"La bayadère", the experience of interpretation. "La Bayadère", the experience of interpreting "La Bayadère" at the Bolshoi Theater

S. Khudekov, choreographer M. Petipa, artists M. Bocharov, G. Wagner, I. Andreev, A. Roller.

Characters:

• Dugmanta, Raja of Golconda
• Gamzatti, his daughter
• Solor, a rich and famous kshatriya
• Nikiya, bayadère
• Great Brahmin
• Magdaeva, fakir
• Taloragva, warrior
• Brahmins, brahmatshors, servants of the raja, warriors, bayadères, fakirs, wanderers, Indian people, musicians, hunters

The action takes place in India in ancient times.

History of creation

Marius Petipa, representative of a family that has given more than one prominent figure ballet, began his activity in France in 1838 and soon gained great fame both in Europe and overseas. In 1847 he was invited to St. Petersburg, where his work flourished. He created a large number of ballets included in the treasury of this art. The biggest milestone was Don Quixote, staged in 1869.

In 1876, Petipa was attracted by the idea of ​​the ballet La Bayadère. He drew up a plan for the script, to work on which he attracted Sergei Nikolaevich Khudekov (1837-1927). Khudekov, a lawyer by education, was a journalist, critic and historian of ballet, the author of the four-volume History of Dances of All Times and Peoples; tried his hand at dramaturgy and fiction. He took up the development of the plot, based on the drama of the ancient Indian poet Kalidasa (according to some sources, the 1st century, according to others - the 6th century) "Sakuntala, or Recognized by the Ring." The primary source of Petipa's ballet was, however, not the ancient drama itself, but the French ballet Sakuntala based on Gauthier's script, staged by the choreographer's brother, Lucien Petipa in 1858. “Marius Petipa, without embarrassment, took everything that could be useful from his brother’s production,” writes Yu. Slonimsky, “the heroine-bayadere, the villain-priest, the names of the characters ... "is not a version of French ballet ... The content, images, direction of the performance as a whole, the talented choreographic embodiment are independent - they are the assets of the Russian ballet theater ... Petipa melted down someone else's material so that it became his own, entered into his own work organically, acquired the features of novelty. The theme of the desire for happiness, love and freedom, characteristic of Russian art of that time, came to the fore. The music for La Bayadère was commissioned by Petipa's permanent collaborator Minkus. Drama and lyrics organically merged in the choreography. Against the colorful background of divertissement dances, the drama of Nikiya developed. “There were no empty spaces in her choreographic part,” writes V. Krasovskaya. “Each posture, movement, gesture expressed this or that spiritual impulse, explained this or that trait of character.” The premiere took place on January 23 (February 4), 1877 at the Bolshoi Kamenny Theater in St. Petersburg. The ballet, which belongs to the highest achievements of the choreographer, quickly won recognition and has been performing on the stages of Russia for more than 125 years.

Plot

(based on the original libretto)

In the sacred forest, Solor and his friends hunt a tiger. Together with the fakir Magdaya, he lags behind the other hunters in order to talk with the beautiful Nikiya, who lives in a pagoda visible in the depths of the forest. There are preparations for the fire festival. The Great Brahmin solemnly comes out, followed by bramatshors and bayadères. Nikiya begins the sacred dance. The great brahmin is infatuated with her, but the bayadère rejects his feeling. Brahmin threatens Nikiya, but she is waiting for Solor. Magdaeva informs her that Solor is nearby. Everyone disperses. The night is coming. Solor comes to the temple. He invites Nikiya to run away with him. The meeting is interrupted by the Great Brahmin. Burning with jealousy, he plots cruel revenge. At dawn, hunters with a dead tiger appear near the temple, bayadères going for sacred water. Solor leaves with the hunters.

