“The grotesque is my way to the beautiful” - Mats Ek (Mats Ek). Swan Lake (Mats Ek) Three "mockery" over the classics

Farewell Mats Ek

Vita Khlopova

No sooner had the new year 2016 arrived, we had not yet had time to move away from the shock of the farewell "Bolero" by Sylvie Guillem, when the great Mats Ek and his muse Ana Laguna announced their farewell to the stage. What does it mean to say goodbye to the choreographer's stage? This means that he does not plan to stage new works anymore, but what is most tragic is that he does not want to maintain the quality of the old ones. In simple words, along with Mats Ek, all his works leave the stage from all theaters, wherever they go. We hope you have at least managed to watch the “Apartment” in Bolshoi Theater.

Ana Laguna and Mats Ek perform "Memory". Photo - http://houstondance.org/

In 2015, the great Swedish choreographer celebrated his 70th birthday, of which he spent 50 years in the theater. Therefore, you can understand his desire for an empty diary and unplanned meetings.
Of course, he is a little cunning: he says that this is not a farewell, but just an evening good dancing. And that you can never say "never". But this decision, taken two years ago, on this moment seems to him the most logical. He does not trust his assistants with his work, he says that many people work this way, but he must control everything himself. But he doesn't want to. Tired.

“I have been on stage for 50 years. Better to stop before you are asked to do so. Life lasts longer than work."

Probably, many people remember video cassettes, where over the crossed-out “Home Alone 1,2,3” was scrawled “Giselle. Mats Ek. These cassettes, rewritten to loss of quality, opened the world for us in Russia modern dance. Deprived of information about contemporary choreography In the 20th century, dancers, choreographers and researchers carefully passed Eco choreography from hand to hand. To say that we were shocked by the interpretation of the painfully familiar story of Giselle, whom he placed in a psychiatric hospital, is an understatement. Probably, it was his work that we first saw entirely from foreign modern dance. The rest is in snatches and fragments.

No fixed points decided to remember how beautiful creative way visited this fantastic creative couple and thank them for the pleasure they gave us.

Photo courtesy of Stephanie Berger

Niklas and Mats Ek hold their mother, Birgit Kulberg, in their arms. Photo: Sven-Erik Sjoberg

Despite the fact that Mats Ek was born into an artistic family, he came to dance rather late.

Birgit Kuhlberg - not only the mother of Mats Ek, but practically the mother contemporary ballet Sweden. In addition to her troupe - Cullberg Ballet - Sweden has always had the oldest ballet theater, the Royal Swedish Ballet, where young Birgit also staged her ballets. But before that, she was educated at the Kurt Joss School and at the Royal Academy in London. In 1967, she created her own troupe Cullberg Ballet, which at that time included only 8 dancers. Each of her artists was a soloist, and therefore all received the same salary.

One of her key productions was a ballet based on the play by the famous Swedish playwright August Strindberg - “ Miss Julie» (1950). And 64 years after the premiere, in 2014, this work entered the repertoire of the Paris Opera.

"Miss Julie" performed by the Paris Opera Ballet

Performed by: Eve GRINSZTAJN/Audric BEZARD

Eka's father Anders Ek - also a well-known artist in Sweden, but he had little to do with choreography. Anders was a famous theater actor at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, who often starred in Bergman's films as well.

Mats Ek's mother - Birgit Kulberg

Mats Ek's father - Anders Ek

With such an excellent genetic set, it is unlikely that someone great would have come out of Mats Ek. And if his brother Niklas Ek- followed in the footsteps of his mother and became a wonderful dancer, and his twin sister - Malin Ek- became a dramatic actress, then Mats hesitated for a long time and balanced between these types of art. Neither dance nor theater at first attracted him seriously. As he later admitted: “I wanted this choice to be truly mine. I didn't want to imitate my mother.". For the first time, he stood up to the machine only at the age of 17, and even then, as part of summer courses. They were held Donja Feuer, who danced with Martha Graham and Paul Taylor, and later moved to Stockholm to work at the Royal Dramatic Theatre. There she met Bergman, with whom she subsequently collaborated for quite a long time.

