Dance Open 2019: Nutcracker, choreography: Alexey Miroshnichenko performed by Perm Ballet

Anna Gordeeva specially for Dance Open

Tchaikovsky: involuntary assumption of power

It was 1876. Marius Petipa has been staging his ballets in Russia for thirty years — Don Quixote, The Pharaoh's Daughter and The Corsair have been already introduced to the public. The master works with Caesar Puni and Ludwig Minkus, energetic composers and professionals, treating all the tricks of dancers with indulgence: if a ballerina asks a choreographer to move a music fragment from the one act to another, no one author is surprised. Music — is a true servant of the ballet. A beautiful, smart servant, but still servant, knowing its place. The Grand music and the ballet are like parallel lines - they don’t intersect. By this time, Tchaikovsky is already famous composer, now we could name him «a rising star» (his first three symphonies have already become well-known in Russia, it was a few years before the Eugene Onegin). And the Direction of Imperial Theatres, or rather its Moscow division, asked Tchaikovsky for a ballet — and the composer agreed. In part, because he was curious about experimenting in a new genre, and in part, because of the financial problems he had and the large honorarium he was promised (800 rub.). And in 1877, from the world premiere of Tchaikovsky's iconic ballet «Swan Lake», the new history of Russian ballet begins. But then, in 1877, not everyone has realized it. The music, that will capture the audience and turn even the most conservative music lovers into balletomanes, was composed by the genius and designed for the talented choreographer — and Vaclav Reisinger running the Bolshoi ballet at that time really wasn’t such a genius. And the first production of the Swan Lake (where the orchestra had only two rehearsals for getting to know the musical score, that horrified Tchaikovsky) was lost in the ballet history, though it went through almost 30 spectacles. The «real» premiere, the spectacle of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, was staged in the Mariinsky theatre in 1895 — after the death of the composer. Unfortunately, from his three ballet works (Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker) Tchaikovsky had a chance to see only last two. And this selection of three spectacles, appeared in the last decade of 19th century, became the revolution in the ballet music. Tchaikovsky, the most peaceful and not ambitious for power person from all the composer generation, captured the imagination of all ballet masters and ballet audience. The servants — it’s great and comfortable (especially in English serials), but everyone wants to have an equal interlocutor, and it was Tchaikovsky who became this interlocutor for those who dance and watch the ballet. And he still remains the same. In his musical «words» , containing deep meanings, every producer finds his own history. And expressed emotions — be it a secret sadness, a hope of first love, a pleasure of meeting — have a resonance with everyone’s heart. Meanwhile Tchaikovsky is never overly familiar with the listener, he never taps on his shoulder, never breathes down his neck trying to tell what he has eaten for breakfast — as it often happens with the modern authors. He is very sincere — but never tiresome. And in our times when the audience is attacked with televisionally staged and intensified emotions, to have such a friend in the music world — is happiness.

Dance Open 2019: Nutcracker, choreography: Alexey Miroshnichenko performed by The Perm Ballet

Anna Gordeeva specially for Dance Open

«Nutcracker»: flowers instead of sweets

The ballet which we often consider a childish and sweet fairytale — is one of the last compositions of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It has much sorrow and even fear — sorrow for disappointed hopes of the youth, fear of the inevitable ending of life. They are masked, disguised as a snowy lyric, adorned with the sparkles of happy memories. But the further the humanity goes from the premiere of 1892 (which was produced by Lev Ivanov, as Marius Petipa was sick), more attentively the musicians and ballet masters listen to the music and more bitter become the spectacles. And if in the interpretation of Maurice Béjart, having turned The Nutcracker into autobiography, into a story about himself as a little boy, feeling bad about the death of his mother and complicated relationships with his father, the final is still happy (finally, the boy has grown up and become a great ballet master in real life), then in the interpretation of Matthew Bourne the children live in an orphanage, and in Radu Poklitaru’s version the heroine is a small poor girl who freezes in the street in a holiday’s evening and it’s only the old rat which is trying to protect her from the frost (all the happy story about the prince appears only in her last dream). Each choreographer, which is going to stage The Nutcracker in our days, remembers about his colleagues’ works and decides for himself, to what degree he will consider this unchildish intonation of the composer and for whom he creates this spectacle — for adults or children. The principal ballet master of the Perm Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre, Alexey Miroshnichenko in his version of Nutcracker has decided to make the spectacle for himself — for the child, that he was in the Vaganova Ballet Academy. The grey thoughts of Tchaikovsky didn’t disappear, but they merged into the background. And in the spotlight has appeared…Saint Petersburg of 1892. Appeared its cathedrals and fences, canals and rinks where the girls so cheerfully flirt with dignified men. (Fallen in love with Saint-Petersburg in childhood, the stage designer Aliona Pikalova created tender decorations with the pictures of the Voronikhin’s fence, and Tatiana Noginova designed such beautiful costumes that Alexandre Benois would give her a compliment). It’s Saint-Petersburg where the Stahlbaum family lives, where children and adults create their home theatre, tell the fairytale about the princess Pirlipat and where the girl Marie dreams about the meeting with the Nutcracker Prince. (The producer has decided not to follow «the historical truth», though in the 19th century the girl was named Clara, and she was renamed only with the beginning of the First World War, because the story became firmly Russian and nobody wanted to return it to German). Miroshnichenko clearly remembers the best «childish» version of the ballet created by Vasili Vainonen (the version that the pupils of the Vaganova Ballet Academy usually dance and the version that he danced himself when he was a pupil) and respectfully bows to it, but still creates his own independent spectacle. And also he creates the most famous libretto change — the characters arrive not in Confiturenburg, but in Blumenberg. Not in a town of sweets, but in a town of flowers — and the divertissement is organized the same way, where not the sweets dance, but the roses, lilies, peonies and lotus. And the final in Miroshnichenko’s ballet is his own, personal — quite happy, though before this final the choreographer makes the spectator a little bit afraid. But what fairytale dispenses with the moment when you become afraid for the characters? Thus, the choreographer bows to the Tchaikovsky melancholy, but still confirms that everything will be fine.