In his palace, Raja Dugmanta announces to Gamzatti's daughter that he is marrying her to Solor. Solor tries to decline the honor offered to him, but the Rajah announces that the wedding will take place very soon. The Great Brahmin appears. Having removed everyone, the raja listens to him. He reports on Solor's meeting with the bayadère. Raja decides to kill Nikiya; the brahmin reminds that the bayadère belongs to the god Vishnu, her murder will incur the wrath of Vishnu - Solor must be killed! Dugmanta decides during the festival to send Nikiya a basket of flowers with a poisonous snake inside. The conversation between the Raja and the Brahmin is overheard by Gamzatti. She orders to call Nikiya and, having offered her to dance at the wedding tomorrow, shows a portrait of her fiancé. Nikiya is shocked. Gamzatti offers her riches if she leaves the country, but Nikiya cannot refuse her beloved. In anger, she rushes at her rival with a dagger, and only a faithful servant saves Gamzatti. The bayadère runs away. Enraged, Gamzatti dooms Nikiya to death.

The festival begins in the garden in front of the Raja's palace. Dugmanta and Gamzatti appear. Raja tells Nikiya to entertain the audience. The bayadère is dancing. Gamzatti orders a basket of flowers to be handed over to her. A snake raises its head from the basket and stings the girl. Nikiya says goodbye to Solor and reminds him that he swore to love her forever. The great brahmin offers Nikiya an antidote, but she prefers death. Raja and Gamzatti triumph.

Magdavaya, seeking to entertain the despairing Solor, invites snake tamers. Gamzatti arrives, accompanied by servants, and he revives. But the shadow of a weeping Nikiya appears on the wall. Solor begs Gamzatti to leave him alone and smokes opium. In his irritated imagination, the shadow of Nikiya accuses him of treason. Solor falls unconscious.

Solor and Nikiya meet in the realm of shadows. She begs her beloved not to forget this oath.

Solor is back in his room. His sleep is disturbing. It seems to him that he is in the arms of Nikiya. Magdaeva looks sadly at his master. He wakes up. The servants of the Raja enter with rich gifts. Solor, absorbed in his own thoughts, follows them.

In the palace of the Raja, preparations are underway for the wedding. Solor is haunted by the shadow of Nikiya. In vain Gamzatti tries to get his attention. The servants bring in a basket of flowers, the same one that was presented to the bayadère, and the girl recoils in horror. The shadow of Nikiya appears before her. The great brahmin joins the hands of Gamzatti and Solor, a terrible thunderclap is heard. The earthquake collapses the palace, burying everyone under the rubble.

The peaks of the Himalayas are visible through a continuous grid of rain. The shadow of Nikiya glides, Solor leans at her feet.

Music

In the music of Minkus, elastic and plastic, all the features inherent in the composer have been preserved. It has neither bright individual characteristics nor effective dramaturgy: it conveys only the general mood, but it is melodic, convenient for dancing and pantomime, and most importantly, it obediently follows Petipa's carefully calibrated choreographic dramaturgy.

L. Mikheeva

The ballet was composed by Petipa for the St. Petersburg Bolshoi Theatre. The main parts were performed by Ekaterina Vazem and Lev Ivanov. Soon, the Bolshoi Theater was closed due to dilapidation, and in the 1885-86 season, the St. Petersburg ballet moved across Theater Square, on the contrary, to the Mariinsky Theater. La Bayadere was carefully transferred to this stage by Petipa himself for the prima ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya in 1900. The stage here was somewhat smaller, therefore, all the performances required some correction. So, in the "picture of shadows" the corps de ballet has halved - 32, instead of the previous 64 participants. The performance did not stand out among the huge repertoire of the Imperial Ballet. The unique shadow scene was appreciated, and the part of the main character attracted ballerinas. So, already in Soviet times, La Bayadère was restored in 1920 for Olga Spesivtseva. In the mid-1920s, a misfortune occurred - the scenery of the last, fourth act was destroyed (possibly due to the St. Petersburg flood of 1924). Nevertheless, in the fall of 1929, before leaving her native theater, Marina Semenova danced La Bayadere in the 1900 version, not without success, not embarrassed by the lack of a final act.

