Two big theaters met in Moscow

Exchange tours of the Bolshoi Theater of Belarus took place on the Historical Stage of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. The ballet The Nutcracker by the cult Belarusian choreographer Valentin Elizariev, the namesake theater of the Bolshoi, showed on the eve of the 75th anniversary of its artistic director, who has headed the Belarusian Bolshoi for almost 50 years. The tours were exchange tours and the Bolshoi Theater of Russia will pay a return visit to Minsk in a year.

Valentin Elizariev began staging his The Nutcracker in 1982 after the great success of the ballet Spartacus, performed on the stage of the Belarusian Bolshoi Theater two years earlier. This is one example of the philosophical author’s theater of the choreographer Valentin Elizariev, which he created in Belarus, and the absolutely original choreographic thinking and language of this choreographer.

The production already familiar to the Moscow audience (the Belarusian theater showed it two years after the premiere on tour in 1984) has now been brought in a new version. The scenery of the outstanding Belarusian stage designer Yevgeny Lysik was restored to it, the costumes were re-sewn.

There is no canonical version of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. The original version by Lev Ivanov in 1892, based on the script by Marius Petipa, who did not take part in the production due to illness, has not been preserved. From it there were only scattered records according to the Stepanov system of several fragments, which are now stored in the Harvard Archives. Therefore, each stage director, starting with Vainonen’s version in 1934 (it is this version that is recognized as the classic and closest version of Lev Ivanov), offers his own vision of Tchaikovsky’s music. With Elizariev, it is just such a non-standard one that we saw in the performance of the Belarusian Bolshoi Theater. This is how the outstanding Belarusian choreographer sees and hears Tchaikovsky’s music.

In Elizariev’s The Nutcracker, there is not only the Stahlbaum family, but practically no Christmas holiday, guests gathering at the Christmas table, the dance of their children. The Christmas tree is indicated in his production by burning light bulbs in the farthest distance. This is a performance in which there are no people. Only dolls. And Masha at the choreographer literally gets from the ship to the ball, because, having come to the workshop of her godfather, she sees a puppet ball of toys arranged in her honor. The main character of Elizariev’s The Nutcracker is Drosselmeyer. The events about which the choreographer tells in his performance are seen through his eyes. He is a master of puppets and through this prism he sees and perceives the whole world around him.

As the protagonist of the performance, Drosselmeyer, in the version of Elizariev, participates in almost all dances: in the waltz of the Snowflakes, and in the final divertissement of puppet dances “Zhigoni”, in the “pink waltz”, and even in the pas de deux, which thanks to his participation turns into a pas de trois. The part of this hero in the version of the Belarusian Bolshoi Theater is extremely intense.

In the history of The Nutcracker, Drosselmeyer has always received special attention, and in different productions this hero is presented in different ways. In Nureyev’s performance, and after him by other choreographers (for example, by Andrey Petrov in the Kremlin Ballet), it is Drosselmeyer who turns into the Prince in the main character’s dream. But for Drosselmeyer to turn into the main rat during the performance, this has never happened before. But in Elizariev’s play, Drosselmeyer is the demiurge of the puppet world he created. And in order to test Masha’s feelings for the Nutcracker (and of all the dolls Masha chooses in his workshop), he becomes the King of mice.

On tour of the Belarusian Ballet, the part of this main protagonist of the performance was beautifully performed by the French dancer Even Capitin. He is a graduate of the Ballet School of the Paris Opera and the Belarusian State Choreographic Gymnasium-College. For six years (since 2016), this artist has been one of the most popular dancers in Belarus, but since January he has been leaving the Bolshoi Theater of Belarus and moving to the Mariinsky.

Just as Grigorovich created his masterpieces together with the artist Simon Virsaladze, Elizariev developed the concepts of all his most significant ballets in creative tandem with the outstanding artist Yevgeny Lysik. Creativity Lysik in some way inherits Marc Chagall and his fantastic blue outer space and is a feature of this production. According to the choreographer himself, “the birth of the performance took place as soon as the artist Lysik sent his layout – in a happy creative unanimity. That same night, in a dream, I saw the first act of the ballet – a parable about childhood, about happiness, about love, about a journey into a dream.

True, today, after 40 years, Elizariev’s “The Nutcracker” looks completely new and bears little resemblance to the festive world of Christmas, originally conceived by the choreographer together with the artist. Before us is also a blue Chagall space, white flying figures with empty eye sockets like ghosts, but how everything has changed! The stunning puppet iconostasis in the first act – continuous and endless rows of portraits of fantastic puppets, some of which, like the Mother of God with a baby in her arms and halo crowns over her head – overwhelms with its grandeur. A person in such a temple feels like a tiny grain of sand in the universe.

The theme of the performance is now looming quite differently than it was in the initial plan – the loneliness of a person in a world mechanized like dolls, puppet-lifeless, scary and empty like their eye sockets. Only the eternal lifeless cosmos, albeit rather intricate, like the artist Lysik, surrounds a person in this lifeless and mechanical universe.

Nevertheless, the so-called “problem of the Great Adagio” is being solved in this unforeseen way by the stage directors, over which Elizariev’s teacher Igor Belsky struggled in his famous production of 1969. It lies in the tragic sound of Tchaikovsky’s music, noted by all researchers in this ballet. And the most tragic thing in this music is the pas de deux with its adagio and variations.

In Elizariev’s production, the wedding pas de deux is actually turned into a pas de trois, since the protagonist of this ballet, Drosselmeyer, instead of a priest, crowns a couple of lovers – Masha and the Prince.

This pas de deux is a separate attraction of Elizariev’s performance. I once saw him at a ballet competition and was amazed at the many gymnastic and acrobatic tricks with which the choreographer stuffed the pas de deux in the fashion of that time. This is probably the most complex and intricate pas de deux in existence. But in the context of the performance, it looks different, more organic and very much in line with the concept of the blind mechanistic world that the choreographer surrounds his characters with. But it is performed by Masha the Princess (Lyudmila Khitrova) and the Nutcracker Prince (Artem Bankovsky) with inspiration and meaning.

It is, indeed, the apotheosis of the entire action arranged by Elizariev. Moreover, the performer of the male part Artem Bankovsky performs all these “puzzling” and “furious” tricks, hardly subject to any of the dancers of the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky Theater, as easily as if the Nutcracker cracks his nuts … Throws the ballerina into the air, holds on one arm, when she, being upside down, like a helicopter, alternately opens her legs in a split. Yes, and this dancer dances very expressively, betraying the meaning of every phrase, every detail of his dance.

Artyom Bankovsky has been working at the Belarusian Theater for six years, in 2014 he graduated from the Belarusian State Choreographic College in the class of the famous teacher Alexander Kolyadenko and the Kolyadenko school, and hardening is very felt in all his dance. Kolyadenko himself was a student of Alexander Pushkin, the great teacher who trained the best dancers of the 20th century – Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Kolyadenko’s pupils include such world-class stars as Ivan Urban, who is now working with John Neumeier in Hamburg, and Ivan Vasilyev, guest premier of the Bolshoi Theater of Russia. And such continuity of generations gives firm confidence in the future of the Belarusian ballet.