Recover, moment – Newspaper Kommersant No. 141 (7342) of 08/05/2022

The St. Petersburg Ballet Theater named after Leonid Yakobson is on tour at the Historical Stage of the Bolshoi Theatre. The quality of the masterpieces of the famous sixties, who gave the theater its name, was surprised Leila Guchmazova.

It’s hard to believe, but the oldest author’s theater in the country is on the stage of the Bolshoi for the first time. For 53 seasons, he has experienced a lot, but now he confidently stays in the circle of St. Petersburg ballet giants, often dances on the stage of the Mariinsky and, despite his homelessness, corresponds to the “state academic” label in terms of art policy and level of performance. He did not come to Moscow as a poor relative either, bringing three significant performances of the “big classics” – “Sleeping Beauty”, “Don Quixote” and “Swan Lake” – and restored miniatures of the famous chef: the recent premiere of “Out of Time. Masterpieces by Leonid Yakobson”, consisting of the cycles “Classicism-Romanticism” and “Rodin”, as well as the one-act ballet “The Wedding Procession”.

Almost the same age as the last century, choreographer Yakobson was lucky to turn. The grandson of the violinist of the Mariinsky Theater and the orphaned son of a petty clerk, among the same skinny Petrograd children, was taken to the Urals in 1918 as part of the Petrograd children’s feeding colony “for fattening.” The world at that time was once again going crazy, so the children were returned to their parents via Vladivostok, Hokkaido, the Panama Canal and New York, where they were met by Japanese schoolchildren and greeted by President Woodrow Wilson. This lasted until January 1921, that is, from the age of 14 to 17, the future choreographer experienced a resonant round-the-world trip and saw something. Apparently, therefore, even the Institute of Performing Arts, which he later graduated from, now the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, did not teach him to walk in formation.

He was talented and intractable, and in 1969 he finally received the Choreographic Miniatures troupe, which he raised until his sudden death in 1975. His youngest artists, now teachers of advanced years, helped the current ones to restore Jacobson’s best opuses. This was greatly facilitated by the artistic director of the Yakobson Ballet, ex-premier of the Mariinsky Andrian Fadeev, a smart, ambitious professional who knows how to combine a course towards an original repertoire with loyalty to the heritage and quality of work.

Petersburg premiere “Out of time. Masterpieces by Leonid Yakobson”, which is being shown at the Bolshoi six months later, was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first concert program of the troupe, but only a trained eye can see the age. Jakobson’s opus “Pas de Quatre” to the music of Vincenzo Bellini from the Classicism-Romanticism cycle is graceful and slightly ironic: yes, we honor white tunics and whisk handles against the backdrop of rhythmic gymnastics and figure skating. “Pas de deux” from the same cycle shows Jacobson, a baroque player who brought a lot of trouble to soloists doomed to petty tricky technique. A logical continuation, “Pas de trois” (Alla Bocharova, Kirill Vychuzhanin, Dmitry Sobolev) differs from all the previous ones in sports aesthetics, unexpectedly illuminated in curls of academic classics and throwing dancers from a jump into the splits on the ground. And the “Sextet” to the overly popular Mozart’s Adagio from the 23rd Piano Concerto is pure Jerome Robbins, only Russian, with cosmopolitan sadness about the imperfection of the world and the inevitable dramatization of relationships: she loves him, he loves another, another loves a third, everyone in the sextet is busy and unhappy. Absolutely remarkable and timeless is the miniature “Flight of Taglioni”, also set to music by Mozart, a kind of trailer and the quintessence of ballet romanticism with its inaccessibly beautiful flying fairy that never touches the ground (weightless Alena Grivnina, Denis Klimuk, well-danced soloists) and as if dissolving into space scenes (lighting designers Yevgeny Ganzburg, Kamil Kutyev).

The one-act “Wedding Procession” looked fresh, marvelous, piercingly sad, revealing the injustice of the world in the dissonances of Shostakovich and Yakobson. Decorated with blue, flying dogs and slanting houses, the ballet revives Chagall’s work at the Jewish Chamber Theater exactly a century ago. The set design and costumes are just as meticulous and appropriate. Technically uncomplicated, but beautifully done theatrical roles of rich and poor parents, the almost grotesque Bride (Julia Koroleva) and the Poor Groom (Aidar Bikbulatov), ​​klezmer musicians, curious residents of the town – everything wraps up in a biting drama. Jacobson’s “wedding cortege” determined for years the rich impudence molded into wide pas, the convoluted insignificance of poverty and the fragile doom of love.

The miniatures from the Rodin cycle, covered many times by epigones, reveal the quietly self-confident Jacobson with his love for ancient myths and sculpture. Here his musicality and ability to see the poses flowing into one another are especially good in the cultural context of a country that does not know sex. Debussy, Prokofiev, Berg; “Eternal Spring”, “Kiss”, “Eternal Idol” (wonderful Anna Bikbulatova and Lorenzo Lodi), “Despair”, frank “Ecstasy”, restrainedly ardent “Paolo and Francesca”, “Minotaur and Nymph” are somehow out of date erotic and cling to the artless, inescapably acting beauty of human bodies.