Then the performance disappeared from the repertoire for more than a decade. It seemed that "La Bayadère" would share the fate of eternal oblivion, like "The Pharaoh's Daughter" and "King Kandavl". However, a new generation of soloists has grown up in the theater who want to expand their dance repertoire. Their choice fell on La Bayadère. The theater management did not mind, but did not agree to large material costs, suggesting that they confine themselves to the old scenery. In 1941, a great connoisseur classical heritage Vladimir Ponomarev and the young prime minister and choreographer Vakhtang Chabukiani jointly created a three-act version of the old play. The premiere was danced by Natalya Dudinskaya and Chabukiani. In 1948, this version was somewhat replenished and since then has not left the stage of the theater.

One of the directors, Vladimir Ponomarev, explained that “the revival of La Bayadere is primarily due to the great dance value of this ballet.” In the 1940s, they tried to preserve (sometimes develop, modernize) the already existing choreography and tactfully supplement it with new numbers Vakhtang Chabukiani added a duet of Nikiya and Solor to the modest dance of the bayadères and the wild dance of the fakirs around the sacred fire in the first picture.The practically pantomime second picture was embellished with the spectacular plasticity of the dance of Nikiya with a slave (choreographer Konstantin Sergeev), in which the temple bayadère blessed the future marriage union. and decisive changes occurred in the third picture. The varied and rich divertissement was further expanded. In 1948, the dance of the golden God (choreographer and first performer Nikolai Zubkovsky) organically entered the characteristic suite. The classical suite included pas d "axion from the disappeared final act. Ponomarev and Chabukiani, having removed the shadow of Nikiya, which is unnecessary here, enriched the parts of the soloists. In general, in terms of dance diversity and richness, the current second act of La Bayadère is unique. The sharp contrast between the plotless brilliant divertissement and the tragic dance with the snake intensified the semantic emotionality of the action as a whole. Having removed the "wrath of the gods" that crowned the ballet before, the directors introduced the motive of Solor's personal responsibility. The warrior, fearless in the face of the enemy, now decides to disobey his rajah. After the picture of the hero's dream, a small picture of Solor's suicide appeared. Seeing an unearthly paradise, where beloved Nikiya reigns among the heavenly houris, life in this world becomes impossible for him. In the future, the perfection of the choreographic composition of the “shadow painting” required not to destroy the visual and emotional impression with some kind of realistic appendage. Now the hero, responding to the call of his beloved, forever remains in the world of shadows and ghosts.

Such a romantic finale crowns the performance, which is very attractive in terms of the rare mastery of the preserved scenography of the second half of the 19th century. The special illusory nature of the palace chambers (the artist of the second picture Konstantin Ivanov) and the striking oriental processions against the background of the patterned exteriors of the palace sanctified by the sun (the artist of the third picture Pyotr Lambin) always arouse applause from the audience. Not without reason, since 1900, no one has dared to modernize these and other pictures of the ballet. The preservation of the classical ballet of the nineteenth century, along with its original scenery, is a unique phenomenon in domestic practice.

Any spectator from a beginner to a specialist is aware of the main attraction of the ballet - the so-called "Solor's Dream" or the painting "Shadows". It is not for nothing that this fragment is often presented separately without scenery, and the impression is not diminished. It was precisely such "Shadows", shown by the Kirov Ballet for the first time in 1956 on tour in Paris, that literally amazed the world. An outstanding choreographer and an excellent connoisseur of classical ballet Fyodor Lopukhov tried to analyze in detail the choreographic nature of this masterpiece. Here are excerpts from his book “Choreographic Revelations”: “The great art of choreography of the highest order, the content of which is revealed without any auxiliary means - plot, pantomime, accessories, has affected the embodiment of the Shadows dance. In my opinion, even lovely swans Lev Ivanov, like Fokine's "Chopiniana", cannot be compared with "Shadows" in this respect. This scene evokes a spiritual response in a person, which is just as difficult to explain in words as the impression of piece of music... According to the principles of its composition, the scene of "Shadow" is very close to the form according to which sonata allegro is built in music. Here choreographic themes are developed and clashed, as a result of which new ones are formed. thought."

From "Shadows" by Petipa, a direct path to the famous "abstract" compositions of George Balanchine.

