The best Russian artists performed at the ballet festival in the Kremlin

Surprises and disappointments

The State Kremlin Palace opened the new season with the tenth International Ballet Festival in the Kremlin. For the second time, it is held without invited international stars: last year the pandemic interfered, now the difficult international situation. Nevertheless, the organizers included in the program a large-scale gala concert with the participation of the leading dancers of the leading ballet theaters in Russia.

The program included four classical ballets performed by the Kremlin artists themselves – three ballets by Tchaikovsky, the most popular composer in the world. His “Sleeping Beauty” and opened the festival, then showed “The Nutcracker”, “La Bayadère”, transferred by Andris Liepa from the Mariinsky Theater when he was an artistic director here. And they ended the forum with a “ballet of ballets” – “Swan Lake”, which is being staged in the Kremlin in the “old Moscow” version, even before Grigorovich’s version, it was staged at the Bolshoi Theater. They even made an exception for Swan: one dancer from outside was invited to play the main part – Fuad Mammadov from the Bolshoi Theatre.

I must say that the artist does not occupy leading positions in the Bolshoi, but his performance in the Kremlin shows that he can claim more. The owner of rare beautiful long legs (which is important in ballet), a high jump and good acting expressiveness, he made an excellent pair for his Odette-Odile – Kremlin prima Daria Bochkova, also a former Bolshoi dancer who joined the Kremlin ballet troupe last year. It was she who invited Fuad to debut with her in Swan, and their duet was filled with chemistry and harmony. The Kremlin ballet, which lost its brilliant premier Anatoly Soyu in May, who tragically died, is in dire need of bright individuals, so such an acquisition as Fuad Mammadov would be very useful for the theater.

Another very young dancer, Maxim Apatonov, who graduated from the Moscow Academy of Choreography last year and now dances in the Kremlin, demonstrated his individuality in the Kremlin’s Lebedin. In the performance, he played the role of a friend of Prince Siegfried Benno and danced in the pas de trois for the first big part of his career. His “beaded” skiffs and cabriols adorned the performance with their dance. In the Hungarian dance, in the ball scene, three couples showed themselves luxuriously and emotionally at once: Edgar Yeghiazaryan and Polina Diyanshina, Vladimir Piskarev and Anna Animutskaya, Oleg Kroshkin and Alena Shevkova. It is impossible not to note in Swan Lake Amir Salimov as the evil genius Rothbart.

The Kremlin artists stood out for their level both at the Sleeping Beauty and at the large-scale two-hour gala-end, which showed soloists from the best regional theaters in Russia, as well as the stars of the Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Theater of the Republic of Belarus (Minsk) and the Donbass Opera (Donetsk). At the same time, the duet from the ballet “A Thousand and One Nights” performed by the prima and premiere of the Kremlin Ekaterina Pervushina and Mikhail Evgenov won not only against the inexpressive background of the artists of the Bolshoi Theater Eleonora Sevenard and Denis Rodkin, but also looked worthy against the background of the best couple of the evening – Oksana Kardash and Ivan Mikhalev. Moreover, Pervushina also showed herself excellently in the Grand Pas from the ballet Don Quixote, and her partner, the premiere of the Chelyabinsk Academic Opera and Ballet Theater. Mikhail Glinka Kubanych Shamakeev, so beloved by many balletomanes during the Moscow competition, blew up the auditorium with his amazing hovering jumps and bewitching beauty of poses.

In contrast to this couple, there was little “chemistry” in the duet of representatives of the Mikhailovsky Theater Ekaterina Borchenko and Pavel Savin in the pas de deux from the ballet Esmeralda. Perfectly performed their variations separately, the dancers together did not make the proper impression. The performance of artists of the Bolshoi Theater of the Republic of Belarus Irina Eromkina and Yuri Kovalev in a duet from Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet (choreography by Valentin Elizariev) was also disappointing. But Marta Lutsko and Mikhail Vetrov from the Voronezh Theater, on the contrary, pleased, having coped well with the pas de deux from the Sleeping Beauty ballet.

A feature of this gala was the participation in it exclusively of artists with Russian citizenship (with the exception of artists from Belarus). For example, the Mari Opera and Ballet Theatre. E. Sapaeva (Yoshkar-Ola) could not boast of his handsome Japanese prime minister Itaru Nada, dancing in Russia for the third season, but he put up his other artists for the concert – Kristina Mikhailova, Artyom Vedenkin and Roman Starikov, who showed themselves perfectly in the pas de trois from the ballet Corsair.

The concert featured performances from contemporary choreography. The duet from the ballet Anima (animus – “life principle; soul”) performed by the artists of the Kremlin ballet has become an expressive example of modern concert choreography. A fragment from the ballet “Crane Song” (choreography by Nina Anisimova and Khalyaf Safiullin), shown by the soloists of the Bashkir Theater Sofya Saitova and Rustam Iskhakov, is interesting because it represented the national classic – the first Bashkir ballet, which has been going on here since 1944. It was he who once made a strong impression on little Rudik Nureyev, predetermining his path in ballet art for years to come.

A surprise awaited the audience of the evening – a fragment of the new ballet “Cleopatra”, staged by Andrei Petrov based on the famous creation of Mikhail Fokine, which amazed Parisians back in 1909 at the very first Diaghilev’s “Russian Seasons”. The premiere of this ballet is scheduled for the next season in the Kremlin.