Career growth and import substitution on pointe shoes: results of the ballet season

Like the entire theatrical world, the famous “Russian ballet” this season continued and continues to experience significant difficulties. Licenses for performances are ending, the repertoire is running out, there are practically no new premieres, many tours have been cancelled… Now the emphasis is on time-tested and under no circumstances changing classics, new promising talented young artists appear, on whom a special stake was made last season. Old performances, but not forgotten by the audience, also receive a new life… This is how the past ballet season looks at least in the main theater of the country. But, in spite of any circumstances, Big remains Big. Ballet theater number 1 in the world …

Without premieres, but with classics …

The last time the ballet audience in the past season saw such ballets as the legendary Flames of Paris, The Bright Stream, Giselle by the ex-artistic director of the Bolshoi Alexei Ratmansky. The last time was shown “The Taming of the Shrew” by Jean-Christophe Maillot, “Orlando” by Christian Spuk, who staged his performance at the Bolshoi just two years ago. The repertoire of this season also did not include Béjart’s wonderful ballet “Parisian Joy”…

And plans are redrawn not so quickly, especially in the Bolshoi, where planning goes several years ahead. So, as before, the Bolshoi Ballet is unable to offer many new products. In the next 248th season, the performance brand of the Bolshoi will return to the stage – “Romeo and Juliet” by Leonid Lavrovsky. It was from him, after the tour of the troupe in 1956 in London, that the worldwide fame of the company began, which all over the world began to be called the Bolshoi Ballet. A new ballet by Vyacheslav Samodurov “The Tempest” based on Shakespeare’s play of the same name is also planned. The highly successful artistic director of the Ural Opera Ballet troupe left his position at the end of this season and switched to free bread. So now he will put in the Bolshoi. And we hope that there will be no transfers next season. As happened this season with The Queen of Spades, which was supposed to premiere at the end of the season.

This performance to the music of Tchaikovsky and Yuri Krasavin did not have time to prepare for the premiere within the agreed timeframe, Yuri Possokhov, so the scheduled premiere had to be postponed. As a result, it turned out that there was not a single ballet premiere at the Bolshoi in the past season at all, and the ballet troupe was mainly engaged in renewals. Although it was not so easy for them. And with one of these renewals – Neumeier’s “Lady of the Camellias” – there was a scandal in general.

It has practically not dropped out of the repertoire since the premiere – since 2014. However, after the July publication of “MK” that the Bolshoi still managed to renew the license for him, in the West such a public “collision” began on the famous choreographer that he had to refuse his promises.

With other renewals it turned out much more successfully. The first of these — the legendary Silver Age ballet Chopiniana by Mikhail Fokine and the Grand Classical Pas from the ballet Paquita by Marius Petipa — were shown by the Bolshoi even before the New Year. Vadim Gulyaev and Natalya Bolshakova, dancers of the Kirov (Mariinsky) Theater, and now teachers-tutors in the Ural Opera Ballet troupe, acted as choreographers for the resumption of Chopiniana. They managed to convey to the Moscow dancers the subtleties of the St. Petersburg style of this ballet, born at the Mariinsky Theater almost 115 years ago.

The most authoritative expert on ballet classics in our country, Yuri Burlaka, also did not fantasize about the themes of ancient ballet. In the Grand Classical Pas, which he resumed, from the ballet Paquita, with his characteristic scrupulousness and pedantry, he put together at least some of the fragments that have survived from this ballet.

As for Pierre Lacotte and his reconstructions of old ballets, after an eight-year break at the Bolshoi, his famous ballet Marco Spada, once staged by Rudolf Nureyev, was resumed. The ballet returned to the playbill in exchange for Yury Possokhov’s The Queen of Spades, which was postponed to the next season. And the audience was only delighted with such an exchange, since the ballet “Marco Spada” was very loved by the audience. The 91-year-old master of French ballet, who loves Russia and Russian culture, readily agreed. But only two months did not live up to the premiere.

Appointments and career moves

Under the circumstances, the head of the Bolshoi ballet troupe Makhar Vaziyev placed his main bet on the dancers. As before, its course is aimed at attracting young talented performers to the theater and their further promotion. The heroes of the season in this sense were Dmitry Smilevsky and Elizaveta Kokoreva. The first danced in the troupe for just over three years, having managed to become a gold laureate of an international competition in Moscow during this time. Even before the competition, at the end of last season, he was promoted to the first, and then to the leading soloists, and at the end of this year, unexpectedly for everyone, he became the prime minister. And, probably, the youngest in the history of the theater, and maybe ballet in general.

After winning the competition, the parties fell on the young dancer like from a cornucopia. Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, Prince in The Nutcracker, Lord Wilson/Taor in Pharaoh’s Daughter, Count Albert in Giselle, Jean de Brienne in Raymond… The main roles in the renewed ballets. Finally, at the end of the season, Nureyev’s part of Marco Spada in the renewed ballet of the same name.

– I did not think that they would be promoted to the leading soloist. And here is the prime minister! It’s such a big responsibility. Not everyone is ready for this. The artistic director made this decision, and now I have no room for error at all. No one can be let down, and this is a burden that weighs on me every day,” Dmitry Smilevki tells me.

– Can you imagine what kind of envy? How many people envy you in the troupe and say – what a disgrace!

“I got used to it when I was in school. Because not only my parents, but also my grandmother and grandfather are ballet dancers. And initially there was such an attitude towards me that, here, everything is done to him according to the pull. I already overcame all this in myself and reconciled with it. Naturally, I understand perfectly well that this is all an advance payment, that I became prime minister really early. But if it happened, then you have to prove it again.

The situation is the same with Kokoreva, who dances confidently, and in the theater she presents herself, they say, already like a real prima.