Unlike other classical ballets, La Bayadere for a long time only performed on the stage of the Kirov Theatre. In Moscow, after not too successful revisions of the play by Alexander Gorsky (who, in an attempt to bring the ballet closer to real India, dressed shadows in saris), only occasionally the act of "Shadows" was performed. Only in 1991, Yuri Grigorovich took the production of 1948 as a basis, replacing some pantomime scenes with dance ones.

For a long time abroad they were satisfied with one act of "Shadows", until the former ballerina of the Kirov Ballet Natalya Makarova decided in 1980 to stage the ballet "La Bayadère" in 4 acts at the American Theater. Of course, in New York no one remembered the final act in the original, even the appropriate music was not available. Makarova combined the first three scenes into one act, reducing the divertissement of the holiday scene by removing characteristic dances. After the invariable act of shadows, the final act was performed with a newly composed choreography, supplemented by the dance of the golden god from the Leningrad production. Despite the fact that the performance was a success and Makarova transferred her production to theaters of various countries, the new choreography in it clearly loses to the old one. After a brilliant romantic scene, inexpressive dances follow, in fact, only illustrating the plot.

More consistent was the true connoisseur of the classical heritage, Pyotr Gusev. In Sverdlovsk, unencumbered by ballet traditions, in 1984 he tried to restore the original La Bayadère from memory in four acts. Pa d "axion returned to the last act, but it turned out that not only the second act, but the entire ballet suffered from this. The masterpiece of "Shadows" like the Himalayas towered over the pale plains of the rest of the performance.

Essentially, the new "renovators" of La Bayadere must decide for themselves the main question: what is more important for them, and most importantly for the viewer - choreographic harmony or meticulous resolution of plot conflicts. Interestingly, in 2000, this problem was solved at the Mussorgsky Theater in St. Petersburg. Taking the 1948 edition unchanged, the directors (artistic director Nikolai Boyarchikov) added to it not an act, but only a small picture. In it, in brief, everything that was in the final act of Petipa takes place. After the destruction of the palace, the performance ends with an expressive mise-en-scene: on the path along which shadows once walked, stands a lonely Brahmin, on whose outstretched arms is the snow-white head covering of Nikiya. It slowly rises up. The performance is over.

A more responsible task - to reanimate La Bayadère of 1900 - was decided at the Mariinsky Theater. Minkus' original score was found in the theatre's music library. The scenery and costumes were reconstructed according to original sketches, models and photographic materials found in the St. Petersburg archives. And finally, the choreographic text by Marius Petipa was restored on the basis of the recordings of the former director of the pre-revolutionary Mariinsky Theater Nikolai Sergeev, which are now in the collection of Harvard University. Understanding that La Bayadère of 1900 would seem poor in terms of dance to the modern audience, choreographer Sergei Vikharev, reluctantly, included some variations from later editions in the performance. In general, the four-act reconstruction of 2002 proved to be highly controversial, and the theater decided not to deprive the audience of the time-tested performance of 1948.

A. Degen, I. Stupnikov

L. Minkus' ballet "La Bayadère" is one of the most famous Russian ballets of the 19th century. The music was composed by Ludwig Minkus, the libretto is by the pen and the choreography is by the legendary Marius Petipa.

How the ballet was created

Bayadères were Indian girls who served as dancers in temples where their parents gave them because they were unloved and unwanted.

There are various versions that explain why the idea of ​​​​creating a performance based on an exotic plot for Russia at that time arose. This is not known for certain, so disputes between theater historians are still ongoing.

The idea of ​​creating "La Bayadère" belongs to the chief choreographer of the Russian imperial troupe - Marius Petipa. According to one version, he decided to stage such a performance in Russia under the influence of the phrase ballet "Shakuntala", the creator of which was his older brother Lucien. The author of the music for the French production was Ernest Reyer, the author of the libretto, which was based on the ancient Indian drama Kalidasta, was Theophile Gauthier. The prototype of the main character was Amani, a dancer, prima of an Indian troupe touring Europe, who committed suicide. Gauthier decided to stage a ballet in memory of her.