But neither his mother Birgit Kulberg nor Donja Feuer were able to captivate the young Mats with dance: after completing his studies in theater, he began working in the puppet theater. And only at the age of 27, in 1972, he returns to dance, and enters the Cullberg Ballet troupe.

First success. "House of Bernard Alba" 1978

The first production dates back to 1976, but the first success is undoubtedly "The House of Bernarda Alba" based on the drama of the same name by Federico Garcia Lorca in 1978. It was then that Ek's style - a mixture of Kurt Joss's biting caricature and Martha Graham's meaningful movement - manifested itself so clearly.
The role of Bernarda Alba - the imperious crazy mother of four daughters, who buried not only her husband, but with the promulgation of his will to the inheritance and the opportunity to marry her younger daughters - was put on a male dancer. Grieving for her dead husband for 8 years, Bernard Alba puts her daughters in her world of mourning, each of whom would love and learn about the world. The only reminder of a man in the house is the furniture, which has coarse soldiers' boots instead of legs. Bernarda is inflexible not only in character, but also in the choreographic text: stretched into a string, she allows herself to relax and stoop only at the final moment, when she is left alone on stage. Even at the moment of revealing her daughter's suicide, Bernarda, unable to squeeze out any emotion from herself, does not react.
One of the few ballets by Mats Ek, where the title role is not given to his main muse - Ana Laguna. Even if this ballet, among others, is removed from the repertoire of various scenes (including the Paris Opera, where it has always been brilliantly performed), there is an official old recording of the performance of the Kulberg Ballet. (on which you can spend an hour of your time just below)

Poster for the ballet "Bernard Alba's House"

Photo by Leslie Spinks from MATS EK, Max Ström Publishing

New wine in old wineskins

After becoming Artistic Director of the Kulberg Ballet in 1980, Mats Ek begins his brilliant series of reimaginings. classical heritage. Indeed, for two hundred years, who has not been tired of watching the torment of the poor village girl Giselle, or of everything famous fairy tale about sleeping beauty. (Only Swan is not tired, but Ek will take it too).

Mats Ek, with his inherent humor and intellect, twists and shakes up old stories, moving them into the realities of the 20th century. But most importantly, this psychological analysis of all these famous stories really been asking for a long time.

“Each fairy tale is reminiscent of a charming village house, on the doors of which it says “The territory is mined.”

"Giselle" 1982
And so, in 1982, Mats Ek staged the first ballet of this series, after which he became already known outside of Stockholm. "Giselle" by Mats Ek thundered all over the world (it was shown more than 300 times in 28 countries), and did the same famous performer leading role- Anu Laguna. Although the critics were indignant, many still later admitted that it was Ekov's "Giselle" that gave a new direction to modern dance. So: a young village girl becomes a simple naive eccentric in a funny beret. Albert is not a count at all, but quite a city dandy. The backdrops of the first and second acts do not even need a test for corruption: the mountains turn out to be female breasts, and the decor psychiatric hospital stuffed with dismemberment. Giselle does not die at the end of the first act, but, as usual, goes crazy. Actually, the second act takes place not in a cemetery, but in a real mental hospital, where, you guessed it, Mirta is the head nurse, desperately reminiscent of Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But still, Mats Ek did not change the moral of the ballet: Giselle, with a bandaged head, opens up a new world to Albert and enriches his spoiled soul, but, unfortunately, there will be no happy ending here either. His final nudity is not Ek's outrageousness, but a way of showing Albert's complete renewal, the rejection of his past life. Hilarion covers him with a blanket, but what happens to Albert is up to each of us, as Ek leaves the finale open.

« Swan Lake, photo by Gert Weigelt

"Swan Lake" 1987.

