An evening of modern choreography “Postscript 3.0” was held on the New Stage of the Bolshoi Theater

An evening of modern choreography “Postscript 3.0” took place on the New Stage of the Bolshoi Theater. The production company MuzArts, working with Bolshoi Theater artists, presented the third version of its “Postscript” project, adding to the two already seen productions the revival of Yuri Posokhov’s ballet “Francesca da Rimini” and the premiere of the play “Four” by choreographer Eno Pechi. Tells Tatiana Kuznetsova.

First “Postscript” (see “Kommersant” dated May 27, 2021) was a happy product of Covid restrictions: producer Yuri Baranov managed to lure inactive first-line authors to Moscow, albeit with ready-made productions. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui then presented to Muscovites his “Faun” to the music of Claude Debussy, supplemented by Nitin Sawhney; Sol Leon and Paul Lightfoot – “Postscript” to the music of Philip Glass, which gave the name to the whole project. These two undisputed hits are still keeping it afloat, but not all spectators of the four-part evening waited for them: the 45-minute performance “Four”, which took the second part, forced part of the audience to leave the theater, scaring off the impatient and ignorant.

This spectacle, staged by Vienna Opera dancer Eno Pecschi to the music of Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” arranged by Max Richter, was truly depressing—so helpless was the choreography. Its squalor only emphasized the banality of Oleg Serebryakov’s aggressive video sequence. Video footage of sea sunsets, flowering fields, starry skies, blazing fire and burnt forests occupied three screen walls. Among them maneuvered Bolshoi soloists Maria Vinogradova, Anastasia Denisova, Daniil Potaptsev and Ildar Gainutdinov, invited from Todes, whose amazing bodily expression and fanatical belief in the value of the product being presented somewhat brightened up the futility of the authors’ attempts to present “four seasons, four centuries of civilization and four stages human development”. The couturier Alexander Terekhov, who made his debut in the ballet theater, ignored this idea, and did not distinguish himself with either imagination or originality: after the first episode, he simply changed the soloists from white tops and pants into black ones – with rhinestones and transparent gauze pants for women, which is why the flaccid lady’s legs looked like perfect jelly.

However, the choreography itself was conducive to this, literally relying on walking with bent knees and postures reminiscent of preparation for the exercise of natural needs. From this “preparation” the actresses were hoisted onto their shoulders or backs, and sometimes they were allowed to make an arabesque. The men worked mainly on the ground – stretches and flips, and, judging by the recklessness of their body movements, Ildar Gainutdinov, an expert in breaking and other acrobatics, composed his solos himself. The gaps between dances were considerable: the dancers often came to the front of the stage, glaring at the hall with a demanding and anxious gaze. We walked a lot, the running obviously gave up. The choreographer was not at all comfortable with fast tempos, so Vivaldi’s agility was responded mainly to the screens – either with views of nature, or with pictures of human activity to destroy it – oil rigs, smoking chimneys, containers and conveyors. The ending was looped back to the beginning: against the backdrop of the starry Universe, a woman and a man performed the initial steps, signaling that one should not count on the “development” of civilization and man.

The likelihood of failure is a professional risk for the producer, as the history of Diaghilev’s enterprise proves. However, in these times of isolation, the risk increases significantly: one has to rely only on internal reserves and those Western authors who are not afraid to jeopardize their careers in their homeland. With two local choreographers, Yuri Baranov has already failed in the Labyrinth project. He chose Eno Peci not without reason – in 2017, the Viennese Albanian staged a not bad novella “Deja Vu” at the Stanislavsky Music Theater as part of the “Intersection Point” project, and it was difficult to imagine that in seven years the choreographer would degrade so much. It is obvious that the “Postscript” project can emerge by staging ready-made, proven things. But even here, in our conditions, only a limited choice is possible. The opening of the evening was “Francesca da Rimini” by Yuri Posokhov – almost the only world-class Western choreographer who continues to collaborate with Russia – just one of these “life preservers”.

Staged by the San Francisco Ballet in 2012 to the music of Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poem of the same name, Svetlana Zakharova was by no means the best ballet by Posokhov. The Bolshoi prima danced it in 2016, in the “Amore” program produced by MuzArts. Nowadays, the ballet has been inherited by young theater artists – along with the magnificent costumes of Igor Chapurin and the impressive scenery of Maria Tregulova, who scattered gigantic plaster casts of sculpted lovers in the black “sky” and decorated the stage with a copy of Rodin’s “The Gates of Hell”. Yuri Possokhov made the three guard figures crowning them into ballet characters, adding to them five “court ladies” – more metaphorical than real: their flaming dresses, as well as the emphasized eroticism of the classical steps, anticipate, provoke, multiply and visualize the heat of love flaring up in Francesca’s soul. The choreography of this ballet is perhaps the most “Soviet” of the works of Posokhov, who premiered at the Bolshoi Theater for ten years in the 1980s. It is replete with desperately virtuoso, powerful male jumps: their diagonals and circles are presented as if on a silver platter – separately and clearly, so that everyone has time to see and appreciate them. Adagios are full of risky upper lifts – with throws, twists, splits, from a running start or from a complex ground push. They are distinguished from the Soviet canon by speed, complexity, quantity and inventiveness, and the classical language is marked by an emphasis on sexuality, which the Russian ballet did not know and does not know.

Actually, this nuance became a stumbling block for the performers of the main roles, the most convincing of whom was Yegor Gerashchenko, who, in the role of the deceived husband, had to portray only tenderness, but not attraction to his young wife; the horror of epiphany, rage and other destructive passions were embodied in perfectly executed jumps. Against the background of this mature husband, the young lovers (Elizaveta Kokoreva and Alexey Putintsev, who have no complaints about the purity of their dance, except for some supports that seem to slow down halfway) looked like guilty schoolchildren who ran away from lessons to kiss in the gateway. Great adagios – sensual, selfless, passionate – insist on different bodily behavior and other acting techniques. However, we must hope that, unlike “The Four,” “Francesca da Rimini” will find its way into the MuzArts programs, and debutants, brought up on the domestic repertoire, will still find colors that are still unknown to them to embody sinful, but irresistible love.