But there is no evidence that this is indeed the case. Therefore, it cannot be argued that it was under the influence of Shakuntala that La Bayadère (ballet) was born. Its content is very different from the plot of the Parisian production. In addition, Petipa Jr.'s ballet appeared on the Russian stage only 20 years after it was staged in Paris. There is another version of Marius Petipa's idea of ​​creating "La Bayadère" - a fashion for Eastern (in particular, Indian) culture.

Literary basis

The developer of the libretto of the ballet was Marius Petipa himself, together with the playwright S. N. Khudekov. According to historians, the same Indian drama Kalidasta served as the literary basis for La Bayadère, as in the production of Shakuntala, but the plots of these two ballets are very different. According to theater critics, the libretto also includes the ballad by W. Goethe “God and the La Bayadère”, based on which a ballet was created in France, where main party danced by Maria Taglioni.

ballet characters

The main characters are the bayadère Nikiya and the famous warrior Solor, whose tragic love story is told by this ballet. A photo of the central characters is presented in this article.

Dugmanta is the raja of Golkonda, Gamzatti is the daughter of the raja, the Great Brahmin, Magdaya is a fakir, Taloragva is a warrior, Aya is a slave, Jampe. As well as warriors, bayadères, fakirs, people, hunters, musicians, servants...

The plot of the ballet

This is a performance of 4 acts, but each theater has its own "La Bayadère" (ballet). The content is preserved, the main idea is unchanged, the basis is the same libretto, the same music and the same plastic solutions, but the number of actions in different theaters may be different. For example, in ballet there are three acts instead of four. For many years, the score of the 4th act was considered lost, and the ballet was staged in 3 acts. But it was nevertheless found in the funds of the Mariinsky Theater, and the original version was restored, but not all theaters switched to this version.

In ancient times, the events of the performance "La Bayadère" (ballet) unfold in India. The content of the first act: the warrior Solor comes to the temple at night to meet Nikiya there, and invites her to run away with him. The great brahmin, rejected by her, witnesses the meeting and decides to take revenge on the girl.

Second act. The Raja wants to marry his daughter Gamzatti to the valiant warrior Solor, who is trying to refuse such an honor, but the Raja sets a date for the wedding. The great brahmin informs the raja that the warrior met Nikiya in the temple. He decides to kill the dancer by presenting her with a basket of flowers with a poisonous snake inside. This conversation is heard by Gamzatti. She decides to get rid of her rival and offers her riches if she refuses Solor. Nikiya is shocked that her lover is getting married, but cannot refuse him and in a fit of anger rushes at the Raja's daughter with a dagger. Faithful maid Gamzatti manages to save her mistress. The next day, a celebration begins at the Raja's castle on the occasion of the wedding of his daughter, and Nikiya is ordered to dance for the guests. After one of her dances, she is given a basket of flowers, from which a snake crawls out and stings her. Nikiya dies in Solor's arms. Thus ends the second part of the play "La Bayadère" (ballet).

Composer

The author of the music for the ballet "La Bayadère", as already mentioned here above, is the composer Minkus Ludwig. He was born on March 23, 1826 in Vienna. His full name is Aloysius Ludwig Minkus. As a four-year-old boy, he began to study music - he learned to play the violin, at the age of 8 he first appeared on stage, and many critics recognized him as a child prodigy.

At the age of 20, L. Minkus tried himself as a conductor and composer. In 1852, he was invited to the Royal Vienna Opera as first violinist, and a year later he received a place as bandmaster of the orchestra in the fortress theater of Prince Yusupov. From 1856 to 1861, L. Minkus served as the first violinist at the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theater, and then began to combine this position with the position of conductor. After the opening of the Moscow Conservatory, the composer was invited to teach violin there. L. Minkus wrote a large number of ballets. The very first of them, created in 1857, is the "Union of Peleus and Thetis" for the Yusupov Theater. In 1869, one of the most famous ballets, Don Quixote, was written. Together with M. Petipa, 16 ballets were created. For the last 27 years of his life, the composer lived in his homeland - in Austria. Ballets by L. Minkus are still included in the repertoires of all the leading theaters in the world.