Of course, “Swan” has been overgrown with various versions since the premiere: sometimes a happy ending, sometimes a tragic one, but the Freudian analysis was applicable here almost from the very beginning. But even here Ek found something to surprise. If other choreographers (except, probably, Matthew Bourne) were inspired by swans that exist on the water - elegant, graceful, then Matsu Ek was interested in showing them on land: ridiculous, clubfoot and hissing disgustingly. As for Odette/Odile, the choreographer's idea is that anyone wants to find his ideal princess (Odette), but he has to be content with an earthly difficult woman (Odile). Well, or: in any woman, both the ideal princess and the real woman coexist, the question is how to get along harmoniously with them. Siegfried, on the other hand, exists under the heel of his domineering mother, which gave rise to many passages from critics different countries about the Oedipus complex.

"Carmen" 1992.

Eck's "Carmen" is perhaps the closest interpretation of this image of Prosper Mérimée. We are accustomed to a sonorous beauty with a pomaded curl on her temple, to a fatal temptress, taking static poses for beautiful photos. Carmen Matsa Eka changes men whenever she wants, she has a job in a tobacco factory, she is independent. Jose, on whose behalf the story is being told, on the contrary, wants what a woman usually wants: a ring on her finger, a family, simple human happiness. But at Ek they have switched roles, because Ek is considering and modern woman Same. She is hard to please, even harder to lure with some ghostly family hearth, and certainly hard to satisfy her sexual appetite.

Ana Laguna as Carmen

"Sleeping Beauty" 1996

Of course, one can understand those who, 20 years ago and now, do not accept Ek's new interpretations, many people think this is a mockery of classical plots. But least of all, you can accuse the choreographer of bullying. His work is brilliant not only as a choreographer, but also as a marketer. If the theater wants to see young viewers, then they need something to attract. Not Disney stories about eternal love, but that which can be understood by the new generation. This is what new readings of Ek attract young audiences to the theater.

"Sleeping Beauty"

The Sleeping Beauty, staged at the Hamburg Ballet, was inspired by a scene he saw on the forecourt of some European city: young girls, hooked on a needle, staggered with completely glassy eyes, as in a dream, syringes are lying around, it is difficult to escape from the temptation. Spoiled girls who think they are old enough to exist without parents, but in fact - they are drawn into the maelstrom of violence and drug trafficking. Here she is - the Sleeping Beauty of the 20th century. The prick of the fairy Carabosse will be in a vein. And sleep is an existence in heroin addiction, from which even the handsome prince will not be able to pull her out. Modern "sleeping beauties", hints Ek, there is no way to count on a magic kiss.

Mats Ek's style is a very high quality mix of his knowledge. He is not a direct heir to Kurt Joss's dance theater, but only a blind person can fail to see Joss at Ek's. A ballet intellectual who managed to combine the classical basis, the technique of Martha Graham, the dance theater of Yoss, the expression of Mary Wigman into his style, Ek makes his “dance theater” unique. Deep plies in the second position, arms extended like arrows, wide body amplitudes, continuity of gesture, strange jumps - all this is clearly visible in his work.
Well-versed in dramatic theatre, he also often applies his knowledge of it to his productions.

Probably, with the current love to mark all age criteria for viewing, none of these ballets can be shown to a child, too cruel a world opens up in them. But his message is always perfectly readable, and everything is in order with morality, but, probably, to get acquainted with wonderful fairy tale ballets, Mats Ek's version should not be considered in the first place.

Another muse

Sylvie Guillem in "Bye"
photo by Bill Cooper, courtesy New York City Center

Sometimes you can hear the opinion that this or that choreographer sings in his ballets either a woman (Balanchine, for example) or a man (Paul Taylor or Béjart), but Ek sang only Ana Laguna. Out of the box for classical and contemporary ballet, this beautiful Spaniard was given to Ek to embody his best female characters. An absolute chameleon, Laguna looks exactly like Carmen, Giselle or the Nurse in each of her roles on stage, erasing her ego in the works of the master. Possessing not only incredible technique, but also the ability to get used to her strong heroines as an actor, Laguna entered herself into the history of modern dance as one of its most striking performers. If suddenly after this article you decide to revise the work of Ek, then be sure to watch them in the recording with Laguna. You will hardly find anyone more innocent than her Giselle and sexier than her Carmen.

