Three from one boat – Newspaper Kommersant No. 197 (7398) dated 10/24/2022

The premiere of one-act ballets, named after the choreographers, was presented by the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre. Tells Tatyana Kuznetsova.

The tradition of naming the “troychatka” – an evening of one-act ballets – after their authors was started in Russia by the ex-artistic director of the Stanislavsky Museum Laurent Hilaire, introducing the key choreographers of the 20th and 21st centuries to Muscovites. Balanchine. Taylor, Garnier, Ekman” immediately gave the audience an idea of ​​what awaits them.

With Sevagin. Samodurov. Pimonov” it is difficult to count on recognition and diversity. All three authors were brought up by the Vaganova Academy, they pray to the Petipa-Balanchine-Forsythe triad and shy away from narrative like the devil incense. They have a common set designer, Alona Pikalova, who was tasked to lead the “troychatka” from “deep blackness to pure white space” and only partially fulfilled her task: both first ballets – “In Dark Images” and “Ultima Thule” – are drowning in the “black office” , and only the light gray “Arktika” is colored with three multi-colored circles on the back. The brevity of self-expression also brings the choreographers closer: thanks to the sparing timing of each ballet, the total “troika” is not tiring. The similarity of the performances enhances the swiftness of the dancing. Yes, Antonio Vivaldi, chosen by Maxim Sevagin, is separated by almost three centuries from Vladimir Rannev and Anton Svetlichny, whom Perm commissioned music for the ballets Samodurov and Pimonov. However, the composers reflected in the choreography seemed to be almost twins: in an attempt to keep pace with the notes, the choreographers chose almost identical steps from the classical exercise.

In this “triad” it is easier to find common features of productions than to explain their differences. Perhaps the most original was “Ultima Thule” by the Yekaterinburg artistic director Vyacheslav Samodurov. And not only because, unlike the black-clad dancers of other ballets, his dancers and ballerinas seemed refreshingly naked in flesh shorts and tops. Samodurov has already managed to survive a painful romance with a classic exercise machine and now he has received freedom – formal and emotional. In his ballet, not “carriers of a choreographic pattern” acted, not functions with a given algorithm, but living men and women. Conflicting, shy, freaking out, seeking intimacy. Ballerinas and dancers, avoiding a compromising narrative and discrediting pantomime, nevertheless looked into each other’s eyes, reacted to bodily contact and, in general, felt relaxed. Where a rigid form was required, they danced clearly, in episodes of “human” their nervous bodies jerked, tossed and tossed. One soloist even threw a plastic hysteria, forgetting for a while about classical decency, since the “20 Variations” of the composer Rannev made it possible to vary the amplitude of the pattern, movements, and feelings.

“In dark images” by Maxim Sevagin, artistic director of the Moscow Stanislavsky Music Theatre, Vivaldi’s baroque quite expectedly turned into “rococo”, which is easier to depict plastically – in the positions of the hands, the composition of groups, in combinations of small pas. Moreover, the artist Anastasia Nefedova came up with charming tight skirts for ladies, reminiscent of mini-crinolines (but for men with bare torsos, disfigured by wide trousers and black corset belts, it was not easy to portray grace). It is difficult to call Sevagin’s choreography particularly inventive: in the trio the gentlemen turned, turned and tossed the lady to each other in the most predictable way, in the quartet the partner repeated the same support-combination with three partners, the fast coda with tiny solos resembled an ensemble encore. However, at a frisky pace, in a relentless stringing of movements, young excitement gushed forth, reminding that the 25-year-old choreographer still has everything ahead.

You can’t say the same about 42-year-old Anton Pimonov. His forte is chamber compositions. However, as the artistic director of the Perm troupe, he is obliged to give work to his artists, so he puts on works that are more crowded, but less successful. In the “Arctic” he turned to minimalism, despite the fact that in the choreography this style was exhaustively worked out by the Americans more than 40 years ago. However, Anton Pimonov is as far from the same Lucinda Childs as the composer Svetlichny is from some Steve Reich. Russians profess a light version of minimalism, trying not to load, but to entertain. The music, reminiscent of the soundtrack to a mini-series about teenage pranks, strums something motor-optimistic, while eight pairs of luminaries alternately do the same step, four pairs of soloists do another, and prima and premier do the third. Choreographic “patterns” – a couple of hundred glideslopes, growing up to a couple of hundred farms, countless balloons and springboard jumps with kicks forward – do not seem to be the basis of the style, but the poverty of fantasy, which the author tries to obscure with an abundance of movements. But the flickering pattern of the dance, all these lines, splitting into diagonals, open squares, interstage arcs, endless running in and running out, only emphasize the infantilism of the writer, who either does not understand the essence of minimalism, or is simply afraid to seem boring. However, it is possible that the premiere of “Sevagin. Samodurov. Pimonov” solves not aesthetic, but state problems. The asceticism of its design testifies to frugality, the intimacy of the composition – to the fact that a large stage is not needed for the release of new performances in Perm. And this, of course, will facilitate the choice of the Perm Governor Dmitry Makhonin between the construction of a new theater building and the third bridge across the Kama, which he publicly announced just the other day.