Premiere

On January 23, 1877, the ballet La Bayadère was presented to the Petersburg public for the first time. The theater in which the premiere took place (the Bolshoi Theater, or, as it was also called, the Stone Theatre), was located where the St. Petersburg Conservatory is now located. The part of the main character Nikiya was performed by Ekaterina Vazem, and the dancer Lev Ivanov shone as her lover.

Various versions

In 1900, M. Petipa himself edited his production. She walked in an updated version at the Mariinsky Theater, and danced the part of Nikiya. In 1904, the ballet was transferred to the stage of the Moscow Bolshoi Theater. In 1941 the ballet was edited by V. Chebukiani and V. Ponomarev. In 2002, Sergei Vikharev re-edited this ballet. Photos from the performance of the Mariinsky Theater are contained in the article.

La Bayadère was staged in 1877 and over the course of its long life not only suffered physical damage (the amputated last act and arbitrary rearrangements of episodes), but also lost a lot in its brightness, brilliance, picturesqueness - in everything with which it bewitched the audience 70 years, not accustomed to such an onslaught of sensual charms. Fokine's Orientals, which struck Paris (and Marcel Proust among other Parisians), would not have been possible without Petipa's discoveries made in his exotic Hindu ballet. Of course, Scheherazade is more refined and La Bayadere is coarser, but on the other hand, La Bayadère is a monumental ballet, and its structure is much more complex. The sensuous luxury of the first two acts, decorative mass dances and half-naked ecstatic bodies are contrasted with white tunics and white veils of "shadows", the detached dispassionateness of poses, the supersensual geometry of mise-en-scenes of the famous third act. In the last (now non-existent) act, the anti-worlds had to come together (as in synthesis, the third element of the Hegelian triad), the white “shadow” appeared on the colorful festival of people, the ghost appeared at the feast, and, judging by the descriptions of F. Lopukhov, the spectacle “incomprehensible , creepy", the extravaganza became a phantasmagoria, and the action ended in a grandiose (albeit somewhat fake) disaster. This ingenious act, I repeat, does not exist now, and its fragment (on the pas of Gamzatti, Solor and Coryphee), moreover, reworked by Vakhtang Chabukiani, was transferred by him from the wedding palace act, where this pas should be, to the areal act, where it seems somewhat premature and not entirely appropriate. And yet the impact of the performance on the auditorium, even with an ordinary performance, remains hypnotic: so great is the artistic energy that gave birth to the ballet, so great is the abundance of spectacular numbers in it, so fantastically good is the choreography. The lively dance fabric of La Bayadère has been preserved, and the metaphorical basis has been preserved: the two colors that color the ballet and create permanent poles of attraction - red and white, the color of flame and fire, the color of tunics and veils. The first act is called “The Feast of Fire”: in the back of the stage there is a scarlet bonfire, possessed dervishes jump over it; the third act may be called the mystery of the white veils, the mystery in white.

What is this ballet about? It seems that the question was asked not to the point: "La Bayadère" is designed for direct perception and does not seem to contain hidden meanings. The motives are obvious, the constructive principle is not concealed, the spectacular component dominates everything else. In Minkus's music there are no dark, let alone mysterious places, which are so numerous in Tchaikovsky and Glazunov. It is specifically ballet and very convenient for pantomime artists and especially for ballerinas, prompting music, prompter music, indicating a gesture with loud chords, and a rhythmic pattern with clearly accented measures. Of course, along with Don Quixote, La Bayadère is the best of many Minkus scores, the most melodic, the most danceable. It was in La Bayadère that the composer's lyrical gift was revealed, especially in the scene of Shadows, where the violin of Minkus (who, by the way, began as a violinist) not only echoes the half-forgotten intonations of the 30s and 40s, the intonations of world sorrow, but also predicts a melancholy tune that half a century later would conquer the world under the name of the blues. All this is true, but the fascinating lyrical dansence of La Bayadère is too motoric for modern ears, and the dramatic episodes are too declamatory. The dramatic monologues in the plays of Hugo or in the melodramas played by Frederic-Lemaitre and Mochalov were built in approximately the same way. To match the music, the decorative background is monumentally colorful, luxuriously ornate, naively sham. Here the main principle is baroque illusionism, in which the image is equal to itself: if this is a facade, then a facade; if hall, then hall; if mountains, then mountains. And although the promising enfilade that opens in the second act still makes the auditorium gasp, and although this decorative effect in the spirit of Gonzago, it must be admitted, is genius in itself, there are still no picturesque mysteries in the scenography of K. Ivanov and O. Allegri maybe no second or third plans. Apparently, it is impossible to look for intellectual problems here: La Bayadère gravitates towards the tradition of emotional art.

