The Bolshoi Theater celebrated the 85th birthday of Ekaterina Maximova

On the Historical Stage of the Bolshoi Theater a concert “Fragments of a Biography” took place, staged by Vladimir Vasiliev in honor of the 85th anniversary of the birth of his late wife, the unique ballerina Ekaterina Maksimova. Tells Tatiana Kuznetsova.

The most striking thing in the large two-part concert is Ekaterina Maksimova herself, or rather, her archival photos and film footage from different years, interlayering the gala numbers. The ballerina’s crushing charm, childish femininity, and acting sincerity captivate us even now. But the exclusivity of Ekaterina Maksimova is different: she seems to be an absolutely modern ballerina – in the sense of technique and physical data. That is, her proportions, physique, step, jump, dance style, footwork, coordination of movements have remained standard since the turn of the 1950s–1960s. This has probably never happened in history. Over the course of 60 years, everything has usually changed – from technique to ballerina type, from repertoire to dance style. This period of time separated the ethereal Taglioni, who first stood on pointe in the 1830s, from the strong-legged, steep-shouldered Italians of Petipa’s era with their fouettés and other graces, and them from the chaste restraint of Galina Ulanova with her very modest physical data and the rotational-jumping records of Stalin’s favorite Olga Lepeshinskaya, today looking pretty clumsy. Each of the historical figures remained a star of their generation, a character in the history textbook. But not Maksimova: it’s not easy for today’s ballerinas to reach her. Especially in the same repertoire territory.

Vladimir Vasiliev, who organizes evenings in memory of Maximova every five years, this year for the first time built a program around the iconic roles of his wife, prefacing each pas de deux with shots of Ekaterina Maximova herself in the same role. No one escaped unfavorable comparison. Nor did Bolshoi ballerina Eleanor Sevenard, who performed the pas de deux from “The Nutcracker” with ponderous regalness and all too obvious effort. Nor the leading soloist Margarita Schneider, who clearly considered the main value of “Flames of Paris” to be rotations and performed double pirouettes with the mechanical zeal of a seamstress-machine operator to the detriment of the canonical text. Neither young Eva Sergeenkova, in the role of Giselle, was more concerned about the purity of her own dance than about the possible death of Albert. Neither the guest from the Mariinsky Theater Renata Shakirova, clearly convinced that the puppet sharpness of gestures is Kitri’s Spanish temperament, and the series of double fouettés are analogous to virtuosity.

Their partners were not in danger of comparison, and they looked more interesting. The elegant Artem Ovcharenko danced the Nutcracker Prince with a kind of condescending impeccability. Igor Tsvirko, immersed, but not losing his jump and enthusiasm, included an intricate “pistol” with a 360-degree rotation in the coda of “Flames of Paris”. Kimin Kim, despite slight blemishes in the Basil variation, confirmed his reputation as the main virtuoso of the Mariinsky Theater. The young Bolshoi premier Dmitry Smilevsky, who in record time learned the part of Paganini from Leonid Lavrovsky’s ballet of the same name as revised by Vladimir Vasiliev, showed miracles of professionalism: he danced with plastic sharpness and rapturously freeness, spinning 8-10 pirouettes with half-forgotten ease and speed.

The real hero of the evening should be recognized as Vladislav Lantratov. The heartbreaking “Ballad” to Chopin’s music ten years ago was staged and performed by Vasiliev himself, writhing in grief on an office chair and evoking a vision of his deceased wife. Lantratov managed to perform this choreography, delicate in different senses, with a stormy adagio, equipped with upper supports and chains around a piano standing on stage, passionately, but without cheap sentimentality, in which he was helped by the light-footed Elizaveta Kokoreva, who also avoided easily accessible melodrama. However, the Bolshoi premiere danced this choreography with equal dignity five years ago, as well as Glinka’s “Waltz-Fantasy”, in which the hero-poet courts five sylph-shaped ladies. These numbers regularly move from one “memory concert” to another. And some – for example, Entre performed by girls from the Moscow Academy, dressed in the costumes of Maximova’s main characters – were born during her lifetime, in 1994.

However, it is incorrect to blame the 83-year-old stage director for repetitions, who designed the concert with projections of his own, very lovely watercolors: many choreographers exhaust their creativity long before the end of their creative activity. In addition, some of the ideas remained unrealized: Vladimir Vasiliev, having received a serious injury in the dark backstage, was taken straight from the theater to the hospital, and therefore did not appear in his “Anyuta” in the role of Pyotr Leontyevich. The Bolshoi troupe danced three significant fragments of this ballet with cheerfulness and skill, fortunately “Anyuta” entered the theater’s repertoire. And the public appreciated this cheerful vivacity – after all, there is something calming and stable in the ongoing “Groundhog Day”. It’s a pity that there is no one to revive it the way Ekaterina Maksimova did.