Review of ballet critic Tatyana Kuznetsova on “Dialogue through Time” by Diana Vishneva in Zaryadye

At the Zaryadye Concert Hall, Diana Vishneva and her Context festival presented the “Dialogue through Time” program, consisting of works by contemporary choreographers. Tells Tatiana Kuznetsova.

The program was gentle: four rooms in each department. The finale of each act was decorated with a performance by Diana Vishneva herself. The choreographers are mostly domestic, accomplished Context laureates, with productions in serious theaters and modern companies. In general, the cream of our modern dance. The organizers explain the name of the evening by continuity; modern dance is written into its predecessors. But among the “modernists” they include the expressionist Kurt Jooss, the postmodernist Mats Ek, the classicist Hans van Manen and the creator of dance theater Pina Bausch, so the “dialogue” here is not so much substantive as practical and, most likely, is intended to justify obvious borrowings from luminaries.

As for the genre of work, here Context gives preference to “pure” dance, usually asking the authors somewhat abstract themes – the Universe, Spirituality, Matter. As a result, choreographers, in the thoughtful words of one of the program participants, compose “creative dances with something that is stronger and bigger than us.” The musical basis is usually a neutral soundtrack interspersed with highly spiritual music – Handel, Bach, Monteverdi; Baroque is preferable because the musical structure allows performers to be brought in and out on stage freely and to start and stop movement at any moment. Clothes are chosen monochrome – black, white, and less often flesh-colored.

Torsos are covered or naked; the legs, on the contrary, are hidden in wide trousers or skirt-pants – so that the leg passes appear larger.

Light is an economical substitute for decoration and is often complemented by a smoke screen of varying degrees of intensity.

The movements are as large and varied as possible in order to avoid accusations of poor vocabulary. Large rondas, large batmans, abundant port de bras with circular movements of the body and an indispensable plié in the wide second position are complemented by parterre rolls, stretches and various “stands”. Eroticism is not encouraged, but signs of attraction are quite acceptable. The “canon” is often used: repetition of one combination by different groups of dancers with a delay of several bars – this achieves the illusion of abundance. In exceptional cases, each dancer is given his own combination, which is performed simultaneously. In “Dialogue through Time,” Olga Labovkina (“Canvases of the Moon”), Ernest Nurgali (“Matter”) and Kirill Radev (“Lacrimae”), who works in Spain, expressed themselves in this manner, and the works of these authors are almost indistinguishable.

Against this background, the artless but very relevant number “The Knife Cuts the Fabric,” staged by Jonah Cook, looked like an island of common sense. The Briton, who worked at the Bavarian Ballet together with his Russian wife and came to Moscow’s Stanislavsky Music Theater to pick her up exactly in 2022, composed a six-minute duet based on a composition by Chet Baker on the theme of toxic relationships. Taking the childhood game of rock-paper-scissors as a starting point, he was able to reproduce the nervous tension and mistrust that cloud the relationship of a couple too concerned with maintaining gender equality. The abuser here turns out to be a determined woman (Renata Nazmetdinova), and her partner (Oleg Epov), who nervously flinches from the loud clap of his hands, can only defend the honor of the male gender in forceful support. But even here the lady does not concede leadership, reformatting the poses in his hands at her own discretion.

The modern troupe, created by Diana Vishneva and working in Context projects, is not at all rich in charismatics who can pull off a weak production. But “Dialogue Through Time” presented the opposite, very rare, case: the magic of personality illuminated the complete helplessness of choreography in the love duet of the Master (Denis Savin) and Margarita (Diana Vishneva) from the ballet by Edward Klug, running at the Bolshoi Theater.

The fact that the ballet was unsuccessful was clear even at the premiere.

But the Bolshoi’s Margaritas, in the scene where the heroine reads her lover’s completed novel with growing erotic excitement, fiddled with a disheveled sheaf of paper too straightforwardly, retouching the sexual implications of the episode. And Diana Vishneva, without missing the slightest detail, demonstrates true acting sophistication. Her irresistible heroine, having had enough of reading and throwing away the manuscript, longs to give herself to the Master: now, lying down, she raises her leg invitingly, now pressing her body against his back, now passionately wrapping her arms around him. However, the indifferent lover, devastated by creativity, responds to the passionate call only with lean support, carrying in an arabesque and raising the lady of his heart to heaven, which makes the love duet look not just stupid, but slightly comical.

An example of self-sufficiency in the game of love was Pavel Glukhov’s six-minute number “La petite mort” (a French euphemism for orgasm) to the music of Johann Pachelbel, performed by ex-Mariinsky prima Daria Pavlenko, who also managed to work in Pina Bausch’s troupe, and therefore knows the value of the smallest body movements. Could anyone else in our ballet so subtly and accurately walk the path of pleasure – from the innocent caresses of the almost motionless beginning, in which the heroine, standing at the back of the stage, gently envelops her neck and chest with her hands, to the selfless finale in half-split on the floor of the proscenium, – unknown.

After all, Pavel Glukhov is almost the only Russian choreographer who knows how to work for a specific order and for a specific performer, which is a clear sign of professionalism.

The great Balanchine staged polkas for elephants to music by Stravinsky, specially written for this occasion. For example, Glukhov’s second number is a fragment from performance “Duo”, set to music by Alexei Retinsky for Diana Vishneva and Daria Pavlenko, does not in any way resemble “The Little Death”. Two almost antique, inextricably linked, mirroring each other dancers in amazingly tailored chiton dresses, spinning, holding hands, raising graceful attitudes, stepping with “bas-relief” non-reversible steps, raising their hands in the cup of a ray of light falling from above – in a word, they move like this, as St. Petersburg classical goddesses who want to achieve immortality in the non-classical repertoire should move.