Dance Open 2019: Nutcracker, choreography Alexey Miroshnichenko, performed by The Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre

Alexey Miroshnichenko: «Nutcracker has followed me all my life»

«I completely forgot and suddenly — when the ballet was almost staged — remembered…It was the spring of 1999. I studied at the ballet department of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet and I went to see the professor Igor Belsky. He was sitting at the table; there were a huge folder and a book about «Nutcracker». We had a small talk. When I was about to leave, Igor gave me the folder — there were all his notes — and the book. «The core work — is Nutcracker, — he told pointedly and added — You should stage the fairytale about the Princess Pirlipat». It was our last meeting. Belsky died after several months. «Nutcracker has followed me all my life. When I was child — it followed me as a literary fairytale. When I was 9 and I entered the dance school — as an annual New Year’s spectacle. I passed through almost all parties of this ballet: the Christmas party, mice, buffoon, arab, Spanish dance, «quaternary», I played even the Mouse King. The Nutcracker became the part of me. And it’s clear that while I was setting my mind on a new spectacle, I kept in mind everything composed by Vasily Vainon. Vainon has created a wonderful production — you shouldn’t think that we produce a new ballet because the old one is bad. The time calls for something more complicated, with many layers of perception, and something more choreographically saturated. Now the Perm ballet company exists in such form when a simple children’s spectacle is not very interesting for it. I make no secret that I always wanted to tell this story in my way. Tchaikovsky composed the ballet on the request of Vsevolozhsky and for the libretto of Petipa, in other words he composed it as music for dance, as service music. But indeed, he composed a multidimensional symphonic suite — programmatic on paper, but, in reality, going far beyond the simple script. And I would like to find its appropriate embodiment in dance. We have created a fantastic and philosophic work where reign Tchaikovsky and Hoffmann, sparkle Petipa and Lev Ivanov and occasionally appears Vainon. It was important for me to pay respect to Vasily Ivanovich in my way, and in the text I even hid some, not the citations from the previous production, but some plastic similarities, allusions, chorographical feelings close to the music. As for me, The Nutcracker is first of all a fairytale about growing up. And I like the definition given by Asafyev — «the symphony about the turn of childhood»: «When the dreams move the thoughts and feelings forward, to the unconscious — to the life which is only anticipated». In this case, the role of toy, as the first «simulator», is very important for a child. He animates the toy and thus he learns to communicate with people. The children often break toys, but they do it from the desire to understand how they are made. And to prevent that from happening with real people, you should allow the children to experiment. In our production Marie is just practicing. She makes an irrevocable mistake — but only in dreams. Having the bitter experience, she begins to act differently in reality. And she grows up. Why waking up, she doesn’t find her toy Nutcracker in the armchair? Maybe because she doesn’t need a toy anymore, she needs a friend. You shouldn’t look far to imagine what city is ideal for this story. Certainly, it’s Saint-Petersburg. The city where Hoffmann’s mysticism and the reality complement each other. The city where Tchaikovsky, Petipa and Ivanov meet. The city where Vainon was born and where I have studied and grown up. It's hard to know for sure, what Belsky meant when he told me: «The core work — is Nutcracker». Probably, he was talking about himself. But who knows, whether it was a message for me or not. In any case, the one thing that makes me feel better — that the fate allowed me to produce this spectacle and I gratefully consecrate it to Igor Dmitrievich! »

YOUNG STARS GALA

Concert of master classes participants

Hermitage Theatre 6+

April 28, 2019

Each year, the Festival enchants boys and girls with a wonderful opportunity to explore the secrets of the legendary Russian ballet school and to discover new nuancesof its refined style. This is a chance not only to learn from the bestteachers, but also to uncover one’s own talents, to gain in selfconfidence, and to delight in one’s progress. This gives each and every one of them a chance to get a little closer to their dreams. «Their dreams of international stardom,» a bystander might think. But no, that’s not it. These young swans, only cygnets still, torture their feet not in search of reverberating fame. Just as a writer cannot put down his pen, or a musician stop the music constantly sounding in his head, so these little boys and girls, fascinated by the artistry and the magic of the dance, cannot breathe without en dedans and jetés. Dance Open Young Stars Gala presents to the St. Petersburg public young dancers from all around the world. Each year, new names are introduced. Each year, there is the opportunity to look down the ages. The stage of the Hermitage Theatre, impregnated with centuries of history, is opened to the future again.