The Chekhov Festival presented its largest production yet

The largest and most ambitious project of the current Chekhov Festival is the famous “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff, performed by the famous company of the Cuban Contemporary Ballet Theater. This is a large Cuban-Russian project, which employs almost 250 people. Five groups perform simultaneously (!): in addition to the Cuban ballet troupe of 46 people, this is also the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow Philharmonic (73 people), the Minin Chamber Choir and the Moscow State Copell. Vadim Sudakova (62 people), Children’s choir “Spring” (60 people). And also conductor Timofey Golberg and three soloists: soprano Maria Buinosova, tenor Yaroslav Abaimov, baritone Pavel Yankovsky.

The Cuban ballet has long been and deservedly famous throughout the world for its dancers. The most famous Cuban troupe is the National Ballet of Cuba, but the Theater of Contemporary Ballet of Cuba, founded in 1959 in Havana, is also very well known. Over the course of its history, the team has presented 310 premieres, earning audience applause and recognition from professional critics for its performances at the world’s most prestigious venues.

The Chekhov Festival already brought the dance group Acosta Danza to Moscow in 2017. Then the program of five one-act performances, compiled by the artistic director of the company, the legendary Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta, created a sensation in the Russian capital. The success of the Theater of Contemporary Ballet of Cuba, which entered the stage of the Zaryadye Hall, turned out to be somewhat more modest, but the scale of the ballet “Carmina Burana” staged in Cuba six years ago, in the same 2017, exceeded all expectations.

From the MK dossier: Carl Orff’s work is based on twenty-four poems from a collection of medieval poetry called Carmina Burana, which translates from Latin as “The Songs of Beuerne”. This is because the original manuscript of the collection (“Codex Buranus”) was found in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery of Boyern and the libretto includes poems in both Latin and Middle High German and covers a wide range of secular topics relevant both in the 13th century, So it is in our time: the inconstancy of luck and wealth, the transience of life, the joy of the return of spring and the pleasure of drunkenness, gluttony, gambling and carnal love. The compositional structure is largely based on the idea of ​​the rotation of the Wheel of Fortune. A drawing of a wheel was discovered on the first page of the Codex Buranus. It also contained four inscriptions placed on the rim of the wheel and together forming a verse: “Regnabo, Regno, Regnavi, Sum sine regno” (“I will reign – I reign – I reigned – I am now without a kingdom”).

The Wheel of Fortune is also the basis of the stage decoration: a circle-shaped screen on which black and white documentary footage almost continuously flashes, illustrating the main ideas of the performance. These are explosions, exploding shells, people’s faces, cockfights, horses running and much more.

– I like this circle, it is very symbolic. Because the whole work goes in circles. As it begins, so it ends. It all starts with the explosions that gave birth to our world and also ends with the explosions with which man destroys our world, which he did not build. And Adam and Eve appear. And we still have time to save our world,” Miguel Iglesias, artistic director of the Cuban Contemporary Ballet Theater, explains his idea to me.

And the whole ballet, in accordance with the concept of Miguel Igleisias, goes in a circle and loops. It begins with a circle formed by Cuban dancers lying on the stage, and ends with the same circle.

– This is the life cycle, from birth to death. For the set design, I hired a film director, and for the video, we hired a person who was involved in advertising projects on television, but who had wanted to do something serious for a very long time. We got together and discussed for days, we came up with endless ideas, and the result was this product, which is not dance in its pure form, not choreography, nor music, but a performance that combines all the components.

Beuern’s Songs: Lay Songs to be sung by singers and choirs, with instruments and magical images, was originally intended by its creators to be synthetic theater. In accordance with the scale of such tasks, choreographer George Enrique Cespedenes also thinks globally, but rationalistically, without the temperament typical of Cubans, he “lays out” the choreography “with thick strokes, as a result of which the ballet is mainly built on crowd scenes, reminiscent of physical training formations and ranks, dancers in who are dispassionate and indifferent. The theme of love around a warlike and aggressive world is represented in Carmina Burana by a single, and erotically also completely neutral, love duet.

– And the duet that we see in the play is Adam and Eve? – I ask Miguel Iglesios.

– No. There is no direct story here. We have our own reality, and a person who believes something and thinks about something has his own reality. The play has no plot. The meaning of the particular duet in this case is that She does not exist and He is trying to restore her from his memories and dreams. That is, he is in constant search.

– Did all five teams work separately from each other? How did you put it all together? How many days?

– Each part, the dance group, orchestra, choir, worked independently, and brought it all together in one day. They followed all my instructions and everything worked out.