Eleanor Sevenard, a strong and technical ballerina, but without a twist, like her great-great-great-grandmother Matilda Kshesinskaya, has also become a prima since this season. Of the other moves up the career ladder, we note the appointment of the leading soloist Margarita Schreiner. Such gifted dancers as Alexei Putintsev and Klim Efimov, who became the first soloists, also received promotion – this moment was long awaited. But Sofia Maimula, who has been working in the theater for only her first year, has already become a soloist. He moved to the position of a soloist and such a wonderful and promising dancer as Mark Chino. Well, deservedly so: the Russian Japanese spent a lot of time in the corps de ballet.

In total, Daniil Potaptsev, the first graduate of the Eifman Academy at the Bolshoi Theater, also worked at the theater for a season. He has not yet been appointed anywhere, but it seems to be not far off. He has already danced James in Sylphide, and will open the coming season in general with Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake. Even Dmitry Smilevsky did not make such amazing and rapid successes. So we are waiting…

A very successful harvest of graduates was this year at the Moscow Academy. The artistic director of the Bolshoi Mahar Vaziev did not fail to take advantage of this and invited about 10 of the best graduates to the Bolshoi. The bone of contention between the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theaters was graduate Makar Mikhalkin. At the Mariinsky he was called to the position of soloist. But even here Mahar Khasanovich succeeded: as a result, Makar ended up in the Bolshoi troupe, however, so far in the corps de ballet. Now he is rehearsing the main role of Lucien d’Hervilli in the Grand Pas from the ballet “Paquita”.

As a result of such perturbations, not only the landscape of the troupe has changed dramatically. With the help of young and energetic dancers, it has become very strong. So, as before, “in the field of ballet” the Bolshoi is “ahead of the rest.”

Import substitution according to Stasik

More confidently than in the Bolshoi, the season passed at the Musical Theater. Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko. Although the troupe under the previous artistic director, Laurent Hilaire, also danced foreign performances, repertoire import substitution at the theater on Bolshaya Dmitrovka is more successful than at its neighbor on Theater Square. One can feel in the repertory policy the hand of the new, youngest in the history of the theater artistic director Maxim Sevagin, who, following Hilaire, continues the course towards modern productions.

During the season there were not only renewals, such as the excellent ballet by the new artistic director Bloom to the music of Dvořák, but also premieres. As many as three. One large-scale – “The Nutcracker” by Yuri Posokhov – and two less significant ones: on the Small Stage “Through the Looking-Glass” staged by Konstantin Semenov, and on the Main Stage in the season finale they showed the premiere of three one-act ballets that made up an evening of modern choreography.

They wanted to stage a new version of the world’s most popular ballet The Nutcracker in Stasik for a long time, but the Russian-American choreographer Yuri Posokhov was only able to realize his plan now. I would like to note that the previous version of The Nutcracker in the revival by Mikhail Krapivin has been running at the Musical Theater for the past 27 years, enjoying such popularity that it seems that there was no urgent need to stage a new version at such a difficult financial time.

This is a rather peculiar import substitution: for the first time, Possokhov made this production for the American company Atlanta Ballet in 2018. Compared to the American version for the Moscow troupe, The Nutcracker was remade and expanded, creating a new version. But what is good for an American troupe of 25 is not good for a serious academic company with three times as many dancers available. Therefore, the impression of the premiere is contradictory.

“Through the Looking Glass” is a full-fledged one-act 70-minute ballet by Konstantin Semenov to music by Vasily Peshkov, based on the fairy tale of the English mathematician and writer Lewis Carroll “Through the Looking Glass” – a work intended not only for children, but in many ways paradoxical, full of riddles, charades and shifters for adults. And three one-act modern ballets were shown towards the end of the season, and the most successful of the three was Maxim Sevagin’s Class Concert set to the music of Ober and Offenbach. The very appeal to the class-concert genre is an unchanging ballet tradition dating back to the 19th century. Like its predecessors, Maxim Sevagin’s “Class Concert” also begins with a simple sketch of a ballet lesson and leads from a banal training exercise to the heights of mastery in the brilliant performance of the premiere and prima “Stasik” Ivan Mikhalev and Erika Mikirticheva. And in the midst of academism, an obvious parody suddenly appears – an inserted pas de deux stuffed with jokes called “Pavlova and Cecchetti”. How famously at the premiere he performed this pas de deux with the prima of the Musical Theater Oksana Kardash Innokenty Yuldashev in make-up under Cecchetti – it’s a pleasure to watch.

“Toy seller” in the Kremlin

Among the best premieres of the season is the ballet “The Toy Seller” by choreographer Andrei Petrov, who unexpectedly left us in April – the head and founder of the “Kremlin Ballet” troupe. At the end of his life, Petrov, as a choreographer, clearly got a second wind. His ballets turned out to be cheerful, witty, filled with interesting choreographic vocabulary.

Comic ballet is generally a rare guest on the ballet scene. And here we have the quintessence of interesting classical and modern choreography, magnificent melodic music by the modern composer Alexei Shelygin, a fascinating and exciting plot in the spirit of adventure novels with villainous criminals and treasure hunts.

The choreography turned out by the artistic director of the Kremlin ballet is light, imaginative, intricate. It was created in the spirit of neoclassicism. And at its core, as always with Petrov, is classical vocabulary, and primarily finger, organically supplemented with elements of modern dance trends and systems. It was the first premiere of the theater during the years of covid restrictions, which, unfortunately, turned out to be the last for Andrey Petrov. True, at the beginning of the next season on the stage of the Kremlin Palace, which has become native to the choreographer, they will show the ballet Cleopatra dedicated to his memory to the music of Vladimir Kachesov – the last creation of the master.