theater took place at the Zaryadye Concert Hall

The Zaryadye Concert Hall hosted an “Evening of Ballet” from the Mariinsky Theatre, consisting of three chamber works set to piano music: each featured six soloists. Tells Tatiana Kuznetsova.

The ticket read: “Mariinsky Theater Symphony Orchestra, conductor – Valery Gergiev.” And the ticket takers cautiously inquired: does the viewer know that Valery Abisalovich will not be there that evening? The Kommersant ballet columnist knew what she was getting into, but the name of the owner of the Mariinsky Theater on the ticket was not surprising. About Valery Gergiev, who is about to either unite both theaters under his auspices, or simply become the general director and artistic director of the Bolshoi in addition to the Mariinsky and become the ruler of a dozen stage venues from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad, recently the media and networks write a little less often than about passions for the Moscow Nutcracker. But my neighbors in the amphitheater turned out to be less prepared and did not immediately come to terms with the fact that the evening would be piano and purely ballet.

In fact, the unity of form and content maintained in “An Evening of Ballet” (each ballet is classical in language, each has six soloists, all three are similar in structure and genre – plotless love lyrics) really required a fair amount of preparation in order to catch the differences that make up the individuality of the presented choreographers. Academic soloists of the Mariinsky Theater rather leveled out the difference in choreographic styles rather than emphasizing them. In St. Petersburg they are used to “serving Art” with full responsibility, in Moscow they are used to simply dancing. Perhaps in the near future this difference will be erased due to total unification. But for now it is significant, which is especially noticeable in the choreography of Ratmansky, an author equally in demand and popular at the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky Theater in the last two decades. And although, due to the strict pro-Ukrainian position of Alexei Ratmansky, the Moscow theater was forced to remove his ballets from the repertoire, and in St. Petersburg they limited themselves to erasing his name from the programs and from the website, the choreographer’s handwriting is so recognizable that one can judge the specifics of the St. Petersburg performance with complete certainty.

“Seven Sonatas” to the music of Scarlatti, first staged by Ratmansky in 2009 for the American Ballet Theater, was transferred by the choreographer to the Mariinsky Theater via Skype in 2020, during the pandemic. Perhaps because of the remote way of working (but more likely because of the artists’ reverence for the “living classic”), any semblance of irony, which constituted its main charm, disappeared from this elegant neoclassical ballet. The dancers reproduced the choreographic text with due diligence: they deliberately “dropped” the body in cabriole shoes; “lost the point” after pirouettes, pretending to be dizzy; “braided” the pas de bourré with bent legs, strained their arms at the elbows, depicting “hour hands” with them. However, they did all this with such deep seriousness, as if they were dancing Petipa’s legacy. As a result, the inventive contrast of variations, the humor of mise-en-scène and the variety of acting types disappeared; the ballet seemed long and boring. The lively pace of the choreography, the explosive speed of jumps and the agility of combinations were also given to the soloists with visible difficulty: only the charmingly playful Renata Shakirova could boast of falling into the style of the choreographer and the necessary technical freedom. In a word, Muscovites, perhaps not so attentive to the “letter,” once conveyed the free “spirit” of the ballets of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named more convincingly.

But the choreographer Alexander Sergeev, nurtured by the Mariinsky Theater, in 2019 composed his ballet “Inopportune” to the music of Vila-Lobos exactly according to the standards of the St. Petersburgers. Three classical duets, joint entre, general coda; not a single unpredictable movement, not a single sharp angle, no technical tests – advantageous poses, comfortable supports. Three types of relationships: trembling first love – with a timid touch on the hand and an unsuccessful attempt at a kiss, stopped by a girl’s palm. Mature love with a duel of characters – embraces and separations, violent rotations, upper supports. Prosperous joyful compatibility – running throws “at the fish”, comical support-swaying in the “frog”, agility of jumping, smiling to the audience. The banality of this saccharine composition can only be matched by the flights of fancy of costume designer Daria Pavlenko: men in gray trousers and shirts and multi-colored women dressed in knitted dresses, which came into ballet fashion back in the 1950s.

In the third part, Jerome Robbins’s textbook ballet “In the Night,” staged to Chopin’s music back in 1970, first appeared at the Mariinsky Theater more than thirty years ago and was resumed in 2009. The Paris Opera has just danced it, so you can read about the ballet itself in Kommersant on November 11. It should only be added that at the end of the twentieth century, St. Petersburg residents danced “In the Night” more soulfully, more varied and purer. Of the current soloists, only the exquisite Mei Nagahisa could compete with them (and, perhaps, even surpass them) – weightless, virtuosic and poetic in the first of three love duets. There is no doubt: in our harsh times, the idea of ​​devoting a ballet evening to love lyrics is certainly useful – if you compose it like the American Robbins and dance like the Japanese Nagahisa.