Tatyana Kuznetsova watched Mats Ek’s ballets close-up at the Khudozhestvenny cinema

At the Khudozhestvenny cinema, TheatreHD presented the Moscow premiere of Mats Ek’s Ballets: Baryshnikov and Guillem — the performances The Place and Bye combined in one program were staged by the great Swede commissioned by legendary artists. Famous ballets close up looking at Tatyana Kuznetsova.

The full house of the Moscow premiere, which required an additional session and a “flexible pricing system”, testified that fashion and modernity do not play a special role in ballet: the audience goes for names. The names here are great, but they do not promise surprises. 78-year-old Mats Ek has been walking in the live classics for half a century, without changing either the style, the language or the principles of his productions. He staged ballets, united by a film program, for the 60-year-old Baryshnikov and the 47-year-old Guillem in his usual manner, without technical virtuosities and claims to novelty.

The films were shot later than theatrical premieres, and in the film versions the authors tried to supplement the stage versions with details – with varying degrees of activity.

The theatrical “Bye”, composed by Ek to the music of Beethoven’s 32nd piano sonata in 2012, Sylvie Guillem included in her program “6000 miles”, with which she traveled all over the world. In 2013, at the Chekhov Festival, she said “bye” to Moscow, repeated in 2015, saying goodbye to the audience; and balletomanes grieved that they would no longer see this fantastic ballerina in the prime of her life and acting abilities – her age was given out only by Wikipedia. The movie “Bye” was filmed by Ek himself in 2013 without any special camera frills (behind the scenes of the filming was awarded a separate film, but it was not included in the Moscow program). The film version carefully broadcast the performance, alternating medium and large shots and avoiding noticeable editing tricks, so that those who saw the performance “live” could see close-up details of the choreography, ballerina’s plasticity and acting that were missed in the theater.

The only element of scenography is a door made of clouded glass; the favorite image of the choreographer, wandering through his performances, here symbolizes the borderline between two lives, between obscurity and publicity. The black-and-white video image of Sylvie Guillem, climbing out from behind the door, on the stage takes on its living flesh, and the film, unlike the theater, allows you to see in detail how the video hand becomes a real hand, and admire the seamless coherence of transformations.

“Bye”, of course, can be interpreted literally as a ballerina’s farewell to the audience, to the stage, to the profession. However, Ek’s trademark absurd humor excludes both straightforwardness and pathos. This ballet is not about the contrast of two lives, stellar and everyday, it is about the desire for personal freedom, capable of elevating anyone to the stars. About how the heroine Sylvie – angular, shy, ridiculously dressed in a purple sweatshirt, a rough yellow skirt and a grass-colored jacket – is transformed into another creature. The democratic Ek does not philosophize with hints: as soon as the heroine throws off her stretched jacket and boring shoes, revealing a slender flexible body and a magically arched foot, all her movements – jumps, stretches, even headstands – acquire divine ballet beauty. The trouble is that such impulses are short-lived: in the finale, frightened of her own liberty, the heroine will again crawl behind the frosted glass of the door, dissolving into a black-and-white video crowd of biased observers, among whom one can identify Ek himself and his ballerina wife Ana Laguna.

She, at that time almost 50 years old, was offered by Mats Ek as a partner to Mikhail Baryshnikov, when in 2007 he staged “The Place” to the music of the Fleshquartet group, a duet short story about a married couple at the end of life, on his order. Starting from the 2000s, this autobiographical theme seriously captured Ek, one after another its variations appear: the duet “Memory”, the trio “Ickea”, and later – “Ax”, shown in Moscow at the Context festival. Baryshnikov’s ballet fits into the same pattern: He and She, memories of past playfulness and serenity, the difference in temperaments, separate lives, preserved love, the departure of a Man. From the design – a table, another Ek’s fetish, a symbol of family life, unity or confrontation. Another transparent metaphor is a white rectangular carpet under which you can hide from the hardships of life. Baryshnikov and Laguna danced “The Place” in different countries, bypassing Russia. The film of the same name, made in 2009, was edited with a real performance of artists in Stockholm.

The Swedish director of photography Jonas Åkerlund, whom Ek invited to shoot, of course, treated his choreography with the utmost reverence. However, the world celebrity and universal idol, who filmed all conceivable stars – from Roxette to Rammstein and from Madonna to Lady Gaga – could not limit himself to fixing the choreography. The film begins with video footage from the security cameras of the Stockholm theater – black and white, blind, with interference. We see a fit Baryshnikov entering the service entrance; then – plump Laguna in a shapeless dress. Him – in the dressing room, taking off his jacket and frozen in front of the mirror. Both of them warming up behind the curtain and not paying attention to each other: he carefully performs ballet steps at the stick, she throws non-reversible batmans, grabbing onto the scenery table. Black-and-white spectators fill the hall, the curtain rises, and the color movie begins.

The director restrainedly emphasizes significant moments (when, for example, the actors’ feet simultaneously step on the carpet), takes a close-up of the nervous trembling of the hands, catches crossed glances, looks under the carpet, where the hero is shrinking. And he actively dramatizes Baryshnikov’s monologue, emphasizing the range from the Hollywood bravado of the dance beginning to the hyper-realistic finale, in which he bangs his head on the table (the camera replaces the tabletop, so that it seems that the distorted flattened face of the hero beats directly against the audience).

Both great artists dance superbly: Baryshnikov is lean, with a beautifully worked out body and academic perfection of every step and micro gesture, and Laguna, whose seemingly loose body is plastic, supple, weightless and full of elemental energy. But Okerlund’s camera testifies reliably: they are not a couple. The love and sensuality of the heroine of Laguna is broken against the detached perfection of a partner absorbed in himself: it seems that even Baryshnikov’s affectionate look was rehearsed in front of a mirror. The director made a film about alienation and unrequited love. He is probably right: world stars too often pay with loneliness for their “Place”.