Ana Laguna as Giselle in Mats Ek's ballet of the same name.
Leslie Spinks

And if it becomes more or less clear about the performer of all the main roles of Eka's ballets, then the second muse of the choreographer is Sylvie Guillem- benefited from this tandem no less than Ek himself. Guillem, who long ago decided to expand her repertoire with modern choreography, moved from the "beautiful" modern Béjart ballet to the "ugly" stories about ordinary woman.

Smoke/Wet Woman 1995

In 1995, Mats Ek directed two short films for Sylvie Guillem in the film-dance genre: "Smoke" and "Wet Woman". Familiar to many, "Smoke" was staged not for the stage, but for the film about Sylvie Guillem in the modern choreography of "Evidentia". Here, 52-year-old older brother of Mats Ek - Niklas, a brilliant dancer with a wonderful school (Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and Maurice Bejart) plays a great duet with prima classical dance. Full of humor, gags and finesse, Smoke leaves no choice but to watch it over and over again. It was this duet that inspired Mats Ek to create "Solo for Two", which was brilliantly performed by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Ana Laguna.

Sylvie Guillem in Mats Ek's Wet Woman

« Bye» 2012

Saying goodbye to the stage, Guillem included Ek's touching number "Bye" in her tour. There, with the help of a video sequence, she went out of her world, where she was an indestructible queen, into the world ordinary people where it, thin and sometimes inconspicuous, is easy not to notice.

Sylvie Guillem in Mats Ek's production of Goodbye.
Images courtesy Sadler's Wells Theater

Ek in the Bolshoi

Diana Vishneva and Denis Savin in the ballet The Apartment by Mats Ek.
Photo by Damir Yusupov/Bolshoi Theater

The last evening of Mats Ek's farewell block "From Black to Blue".

“There were three performances in total. If the first " She was Black “ 1994, intellectual and gloomy, full of complex compositional constructions, change of rhythms, software for the creativity of Max Eck, and, according to the title of the whole evening, the starting point of the path, what then is this “Blue”, to which the movement is going?

„Solo for 2 “ 1996. Abstract wall with doorway, stairs. There are two main colors on the stage - brown, blue, and their shades. Light shimmers between them, and it seems that they are sides of the same plane.
The young man has a brown loose suit ( Oscar Solomonson) And blue dress at the girl ( Dorothy Delaby). Color and plane are the environment in which the action takes place. The girl runs her finger along the edge of the stairs, lingering at the transition from horizontal to vertical, continues the plane of the wall with her palm. The duet of two heroes is also often the construction of an invisible geometric space, where arms and legs indicate planes, where the angles of these planes are constantly changing. But physiological gestures are suddenly wedged into these abstract dance variations, such as the characteristic rhythmic movements of sexual intercourse or sniffing a partner. Or the heroine will suddenly bury her nose in the hero's ass. The heroes completely change clothes, change roles, trying on each other's movements. They explore the space, either hanging on the wall, or climbing the stairs head down, or even jumping over the wall into the unknown.

Suddenly, the backdrop pulls back, revealing brickwork, an electrical panel, and wires at the back of the stage. Workers dismantle the wall decorations, remove a hidden mat with a large white cross in the middle, bring a pile of firewood and a stump. So, without intermission, the action moves on to the next performance „ Axe “.
Under the adagio Albinoni stooped old man chopping wood: he takes a log, sets it on a stump, a wide swing of the ax - the log splits into two parts. In his whole figure, in his position of the body, in a little baggy clothes - in everything there is some kind of fatigue, doom, humility to this work, but at the same time dignity.
His action and existence on the stage is like a miniature come to life depicting peasant seasonal work from the Book of Hours of the Duke of Berry.

