Girl with a gun – Newspaper Kommersant No. 49 (7494) dated 03/23/2023

On the historical stage of the Bolshoi Theater, the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theater presented its three-act ballet Katarina, or the Robber’s Daughter. The performance, which received 11 nominations, ended with the Golden Mask ballet competition. Tatyana Kuznetsova I was convinced that it was “Katarina” that was the undisputed favorite of the competition.

Katarina, or the Robber’s Daughter, a clever and grandiose reincarnation of the forgotten ballet by Jules Perrot, is a unique phenomenon in the Russian theater. Already at the premiere, it was clear that provincial Krasnoyarsk unexpectedly gave birth to a magnificent three-act ballet that could compete with the world’s best productions of the passeist genre (Kommersant wrote about this on November 23, 2021). “Katarina” is unique in the truest sense: it is the only stylization undertaken by Russian authors. Before its appearance, all domestic (and world) appeals to antiquity were either based on pre-revolutionary recordings of choreography – like the works of Sergei Vikharev, Yuri Burlaka, Alexei Ratmansky or the witty Paquita by Vyacheslav Samodurov. Or they showed a French version of stylization – like Pierre Lacotte’s ballets at the Bolshoi Theater and the Paris Opera. Or, like the Yekaterinburg “King’s Order”, they were a tortured attempt to compose an ironic modern ballet according to the patterns of a 19th century performance.

“Katarina” does not try to be ironic, but does not try to interpret seriously the vicissitudes of romantic ballet (the only thing that has been preserved intact from it is the libretto). A love polygon, all sides of which – the charming robber Catarina, her militant assistant Diavolino, the dreamy artist Salvator Rosa, the vengeful widow Florinda, the voluptuous Duke Albano – are desperately intriguing, getting into the most incredible situations, serves as an excellent basis for a subtle and cheerful game of passeism, in which all co-authors participate. In the case of “Katarina” 11 nominations – not excessive generosity of experts, but a reflection of the real contribution of each accomplice to the performance. And the composer Pyotr Pospelov, who wrote a huge multicolored score based on a violin tutor (a simplified transcription of the score used in rehearsals) lasting one hour and scattered fragments of Pugni’s music for other forgotten ballets. And the conductor Ivan Velikanov, who performed it with love and inspiration and irresistibly incendiary. And stage designer Alona Pikalova, through whose efforts a real theater of the century before last came to life on the stage with all the picturesque and architectural delights. And costume designer Elena Zaitseva, who dressed the crowd of characters not only brightly, elegantly and stylishly, but extremely advantageously and comfortably. Due to the lack of appropriate nominations, the consultants (musicologist Elena Cheremnykh and ballet expert Olga Fedorchenko) were left without curtsy, although through their efforts “Katarina” acquired the authenticity that convinces the audience of the antiquity of this remake.

And – last but not least – the team of nominees is led by choreographers Sergey Bobrov and Yuliana Malkhasyants, who famously crossed the fine line that separates entertainment from art. Composing a ballet text, they masterfully combined the obvious signs of antiquity (lowered hands, coquettishly engraving poses, fine technique preserved from Bournonville ballets, whimsical angles, low adagio lines) with open virtuosity, so appreciated by modern audiences. Observing the rules of the game, they did not burden men’s parties with Soviet inventions such as double sodebasques and double assemblies, but they generously used all types of pirouettes, entrecha, splits and jete en tournant. Having rid the ballerina of fouettes, which did not yet exist in Perrault’s time, they gave her an even more difficult trick – 32 rounds in a la seconde, complicated by double turns, and equipped her party in abundance with all kinds of spins on pointe. Strictly observing the canons of ancient large forms – Grand pas, divertissements, Pas d`action – they introduced playful quotations from well-known ballet roles into them. And their entire gigantic choreographic structure was so firmly cemented with a clear and sensible direction that each character bent his line without interference, and the intricate plot was easy to read without a libretto.

Three artistic nominations is not too many for this crowded ballet, in which episodic parts are by no means lost, like the drunken Page (Daniil Kostylev) with his frivolous but difficult variation. Another thing is that at the performance in Moscow, Matvey Nikishaev, who was nominated for the role of Salvator Rosa, frankly passed by the third act. And the Italian Marcello Pelizzoni, with his bad feet, torn arabesques and actor’s clichés, was initially inferior to another Diavolino – the wonderful Georgy Bolsunovsky. Only Elena Svinko has the right to count on the Golden Mask, who at the beginning of this season exchanged her ballerina status in the Krasnoyarsk troupe for the position of a simple soloist in the St. Amazingly virtuoso, impeccably educated, surprisingly diverse (in countless variations, duets, ensembles and mise-en-scenes, the choreographers were able to present the heroine in a variety of guises) – her robber is undoubtedly more significant than the works of the other nominees.

The Krasnoyarsk troupe at the Bolshoi Theater was not timid, since they had already experienced this scene during last year’s summer tour. Of course, the exterior of the corps de ballet is inferior to the theaters of the capital, but this difficult choreography (rarely the male “mass” has to perform eight entrechat-six, and the women have to jump and spin so much) everyone dances so smoothly, recklessly and selflessly that the difference in height or in physique doesn’t matter anymore. In the golden frame of the Bolshoi Theater, Katarina, or the Robber’s Daughter, looked as if she was born for this stage. And it is sincerely a pity that this metropolitan in spirit and letter performance has no chance to take root: this season, Muscovites are resuming their own ballet on a bandit theme – “Marco Spada” by Pierre Lacotte, a French pastiche, inferior to “Katarina” in all respects.

As for the “masked” competitors, in terms of the number of nominations only “Dancemania” of the Bolshoi Theater was equaled with “Katarina”; this one-act ballet with excellent choreography by Vyacheslav Samodurov was able to achieve parity due to acting nominations – six soloists of the Bolshoi really dance excellently. The Yekaterinburg LAD project, consisting of four ballets to music by Leonid Desyatnikov and receiving eight nominations, is too heterogeneous due to the incomparable quality of the choreography of its various parts. And “Romeo and Juliet” by the Stanislavsky Music Theater with weak choreography by Maxim Sevagin and intentional vulgarity of direction by Konstantin Bogomolov can be safely considered an outsider. However, the decisions of the jury are unpredictable – this is the main intrigue of the Golden Mask competition.