Mischief is a fearless force – Newspaper Kommersant No. 235 (7436) of 12/19/2022

On December 16, the birthday of Rodion Shchedrin, a ballet evening from his works was held at the Mariinsky Theater: Maya Plisetskaya’s eternal hit – Carmen Suite directed by Alberto Alonso – performed the Mariinsky Ballet led by Diana Vishneva, the premiere of Mischievous Chastusheks, who had not seen the stage for more than half a century, was shown by the Yakobson Theater. From Saint-Petersburg – Tatyana Kuznetsova.

The life of the theatrical heritage of Rodion Shchedrin was divided in two. The Bolshoi Theatre, which regularly presented premieres of Shchedrin’s operas and especially ballets in the 1960s-1980s, hardly noticed the composer’s anniversary. Of the repertoire of those years, Muscovites retained only the Carmen Suite, but even on the anniversary days there was no place for it on the poster. On the other hand, the Mariinsky Theatre, which in recent decades has become Shchedrin’s home, hosted a two-week festival on its three stages, presenting a dozen of the composer’s works. And he celebrated his birthday with a premiere. True, not their own: on the historical stage of the Mariinsky Theater, the troupe of the St. Petersburg Ballet Theater named after Leonid Yakobson showed “Naughty Chastushkas” directed by Vyacheslav Samodurov.

For the first time, “Mischievous Chastushki” was danced just at the Mariinsky Theater (in those days – the Kirov Theater) in the mid-1960s under the name “Malyavinsky Women”, and this nine-minute concerto for orchestra, written by Shchedrin in 1963, was staged by none other than Leonid Yakobson. There was no trace of those “Babs”, and for the next half century the ballet did not favor this impetuous, cheerful music, despite the fact that Shchedrin himself, describing it, clearly had in mind the dance: “In” Mischievous ditties “, conceived as a virtuoso orchestral composition , only one of the spheres of the ditty is affected – dance and comic. After Yakobson, Moscow choreographer Natalya Ryzhenko ventured to dance jokingly: in her television production of the early 1970s, Bolshoi artists led by Nina Sorokina and Yuri Vladimirov made such virtuoso pretzels, disguised with folk color, that the current soloists could not even dream of.

On the occasion of Rodion Shchedrin’s 90th birthday, choreographer Samodurov ventured to pull “Naughty Chastushkas” out of half a century of oblivion by inventing a wonderful move to turn a 9-minute number into an 18-minute one-act ballet: he repeated the music twice. The first half of his “Mischievous Chastusheks” goes to the piano, the second – in all the multi-colored orchestra; the first is designed for seven soloists, in the second a dozen luminaries join them.

The ambitious and most interesting task – to show how a full-blooded choreographic score sprouts from the grains of individual combinations – Vyacheslav Samodurov decided halfway: the first, piano part, he clearly succeeded. The scene between the black front curtain and backdrop, cut into strips like noodles, opens in parts. In the foreground, openings are illuminated in turn, in which each soloist sets his own theme. Who spins wildly, who bounces the ball, who nervously gesticulates, allegedly not controlling the thresher of the legs, and who, turning his back to the audience and amusingly spreading his legs, waddling away into the darkness: ditties are mischievous. Naive plastic humor, which the choreographer Samodurov likes to resort to, is manifested here in almost every episode. Here the artist crosses the illuminated area with all determination, without slowing down his step. The other, looking into the hall, tunes in for a few seconds for a dance feat, so that in the end, waving her hand to dance, she runs away from the illuminated square into the saving darkness. Often a soloist, having performed something serially boisterous, wearily hangs his head and arms and, staggering on half-bent, leaves with a sense of accomplishment of duty. At the end of the first part, all seven, completely exhausted, fall back on the proscenium.

This playful choreography really requires serious strength and energy. Shchedrin’s dance ditties are a solid allegro, asymmetric, interspersed with syncopations, fraught with unexpected dynamic zigzags – just turn around. Musical virtuosity provokes choreographic virtuosity: if there are pirouettes, entrecha or tours in the air, then a whole series. In terms of technique and stamina, the soloists basically endure the nine-minute race, but when the stage is still lit (albeit poorly) and the choreographer mixes the solo parts in a one-time dance, the very abundance of voices creates some confusion on the stage. The first part is quite charming.

However, the second – orchestral – does not bring the production to a new level, it only increases the number of acting and fussing people. Where two walked briskly, in the second half of the ballet a line of seven girls roams, where one soloist twirled and jumped, a dance for three is formed, and there is clearly not enough virtuosity for everyone. The best – really “orchestrated” – episode was the impetuous pas de quatre, which grew out of the duet of the first part: the choreographer, having saved the combinations, divided them between three partners, tearing Alla Bocharova, flying and spinning like a top, from each other’s hands.

But Samodurov lacks the choreographic sequence: halfway through, he replaces the choreographic “orchestration” with various techniques designed to create the illusion of seething action. Launches a funny train of artists shuffling on bent legs; breaks the luminaries into triples – each in its own corner of the stage with its own combination. And under the ever-accelerating finale, “shari-vari” is started – this is how in the 1970s the Moiseev ensemble called the stream of tricks or complicated runs from backstage to backstage. The compositional chaos is exacerbated by the costumes: the artist Anastasia Nefedova tried to strike with the brightness of colors. Vivid green combined with blood red and doll-like pink-blue tones predominated. For men, sweatpants with stripes were often complemented by boxer shorts and wide corsets with lacing; knee-length black leotards crawled out from under the puffy short dresses of women. The references to Balenciaga, which is just now experiencing the consequences of an advertising scandal, looked especially relevant: black striped belts crossing the breasts and torsos of the artists in the style of sadomaso looked piquant than the same ones on plush toys.

However, even in such a killer outfit for the dance, the artists looked good and did not lose their ability to act. They, perhaps, lacked the spiritual detachment necessary here: either they were not used to being naughty, or they were not sure that the choreographer’s humor would reach the public. Got it anyway. But he did not reach the music.