After a minute or two, an elderly woman appears, her White hair gathered in a braid, she is wearing a long rough skirt and a jacket of a muted brownish-greenish color. The woman crosses the stage from one angle, then from another, she is characterized by wide waves of her arms, not very slight tilts of her inflexible lower back. The old man does not pay any attention to her, he is immersed in his monotonous work.
A woman takes a log, presses it to her chest like a baby, makes a circle, she lies down herself, like a log on a stump, as if exposing herself under an ax. Finally, moving with small steps backwards, she bumps into the back of the hero with her back, and thus stops the work of his body with her body.

The subsequent duet of two old men finally turns the performance into a parable, into a metaphor of life: their inflexible, careful plastique now and then refers to a dry tree, as to the image of an old man, "doomed to a log house", and, in the end, to be burned. But how much wisdom, simplicity, unconditional acceptance of the order of things is in this dance. It seems that these are not specific Ana Laguna and Ivan Auzeli, but the eternal “Once upon a time there was an old man and an old woman” from the fairy tales of all the peoples of the world.

The fact that these two performances went on without a pause gave the viewer the right to consider them as one in the perspective of the other, and, perhaps, as a portrait of the choreographer in time. It is not for nothing that in the very title of the evening there is a motif of a path, a direction.
All four dancers came out to bow and Mats Ek himself threw his farewell bouquet to the audience.”

Marina Zimoglyad

Director: Mats Ek

Composer: P.I.Tchaikovsky. Choreography: Mats Ek. Cullberg Ballet (Cullbergbaletten). Mats Ek, a recognized master of the ballet avant-garde, offered his own, rethought version of Swan Lake (1987). "Grotesque - this is my way to the beautiful" - this is the choreographer's motto. In the early 1990s, Ek's "Swan" produced the effect of an exploding bomb in the USSR. The choreographer created a grotesque-parody cocktail, very sharp and intoxicating. His style is an original symbiosis classical choreography, Art Nouveau, Minimalist Gestures. The swans in this tale are a combination of a man and a swan. In the water they are elegant, but on the shore they are clumsy and aggressive creatures. Ek used such plasticity in his ballet and showed both the two-sided essence of swans and another part of the human soul. His barefoot, bare-footed, bald-headed, bisexual birds are ludicrous and attractive. His postmodern "Swan Lake" parodies classical ballets. His style is an ironic game with classical plots and canons of dance, which creates the effect of clearing the cliche and a fresh look at the classics. This is a classic from another century. (Recording from the channel Classica).

Part Names: Intro, Bathroom, Television, Pedestrian Crossing, Kitchen, Children's Games, Waltz (Four Couples), March of the Vacuum Cleaners, Duo of Embryos, Grand pas de deux, Safe Barriers, Finale

Paris Opera returned ballet theater Mats Ek, after persuading the famous Swedish choreographer to stage new performance. The world premiere of "Appartement" made people talk about the main classical troupe of France as a universal troupe.

