He got lost in the gloomy forest

The Russian premiere of the international multimedia monoballet Dante took place on the stage of the Crocus City Hall, in which ballet star Sergei Polunin went through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. An extraordinary sight was smitten Tatyana Kuznetsova.

The world premiere of “Dante” took place exactly 700 years after his death – in September 2021, in Ravenna, where the great poet is buried. The three parts of The Divine Comedy were divided between international teams of directors. The solid “Hell” made up the first part, “Purgatory” and “Paradise” fit into 35 minutes of the second act. The only hero of the play is Dante. “They did ballet during covid, so they couldn’t bring in new performers – the distance between the dancers should be at least two to three meters. And so it was decided that I would be alone on stage, ”Sergei Polunin simply explained the transformation of the multi-figure Divine Comedy into a mono-ballet. Dante here is his own guide, and a sinner in fiery hell, and a lonely righteous man in Paradise. However, the pantomime ghost of Beatrice in a white cloak with a hood occasionally shares his hellish loneliness, in “Purgatory” he unexpectedly hits the solar plexus a couple of times, but in paradise, contrary to the “Divine Comedy”, he never appears. The Italians, it seems, were stunned by Dante: there were few reviews, and all were descriptive. Reviewers can be understood: such an incredible spectacle and such a childish interpretation of the Divine Comedy cannot be taken seriously. However, describing this busy animation is also not an easy task.

Imagine a video forest on the back – naturally, “gloomy”, bluish-gray. In the center, a waterfall smokes with smoke sprays and splashes with sound waves, birds scream wildly in the electronic music of Miroslav Bako, a live pianist on the proscenium adds pictorialism, the video roots of a gigantic tree seem to fall out onto the stage, and inside this live picture Dante runs excitedly, picturesquely waving the floors of a velvet a cloak as wide as Albert’s in Giselle. The ball of light “Virgil” leads the hero to the Styx with small figurines of human souls along the banks and a boat of a large animated Charon. And then real hell begins, clearly prompted by the final part of the Lord of the Rings movie saga to designer Jan Yanko. Video landscapes, sinister one another, change with each new test of Dante. Among the gloomy rocks and gigantic fragments of viaducts whirlpools of flame boil, a tiny Gollum sneaks along the black ridge of a distant mountain, a disgusting five-meter orc strives to crawl out from behind a nearby boulder; some kind of bald ceratosaurus, occupying the entire back, beats with its tail and snaps its mouth, preparing to devour the little living Dante, who enters into an unequal duel with him. And even the ghost of Beatrice did not save him in the finale of “Hell”: with a desperate leap, the hero rushes right into the ribs of a horned devil with red eyes, who occupied the entire backdrop.

Sergei Polunin dances Dante with trademark zeal and faith in the proposed circumstances, summing up the experience of his two main roles: the unbalanced Prince Rudolf and the leader of the ancient Roman slaves Spartacus, since the British choreographer Ross Freddy Ray does not offer the dancer anything unusual. The part of Dante consists of separately taken classical pas like double rounds in the air, throw-over jets, assemblies (double and subresso) and other aerobatics, which are completely impossible to withstand in large numbers. Therefore, there are many melodramatic interludes in the role: Dante raises his hands in supplication, grabs his head, tears his hair, closes his eyes in horror with his palms, throws himself on the floor in despair and falls to his knees.

The suffering of Sergei Polunin, coupled with a spiritual face, expressive plasticity of the body and hands, as well as general romantic restlessness, broke more than one girl’s heart. But in Dante, the 33-year-old artist also showed a decent physical shape, which is surprising for a freelance dancer not tied to the daily webbing of a ballet class. True, it is difficult to judge the academic performance of a multimedia project. The torment of the hero does not imply the purity of the positions and the completeness of the pas, so the breakdown of the tour or pirouette can be easily masked by some kind of woeful lunge or a confused transition to the other leg. However, the dancer Polunin’s jumps were high, his knees and feet stretched out, the lines of the poses were fine; the only pity is that the climactic jete en tournant of “Purgatory” he had to jump in the dark because of a technical glitch.

It’s a pity, because the fleeting “Purgatory” and “Paradise” did not receive such significant visual support as “Hell” from the “Lord of the Rings”. Judging by the video design of Marcela Grimaud and Otto Bubenichek, as well as the choreography by Sergei Polunin himself and Jiri Bubenichek, who created Purgatory and Paradise, respectively, the authors themselves did not master Dante’s work in full. In any case, little can be learned from the farm, the breeze and the convertibles that Dante, dressed in white, jumped into Purgatory against the backdrop of thickening clouds, lightning strikes and the music of the American Gregory Revere. “Paradise” (by no means harmonious at the will of the composer Kirill Richter) was arranged by the hero of Sergei Polunin in his own way, dragging the pillars-pedestals scattered here and there, crowned with Dante’s heads, to the center of the stage. And when the posthumous video masks of the poet circling around the back were replaced by a photograph of the dancer himself, the living Sergei Polunin took the central place among the monuments, with Christian meekness spread his arms to the sides and made it clear that he had fulfilled the mission of becoming the messiah. Although this mission is hardly related to the Divine Comedy.