Zoological arguments – Newspaper Kommersant No. 199 (7400) of 10/26/2022

The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater shows “Program No. 1” – an evening of one-act ballets, composed by the artistic director of the ballet Maxim Sevagin from Dmitry Bryantsev’s Phantom Ball, Marius Petipa’s Paquita and numbers by contemporary authors. Tells Tatyana Kuznetsova.

In “Program No. 1” only one department was new. Both Dmitry Bryantsev’s Phantom Ball and Grand pas from Paquita returned to the music theater playbill under Laurent Hilaire, the troupe’s ex-artistic director. Following the example of his predecessor, Maxim Sevagin, the new director of the Stasika ballet, compiled Program No. 1 from contrasting works, layering stylized romanticism and classics of the 19th century with miniatures by contemporary authors: Pavel Glukhov, Konstantin Semenov, Ksenia Ternavskaya and Andrei Kaidanovsky. The directors of the evening, first shown in July, were selected by Maxim Sevagin with an eye to future cooperation with the theater.

Of all four, only Andrei Kaidanovsky is a choreographer with a European name and experience on large stages. He staged at the Stanislavsky Museum three times. But the worst of his works, The Birthday Waltz to the music of the waltz from the first act of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, staged in 2018 on the occasion of the anniversary of the music theater and marked by obvious traces of haste, got into the “Program No. 1”. Known for his sense of humor, the ability to vividly tell different stories and the ability to reveal actors in the dancers, here the choreographer was unable to come up with either a form, or a coherent plastic text, or characters. However, Maxim Sevagin had no choice: the music theater did not renew the rights to other productions by Kaidanovsky, who lives and works in Austria. And the exclusive ballet of the choreographer, announced last year for this season, also disappeared from the theater plans.

But the productions of the other three authors of Program No. 1 are included in the 2022/23 season: in April, Konstantin Semenov will stage the immersive Through the Looking-Glass (based on Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking-Glass), in June, choreographers Glukhov and Ternavskaya will perform one-act ballets. It seems that the artistic director Sevagin found their test of writing on the big stage very encouraging, which is not easy to agree with. Their work seemed very infantile, although the choreographers Glukhov and Semyonov, laureates and participants in many choreographer competitions, are far from newcomers. In “Program No. 1”, both showed love duets, which is typical – with identical episodes: a man and a woman stand facing each other, trying to touch different parts of the partner’s body, from which these parts shyly avoid. In choreographer Glukhov’s performance “I Feel” to the music of Gavin Bryers, the initiator of the acquaintance was a lady, the gentleman yielded to her insistence and, after a series of batmans, stretch marks and low lifts, disappeared into the darkness, without satisfying her aspirations.

Konstantin Semenov in his miniature to the music of Franz Schubert “Andantino. The Dream of a Butterfly ”released creatures that were not quite humanoid. The soloist, lying on the back of her partner (perhaps depicting a flower), picturesquely crooked her legs and clung to his neck with her ironing feet while he twisted her upside down. Both stood on “birches”, “blooming” with stems of limbs. However, the choreographer was not constantly tormented by “modernity”: the artists, having torn off their “shells”, similar to bulletproof vests, switched to the ranverse, high lifts and other niceties of classical dance.

In Red Deers, staged by debutante Ksenia Ternavskaya to the music of Emptyset, the dance of two couples was preceded by a text about deer fighting for females, after which they shed their antlers. So, when two dancers carried out a ballerina, dangling limply on each shoulder, then unloaded them, leaning against each other, and proceeded to a militant duel-dance with “wheels” and other acrobatics, the meaning of the miniature appeared quite clearly. However, the idea soon fell apart into support and pas. The quartet developed according to the ballet pattern – with a female solo and a trio, in which two men lifted the dancer in support. However, in the final, the “deer” got rid of the “horns”: leaving the ladies on the floor, the gentlemen retired behind the back.

It is clear that in the foreseeable future the artists of Stasik will not have to dance Marco Goecke, Alexander Ekman, Sharon Eyal, William Forsythe and other living classics of the modern theater, which the Frenchman Laurent Hilaire introduced into the repertoire of the music theater. But, perhaps, his successor should not try to replace the former internationalism with an equal amount of domestic choreography, but focus on the classics for now. After all, the artists of the artistic director Sevagin danced the Grand pas from “Paquita” simply dirty – in contrast to the Ilerov times.