The facade, as well as the heavy luxury of the interiors of the Paris Opera, is in stark contrast to the cheerful ceiling auditorium, painted by the son of the Vitebsk grocer Chagall. But the French public loves contrasts. And now the faience bidet, erected on the proscenium in front of a curtain of purple and gold tassels, caused a general roar of approval.
From this very bidet, Mats Ek's performance "Appartement" begins. It is easier, of course, to translate - "Apartment". But here, in addition to the literal, another meaning is also implied - “separation”, “intimacy” (“a part”). The choreographer came up with the theme and heroes of his ballet, sitting in the evenings in the Parisian bistro "Mistral", - he looked at the passers-by, invented biographies for them. Of those that do not add up in history - just the dreary fury of an unnecessary woman, or the wounded pride of a neurotic, or taking on the confusion of growing teenagers, or one hundred and fifty family quarrels that start with nothing and end with an unexpected catastrophe. A sophisticated psychologist and connoisseur of human souls (he managed to assist family friend Ingmar Bertman in his youth), Mats Ek leads the audience through the "Apartment" as if through the circles of a banal and absurd hell - a bathroom, a living room, a kitchen, an entrance hall. Each new room hides behind a luxurious curtain - an exact copy theatrical. And it seems that behind him the most important thing will be revealed - that for which a person is given his single life. But another purple with gold tassels rises - and there is a gas stove, a vacuum cleaner, or just the front door.
Music for his "city" ballet Ek ordered a cult Swedish group- Fleshquartet. There are actually five of them, Royal Academy string players who left the academy fifteen years ago for a career on MTV. Musicians with the appearance of university professors are placed behind the last curtain, right at the door to the "apartment". There they play with inspiration their sobs, moans, whining, jaunty pop music and metallic gnashing. In the urban potpourri coming out from under the hands of academics, you really “feel asphalt”, which is what the choreographer was trying to achieve.
In fact, the critics who dubbed Ek a postmodernist are not quite right. The Swede did not play with the classics - he just wanted to register it in modern times. That is why he launched his eccentrics, drug addicts, hysterics, crazy people into bronzed plots, called them Aurors and Alberts and endowed them with amazingly specific and at the same time fantastically capacious plastic language, full of humor, vulgarisms and some artless pathos. This profanity became the hallmark of the choreographer, who made the ballet "get your feet wet in a cold puddle." In "Apartment" you can see familiar passages, links and themes, but the 55-year-old master, a master of psychological studies with surreal denouement, has not abandoned his ingenuity.
The troupe of the Paris Opera placed at the disposal of Ek their best forces. The performance, staged for 16 people, involves three star dancers (the title of "etoile" applies to persons of both sexes) and six first dancers and dancers. Ek dressed refined classics in rough shoes with thick soles, shapeless dresses and jacket pairs with ridiculous bumps in the most unexpected places. He made me crawl on all fours and kick on my knees, spin on my shoulder blades and hang upside down. Artists perform all this not just honestly, but with pleasure and work excellently, leaving narrow specialists in modern dance far behind.
Everyone must see: the luxurious Marie-Agnes Gillot ( the best Fairy Lilacs of the Parisian troupe), curled up in a pitiful ball in a white bidet cup. And the handsome Jose Martinez, the arrogant "hero-lover" who has become a twitchy clerk in the "Apartment", reflecting on the TV. And the main Tybalt of the theater - the self-confident Kader Balarbi in the role of a crumpled husband, unsuccessfully persuading his wife to fulfill marital duties. And the mighty Nicolas Le Rich in the image of a broken lover, striving to stick his head in a gas stove.
In a couple of weeks they will all return to their usual counts and jeeps - last month The Paris Opera traditionally dedicates the season to the classics. But the exclusive Mats Ek, who settled with his "Apartment" in her repertoire on the eve of the 340th anniversary of the French ballet, brought fame to the Parisian troupe as the most modern ballet theater.

In 2015, Matsu Ek turned 70, and already at the beginning of 2016 he announced his departure from dance world. And with him all his works will go - from all the theaters of the world. He believes that he should control the productions of his ballets himself, and now he no longer has the strength to do so.

“I have been on stage for 50 years. Better to stop before you are asked to do so. Life lasts longer than work."

Ballet de Opera de Lyon, Giselle

Three "mockery" over the classics

His departure, along with all the works, means that now no one will ever see his ballets live (those who did not have time are late). Only on video. In connection with this bleak event, I would like to recall and once again revise the three classics rethought by Ek.

Giselle (1982)

Classic: The ballet tells the love story of a peasant woman Giselle: she loves Albert, who did not tell her that he was a count and, even worse, that he was engaged. Upon learning of this, Giselle immediately dies and naturally turns into a vilisa. One night, a grieving Albert comes to her grave, and then the Wilis appear, thirsting for revenge. But Giselle appears and saves him.
The image of Giselle is a classical ballerina of the era of romantic ballet - a weightless fairy in a chopin skirt and with wings (often confused with the Sylph).

