An honest feast for “Svadebka” – Newspaper Kommersant No. 237 (7438) of 12/21/2022

The traditional December dance festival Monaco Dance Forum in Monte Carlo ended with the performance of the sensational performance “Sonoma” by Spaniard Marcos Morau and an evening of one-act ballets by Jean-Christophe Maillot – “Opus 40” and “The Wedding” by Igor Stravinsky. Tells Maria Sidelnikova.

Monaco Dance Forum is a chamber festival, but with an international scope. His program is recruited from the premieres of recent seasons, so there are practically no misses here. For Monegasques, this is an opportunity to feel part of the global dance context, because ballet here is a matter of national importance. The Monte Carlo troupe, the heiress of Diaghilev’s Russian Seasons, is the favorite brainchild of the Princess of Hanover Caroline, and there is nothing more permanent than this passion of hers: no matter how the world changes, at half past seven in the evening the princess will modestly enter the hall sparkling with diamonds and furs, accompanied by the permanent artistic director of the Ballet Monte Carlo Jean-Christophe Maillot – and the performance will begin.

This year, the festival was launched by the ambitious project of the Germans Gauthier Dance “The Seven Deadly Sins”, which brought together the entire color of modern choreography. Azur Barton, Hofesh Schechter, Marco Goekke, Marcos Morau, Sasha Waltz, Sidi Larbi Sherkaoui translated human vices into their own body language. And for the finale, they saved the gloomy complex story “Sonoma” (soma in Greek – “body”, sonus in Latin – “sound”) by Marcos Morau, performed by the artists of his troupe La Veronal.

The forty-year-old Spaniard is a versatile author: he is a photographer, a theater director, and a choreographer. But in whatever hypostasis Morau appears, he is invariably interested in duality. He wraps his observations in spectacular visual images-metaphors, which largely ensure the memorability of his performances. Sonoma opens with a scene around a cross. Nine girls, dressed in traditional Spanish costumes, are spinning to folk tunes, dance round dances and read the gospel commandments. It all looks quite serene. The viewer is gradually and irrevocably immersed in a funnel of creepy surrealistic paintings, lavishly decorated with artificial flowers and old woman dolls. Innocent bonnets on the heads of girls will be replaced by black bags (a symbol of religious narrow-mindedness and, more broadly, of any narrow-mindedness). Worldly passions will take precedence over pious humility – sometimes they walked like peahens, but now they are already convulsing. And the beatitudes – there are far more than nine free interpretations of them – are torn by screams from mangled mouths. The saints turn into militant Amazons and frantically beat the traditional drums of the province of Calanda, thus releasing all the pain. So Marcos Morau at once sings of his Spanish roots – more precisely, adherence to them and the desire to break with them – and along the way pays tribute to his film idol, the great atheist and revolutionary Luis Buñuel.

The Monaco people honor court etiquette, so they let the guests speak first and only then they themselves take the floor. The festival closed with an evening of one-act ballets by Jean-Christophe Maillot. He resumes his version of Stravinsky’s Les Noces for the first time, twenty years after the premiere. Instead of a Russian peasant wedding, he has a conditionally European wedding, an arranged marriage arranged by two families. Belonging to the clan of the bride or groom, as well as the young themselves, gives out only the color of the suit – white, gray or black. The costumes themselves – strict overalls – are the same, almost everyday. The main decoration is a movable structure made of transparent plates. Voice in French (recording of Les Noces by the Paris Opera in 1985, choir and orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez). Following Stravinsky’s score and Bronislava Nijinska’s choreography, Maillot skillfully weaves the heritage of Russian ballets and her own history together. From the original – the elemental power of the ensemble, the alternation of male and female paintings, jumps with tucked knees, folk-characteristic oversteps on imaginary heels, arms turned off at the elbows according to the constructivist fashions of the twenties of the last century. From himself – tricks with a table-swing and a climactic duet. Mayo no, no, yes, and includes almost circus tricks in his performances. The clumsy table also becomes a negotiating table, on which parents, concerned about the happiness of their children, alternately jump (the mother and father of the Bride is an excellent work of Candela Ebbesen and Jata Benot, who, perhaps, danced the young ones – Anna Bekvel and Simone Tribunu), and the marriage bed. Towards the end, a giant rocking chair is lifted vertically, and along it, wriggling in languid pleasures, turning into convulsions of orgasm, the Bride picturesquely creeps up.

Mayo staged Opus 40 in 2000 on the occasion of his fortieth birthday. He celebrates each round date with such a plotless “opus”, overcoming all age-related crises dancing and effortlessly. And now he has resumed this work with the new soloist of the troupe, a very young graduate of the local Princess Grace Ballet Academy Ashley Krohouse. There is no narrative in Opus 40. It is a colorful kaleidoscope of associations made up of solos, duets, fours and group dances, united by flirting and self-recognition through these fleeting relationships. And if at first the bodily vertical strives to collapse and fold in half, then in the course of this rapidly murmuring ballet, the lines of movement will line up and rush upwards – to new years and new pleasures. Next year, Jean-Christophe Maillot will celebrate 30 years at the head of the Monte-Carlo Ballet – a pearl wedding. Not by calculation, but quite by love.