Natalya Kasatkina died. Obituary

At the 90th year of her life, Natalya Kasatkina, People’s Artist of the RSFSR, dancer, choreographer, artistic director of the Natalya Kasatkina and Vladimir Vasilyev Classical Ballet Theater, died of thromboembolism at the Sklifosovsky Institute.

Natalya Kasatkina and her husband Vladimir Vasilyov made up a rare pair of choreographers-co-authors: all their lives (until Vasilyov’s death in 2017) they choreographed only together, and so inseparably and completely that in ballet circles their creative duo was called only “KasVas” . These intelligent Muscovites with an exceptional pedigree (famous artists, writers, artists, engineers, architects, directors crossed paths in Kasatkina’s extensive family – in the person of the founder of the Moscow Art Theater, Konstantin Stanislavsky) were brought together by the Bolshoi Theater. The early marriage of the ballet dancers turned out to be extremely harmonious and happy, despite the fact that the careers of the spouses developed differently: the dancer Kasatkina was more gifted and brighter than her handsome husband, and her repertoire – characteristic and classical – was broader and more significant.

What they all had in common was a passionate interest in Moscow ballet history. At the school they were trained by the legendary Muscovite teachers Nikolai Tarasov and Shulamith Messerer (Natalia Kasatkina recalled the graduating class of St. Petersburg resident Maria Kozhukhova as a bad dream), in the theater they went to class with Asaf Messerer, and learned the art of character dance from Anatoly Kuznetsov. Evgeny Kacharov became their guide into the depths of the history of the Bolshoi. A mimance artist, an obsessive dance fanatic, the owner of a phenomenal memory and the last partner of Ekaterina Geltser, it was he who brought the youngsters into the apartment of the former queen of the Bolshoi, who graciously gifted the newcomers with her memories and the secrets of forgotten acting skills. Many years later, in 1978, for the Classical Ballet troupe, which had just been headed by choreographers, old man Kacharov would stage “An Evening of Ancient Choreography,” resuming forgotten fragments of the ancient Bolshoi classics; and these charming pas de deux and ensembles with exquisite unknown movements and combinations will create a storm in the stagnant ballet timelessness.

Surprisingly, with a burning interest in antiquity, the budding choreographers’ own interests lay in a different sphere—the Soviet avant-garde.

That strong, semi-acrobatic exercise on the verge of bodily capabilities, which Fyodor Lopukhov was fond of in the 1920s and some of the dizzying supports of which was retained by pop ballet in the socialist realist years. However, the reform of the ballet language in itself was not the goal for Kasatkina and Vasiliev: the intellectual authors dreamed of changing the entire structure of the ballet performance, starting with music. In 1962, their first-born appeared at the Bolshoi: Nikolai Karetnikov’s one-act ballet “Vanina Vanini”; the young choreographers wrote the libretto based on Stendhal themselves. Judging by the sketches, it was still a completely traditional performance. But it was clearly successful, since two years later the completely revolutionary “Geologists” (“Heroic Poem”) by the same Karetnikov appeared, a pseudo-production ballet about a geological expedition and a disastrous forest fire with three soloists and a disguised love triangle. Here the new choreographic language was revealed in all its unbridledness – without any semblance of everyday life, but with crazy lifts, desperate jumps and risky combinations of steps. For this choreography, the Bolshoi found the perfect couple – the petite, fearless Nina Sorokina and the frantic athlete Yuri Vladimirov.

They became the main characters of the next hit: Kasatkina and Vasiliev were the first in the USSR to risk staging Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” – crudely primitive, like Nijinsky’s, and acrobatic-classical, as befits the Soviet avant-garde. The pathos was quite thaw-like – in the finale, after the death of his beloved, the Shepherd plunged a knife into the wooden Idol, for whom the victim was intended. Natalya Kasatkina herself brilliantly played the role of Besnovataya, an intimidatingly beautiful fanatic who controls the obedient crowd and sends the heroine to her death. The Bolshoi Theater took “The Rite of Spring” as the newest word in Soviet ballet on tour to the USA. It was a wild success: even the picky Stravinsky, having approved the production, personally stood at the controls. And after the American triumph, the choreographers did not stage a single ballet in their native theater: the choreographic thaw with its polyphony ended, and the golden age of Grigorovich, the only choreographer of the Bolshoi, began.

In 1971, idle choreographers managed to break into the Leningrad Kirov Theater (now the Mariinsky): their second masterpiece, “The Creation of the World” to the music of Andrei Petrov, was born from the drawings of Jean Effel, wittily commenting on the Old Testament.

The grace, humor and transparent composition of the sparsely-crowded ballet gave the performance a long, happy life. Almost all the main stars of the ballet stage of the last third of the twentieth century were Adams, Eves, Gods and Devils – from Mikhail Baryshnikov and Ekaterina Maksimova to Yuri Solovyov and Vladimir Malakhov. Rare forays to other stages – to Novosibirsk, the Stanislavsky Music Theater – as well as work on television productions and concert numbers, were quite productive, but did not live up to the two best ballets. And only in 1977, Natalya Kasatkina and Vladimir Vasilyov received an entire troupe at their disposal – the Moscow “Classical Ballet” was given to the authors still considered promising: in 1966, under the name “Young Ballet”, it was founded by Igor Moiseev and for ten years later it fell into complete desolation.

With the arrival of Kasatkina and Vasilyov, this wretched group, which they renamed the Classical Ballet Theater, turned into the most progressive troupe in the country. The forgotten Russian heritage and the pirate Western avant-garde were staged here: Azary Plisetsky, who worked for Maurice Bejart and Roland Petit, transferred fragments of their ballets to Moscow with the consent of the authors. The witty Dmitry Bryantsev, the best young choreographer of the USSR, composed miniatures here. Pierre Lacotte came here in 1980 and gifted Muscovites with his charming antiquity: in his “Swiss Milkmaid” the main role was amazingly danced by Ekaterina Maksimova, who had no roles at the Bolshoi. The repertoire, supplemented by great academic classics, went far beyond the limits of the concert. However, they also tried to present the old classics in a new way, in particular, in “Swan Lake” they restored Gorsky’s “white act”, and in the mass waltz by Kasatkin and Vasilyov they used small benches – the same as Petipa had.

The atmosphere in the troupe was radiant; the best artists were drawn here from the regions. The Moscow school supplied “semi-finished products”: young artists rejected by the Bolshoi Theater during a year of work at KasVas turned into outstanding soloists – the tutors here, led by Maya Plisetskaya’s brilliant cousin Naum Azarin, were selected.

Thanks to their efforts, the stars of the troupe (Margarita Perkun-Bebezichi, Irek Mukhamedov, Vladimir Malakhov and many others) shone brighter than their peers at the Bolshoi: they regularly took gold at international competitions and filled the gigantic Kremlin Palace with the public – the Classical Ballet Theater did not have its own stage , and no.

The artistic directors staged them themselves, actively and enthusiastically. But it seems that their time ended with the thaw: the new original ballets caused more confusion than delight. The Kommersant columnist, who lived with the choreographers in the Bolshoi Theater cooperative, built on the very spot where the wooden house of the Kasatkin family once stood, had to painfully overcome embarrassment: my reviews of the 1990s–2000s were like feuilletons. But Natalya Kasatkina, the only victim of the columnist’s mockery, knew how to take the blow. “You scolded our “Spartak”, and in Spain an amphitheater of ten thousand gave him a standing ovation,” this magnificent, stylish, intelligent woman, who throughout her life retained her old Moscow leisurely speech and the posture of an uncrowned queen, used to say when she met the author in the courtyard and smiled radiantly.

Tatiana Kuznetsova