Ek: Giselle is an ordinary girl, naive and wonderful; Albert is not an earl, but a city dandy. However, she does not die, but goes crazy, and instead of a cemetery, she ends up in a psychiatric hospital. The back of the stage is replete with dismemberment, Giselle with a bandaged head shows Albert a new world, Albert in the end turns out to be naked - i.e. updated. This interpretation was negatively perceived by the ossified ballet world, however, the ballet was eventually shown in 28 countries and found its recognition.

Swan Lake (1987)

Classic: The most famous ballet in the world. When they say “ballet”, Odette immediately appears. The libretto (albeit vaguely) is known to everyone: Prince Siegfried falls in love with an enchanted swan girl, but is later fascinated by the sorcerer's daughter Odile, who in subsequent editions became a black swan. The endings changed all the time - sometimes Odette died, then everything ended well.

Ek: "Swan" is just the holy of holies in ballet. However, this is also an inexhaustible storehouse for interpretations: here are the complex relations between the prince and his mother, and different interpretations of the prince himself. white swan like a dream, an ideal. But in almost all interpretations, swans are beautiful and graceful, slowly swimming in their lake. At Ek, the swans crawled out onto land, but here they are no longer so beautiful: short-legged and clumsy, they spank with their flippers, waddling from paw to paw. All the dancers are “bald”, awkwardly dancing on crooked legs, ugly bending and shaking their backs. Many took this as a mockery of the holy.

(here we publish only the first part, you can watch the remaining 10 on our youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwlETpYGULTbDGEef3oCDBJAbnhL95a04)

Sleeping Beauty (1996)

Classic: There is no point in talking about the libretto - everyone has read the fairy tale of Charles Perrault. Plus an abundance of different fairies and heroes of other fairy tales by Perrault.

Ek: In his version, it doesn’t even smell like a fairy tale, and it’s better not to watch ballet for children under 18. The idea for the production came to him when, in a European town, he stumbled on the street on staggering girls with glassy eyes and syringes scattered around them. Here she is the "sleeping beauty" of the 20th century - she sleeps awake and sees heroin dreams. One kiss will not save the prince. No one has ever set this to Tchaikovsky's music.

These three remakes of him are often erroneously referred to as a "trilogy" and a "mockery". However:
« There was no idea to make a trilogy. I have no such ambitions at all -
break, destroy, penetrate the facade .. On the contrary, I live with a feeling
respect for the three hundred year history of classical dance and his own
development ways. I don't want to touch it at all. And I don't want to argue. So I
I don't make any edits, I make my own versions. Using cultural
heritage - music, these fairy tales that underlie the libretto .. So does
any interpreter, even one that works with traditional versions
classics. I am just a link in the chain.«

The world premiere of two ballets by the famous Mats Ek took place on the stage of the Opera Garnier: for ballet troupe At the Paris Opera, the Swedish choreographer staged "Another Place" to the music of Franz Liszt and Ravel's "Bolero". The program was supplemented by "Carmen" by Shchedrin-Bizet, created by him 27 years ago. From Paris - Tatyana Kuznetsova.

Every world premiere of Mats Ek is already a sensation. The master has repeatedly stated that he is quitting ballet: he will not compose, and he will even forbid his performances to be shown, because he cannot control their quality. Fortunately, he does not keep his word. One of the few companies that makes him do this is the Paris Opera. This time, the director of the ballet troupe, Aurelie Dupont, promoted the choreographer to two world premieres at once, and on the first evening, having briefly left her creative retirement, she danced one of them - the 33-minute duet “Another Place”.

Mats Ek has been staging similar “solos for two” for the third decade, starting in 1995 with the TV ballet “Smoke” - it was danced by Sylvie Guillem and the older brother of the choreographer Niklas Ek. In the 21st century, "Memory" appeared in many variants. One of them last year in Monaco at the evening dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Bergman, 76-year-old Mats Ek danced with his wife Ana Laguna, which made the already known intimacy of these duets seem completely confessional. The “Place”, composed by him for Mikhail Baryshnikov, also swept the world, he also chose Laguna as a partner. And now there is "Another Place" dedicated to Agnes, daughter of Mats Ek from his first marriage, but similar to the previous one, and also to Bergman's "Scenes of Married Life" with their endless love and hopeless mutual misunderstanding.

