The Moscow Academy of Choreography celebrated its 250th anniversary on the Historical Stage of the Bolshoi Theater

On the Historical Stage of the Bolshoi Theater, the Moscow State Academy of Choreography (MGAC) celebrated its 250th anniversary with a four-hour concert in three departments. Tatyana Kuznetsova noted the conservatism of the school, which does not prevent it from supplying promising personnel to the Bolshoi Theater.

The birthday of the Moscow Ballet School is considered to be December 23, 1773, when the Italian Filippo Becari signed a contract with the Board of Trustees of the Moscow Orphanage to teach children “to dance with all possible precision and show themselves publicly in all pantomime ballets.” But almost 90 years ago, a different date was celebrated, as evidenced by the program for celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Choreographic College dated November 29, 1934, stored in the home archive of the Kommersant observer: in 1809, the highest approved “Regulations on the Imperial St. Petersburg and Moscow Theater Schools” marked the beginning of comprehensive vocational training. However, the more holidays, the better: another reason to shake yourself up and imagine the achievements of today.

It must be admitted that the Moscow State Academy of Arts celebrated its 250th anniversary more thoroughly than the 200th.

In 1973, when the author of these lines was studying in the fifth grade of the Moscow Choreographic School, the school showed at the Bolshoi Theater only a Class Concert staged by the then artistic director Maxim Martirosyan; the entire second section was given to the stars. The anniversary concert was attended by Maya Plisetskaya, Vladimir Vasiliev with Ekaterina Maximova, Mikhail Lavrovsky with Natalya Bessmertnova, Yuri Vladimirov with Nina Sorokina, Marina Kondratyeva with Maris Liepa – all the legendary Moscow graduates in the prime of their years, which, of course, was a great holiday for the public, but very modestly represented the school itself of stagnant times.

The anniversary concert for the 250th anniversary was structured differently. In the first two sections, the school reserved mainly mass numbers, giving the pas de deux to the young soloists of the Bolshoi: over the past three or four years, the Moscow State Academic Academy has produced several ballerinas and premieres (actual and potential), and this season seems to have been a lean one – You can’t make talents ripen just in time for a holiday.

The third part of the concert was occupied by Boris Eifman’s one-act ballet Musaget, composed by him in 2004 for the centenary of Balanchine, commissioned by the New York City Ballet, to the music of Bach.

This performance, like the 1st movement of Prokofiev’s “Classical Symphony” that opened the concert, staged for the school by Leonid Lavrovsky in 1966, and the Grand pas from the second act of “La Bayadère” edited by Vakhtang Chabukiani in 1940, and several more mass numbers the school has already performed in May of this year at the graduation concert (see. “Kommersant” from May 27).

Not much has changed since then. The new soloists of the Classical Symphony, Kamila Sultangareeva and Maxim Nakhimovich, danced no worse than before – even freer and more organic. The characteristic “Dance with Drums” no longer looks like a number from a cafe: the “savage” soloist Alexandra Sokhatskaya did not kick her forehead, did not smile with inviting readiness, did not jump up and down like a flirtatious goat; the men also worked harder and more clearly. However, this achievement is private, pedagogical, and not systemic, since in another heritage number – “Basque Dance” from “Flames of Paris” – soloist Natalya Thompson was still beaming, bouncing the ball and happily twirling her hips, clearly not knowing what she was depicting a furious sans-culotte storming the Bastille. In La Bayadère, Darina Moseyeva was cast as Gamzatti, an energetic owner of a rare jump and quick spin for her height. So far, the girl has a wooden body, a careless foot and unyieldingly hard hands, but if she is lucky enough to fall into good hands at the theater, these shortcomings can be corrected, as shown by the example of her partner, last year’s graduate Makar Mikhalkin, who honed the culture of gesture in the Bolshoi troupe in three months.

The classical repertoire, which was danced by great-grandparents, clearly overwhelms today’s schoolchildren.

Almost everyone smiles welcomingly, but moves as if they are under a laser sight and the slightest deviation from the main line threatens them with great troubles. The transformation of schoolchildren in the ballet “Musaget”, which freely interprets the biography and work of George Balanchine, is indicative. In it, in addition to the hero, whose role was played with intelligent sincere pathos by the Bolshoi soloist Klim Efimov, and his duets with three female muses, there are also crowd scenes depicting a ballet class, rehearsals and Balanchine performances. The students of the Moscow State Academy of Arts in these episodes are simply unrecognizable: light, fast, relaxed, musical. Frozen, well-behaved girls turn into seductive beauties, uptight young men turn into handsome men jumping like crazy and ignorant of teenage complexes. And no matter how you feel about the choreographer’s work of Boris Eifman, it is worth recognizing that his ballet 20 years ago is the only thing that allows students to find themselves in dance.

As for the pas de deux set, it turned out to be textbook, and it cannot be said that the Bolshoi artists handled it jokingly. Thus, in the pas de deux from “Flames of Paris,” the experienced Margarita Shreiner unexpectedly failed the fouetté, although in the entre and variation she so enthusiastically demonstrated the recklessness of the rotations that she forgot about her partner and about the work of her arms and body. Her Philip (Alexey Putintsev), having come to terms with the lack of contact, focused on his own dance, presenting all the tall and complex jumps, as well as the consistently abundant spins in the most academic way. The adult Igor Tsvirko and the young petite Elizaveta Kokoreva cleanly and carefully danced the farewell adagio of Spartacus with Phrygia, performing the acrobatic lifts of Yuri Grigorovich with gratifying ease. But I would prefer to see these artists in Yuri Posokhov’s choreography, staged especially for them: in a scene from “The Seagull” in which the provincial girl Nina deftly seduces the capital’s womanizer Trigorin.

The pride of the 2021 edition, leading soloist Eva Sergeenkova, with the wise support of Artem Ovcharenko, gracefully danced the “wedding” pas de deux of Princess Aurora, once again charming with the captivating lines of her legs and unexpectedly surprising with her quite confident rotation. Her classmate Arina Denisova, who also dances ballerina roles at the Bolshoi, came out with Dmitry Vyskubenko in the pas de deux from Raymonda, dancing the famous “Hungarian” variation with that learned “aristocratism” that excludes any manifestation of life – even clapping your hands the girl did not dare. The culmination of the divertissement second part, as expected, was “Don Quixote” with the most technical of the recent graduates, Elizaveta Kokoreva and Dmitry Smilevsky. The young prime minister even exceeded expectations, showing true miracles in the form of triple tours and triple sodebusks in the air – so light, fast and perfect in form (unlike the stuntman of the 2000s Ivan Vasiliev) that the eye could not keep up with his graces, and the mind could not I could believe my eyes.

Almost all the honored and national heroes of the 20th and 21st centuries who worked in the theater took their final bow, led by rector Marina Leonova and the galaxy of the Bolshoi’s “golden age”: Mikhail Lavrovsky, Yuri Vladimirov and Vladimir Vasiliev.

The latter, running to the front of the stage, gave an impromptu speech in his usual – confidential, infectious and temperamental – manner in honor of the teachers who preserve the Moscow school. Flowers were brought, golden confetti fell, the audience stood in applause – and it became clear that the Moscow spirit was still alive. Even though he doesn’t win.