On the stage there is only a table and a red carpet, in orchestra pit- pianist. Liszt's romantic impulses sometimes inspire Ek's signaturely mundane choreography, but more often they work in contrast, as if emphasizing the inexpressibility of deep feelings and secret thoughts. A man (Stefan Bullion, carefully disguising a classical education for the sake of resemblance to a character - an intellectual shabby by life, summing up disappointing results of life) touches his table so reverently that it is clear: this is not a piece of furniture, but, perhaps, a symbol of the most valuable thing that life has given him . Exquisite, despite the shabby clothes, a fading woman (in the second cast, this role is danced by Lyudmila Pagliero - more touching and restrained than the star Dupont) also claims a part of the table, but the partner jealously protects his immunity. In such bickering and reconciliation, in mature tenderness and childish resentment, in sexual oblivion and bitter awareness of the end of life, half an hour of the characters' lives imperceptibly flies in figures of dance speech typical of Ek: wide second positions, non-reversible attitudes, single takeoffs jete en tournant, circular - from elbow - hand movements. At the climax, He, with his head wrapped in a red carpet, freezes with a kind of phallic symbol, and She will jump onto this living pillar and roll down to the ground. And both realize the vanity of bodily love, and sit side by side on the table, and at once droop with their whole body, as in a fairy tale: they lived a long time and died on the same day.

Next to this chamber lyrics, Bolero, despite being half as short, looks almost like a monument, a conceptual statement about today. True, from yesterday's position, on behalf of the outgoing generation: the choreographer who dedicated the performance to his deceased friend, the writer Sven Lindqvist. Mats Ek ignored the "Spanishness" of the first production of Bronislava Nijinska, and the invincible - with light hand Bejart - eroticism "Bolero". He returned to the origins of the idea - it is known that Ravel, composing this music, imagined a kind of gigantic factory absorbing workers. For the choreographer, youth turned out to be a humanized machine - a crowd in black sports overalls with hoods pulled down over their faces. At first united into a single corps de ballet "body" with the same gestures and reactions, this crowd breaks up into groups as the rhythm grows stronger; “fours”, “fives”, “triples” cross the stage horizontally, from backstage to backstage continuously and uninterruptedly. Each team has its own "voice" - a short combination (Ek allows young people to speak out without restricting the amplitude of movements, giving freedom to bodily impulses, generously scattering jumps and batmans). But all these voices are too loud, too assertive, too aggressive. In short seconds of “passing”, the choreographer manages to sneer at hot topics: here are four feminists, slipping in pancake arabesques, like jeeps in Giselle, escorting a guy trying to escape from an inexorable square. Here is an egocentric careerist who does not notice the humiliated love of his wife, who brushes dust particles off his shoes.

The black active crowd is opposed by an old man in an old white linen suit: 78-year-old Niklas Ek fills the entire performance with water, with an aluminum bucket in his hand, crossing the stage diagonally from the lower left to the upper right wings. He does this in a concentrated and measured manner, only occasionally assessing the rapid flickering of the young with his eyes. Towards the finale, his diagonal path intersects with the horizontal lines of the crowd. They try to eliminate the old man: they put a bucket on his head, drag him backstage, holding him up in high support. But the stubborn Stoic Sisyphus appears again, already with two buckets, pours them into the bath and rushes there himself, raising a cloud of spray. And while the youth agonizing on the floor describes circles with their bodies, breathing out before their eyes and dying in stillness, the fountain of creativity, art, life continues to beat from a full bath until the very last chords of Bolero. It was impossible to speak more clearly. It looks like this is really Ek's last ballet. The choreographer put an end, or rather, an exclamation mark.