La Bayadère is the clearest demonstration of the emotional possibilities that the ballet theater has, it is a parade of dazzling stage emotions. And any attempt to modernize the whole or any individual component turned out to be (and continues to turn out to be) unsuccessful. It is known that in the early 1920s, B. Asafiev re-orchestrated the score, apparently trying to saturate too watery pieces with sharp sounds and, on the contrary, soften too flashy sound effects. The result was the opposite of what was expected, and I had to go back, abandoning the tempting idea of ​​stylizing Minkus as a composer of the latest symphonic school. The same thing happens with attempts to rewrite scenography in a modern way: witty ideas fail and reveal offensive inappropriateness. The ballet rejects overly sophisticated implantations in its text and wants to remain what it is - incomparable, and perhaps the only surviving example of an old square theater. Here is everything that gives rise to the magic of the square theater, which makes up its philosophy, its lexicon and its techniques.

The square theater formula is revealed in three acts (in the author's version - in four), becomes action, gesture and dance. The formula of the triune: melodramatic intrigue, firstly, an affected manner, secondly, and thirdly, all kinds of excess, excess in everything, excess of passions, suffering, pangs of conscience, shameless villainy, devotion and betrayal; the excess of processions, extras, sham objects and sham animals; excess of facades, interiors, landscapes. And, finally, and most importantly, the areal apotheosis: the central stage takes place on the square, in front of the celebratory crowd, in the presence of all the characters in the ballet. The square is not only a scene of action, but (albeit to a lesser extent than in Don Quixote) a collective character and, moreover, an expressive symbol in the sign system of the performance. The square is opposed to the palace, the palace perishes, and the square will remain - forever, it is not clear, eternity is present here only in the scene of "Shadows", only art is eternal here. Such is the moral outcome of La Bayadère, somewhat unexpected both for Parisian melodramas and for the St. Petersburg imperial stage. This artistic misalliance, however, is the whole point - in La Bayadère, much converged, much went towards each other: the wild energy of the theater of the boulevards, which inflamed the young Petipa, and the noble forms of high academicism, Paris and St. Petersburg, the flame and ice of European art. The nature of La Bayadère, however, is more complex.

La Bayadère is Petipa's oldest ballet still in the repertoire. It is even more archaic than it seems to be. The legendary ballet antiquity is present in it on the same rights as the routine of the ballet theater of the second half of the 19th century. The second picture of "La Bayadère" is a huge palace hall with a promising hand-painted scenery in the depth, a few figures in luxurious oriental costumes, a chess table in the corner and a chess game played by the characters, and, finally, the main thing is the stormy pantomime dialogue between Raja and Brahmin, high style ( in the Noverre classification danse noble), and after it another dialogue between Nikiya and Gamzatti and an even more violent explanation, an even more violent passion - all this is almost typical Noverre in his pantomime tragedies.

The Petersburg spectator of the 70s could see on the stage approximately the same thing as the Stuttgart or Vienna or Milan spectator - a little more than a hundred years ago (the Parisian spectator - even exactly a hundred years ago, because it was in 1777 that Noverre staged in Paris, his famous tragic ballet Horace and the Curiatii, previously staged in Milan and Vienna).

The second picture of "La Bayadère" is, as it were, addition artistic perspectives: optical (a la Gonzago) on the back and choreographic (a la Noverre) in the action itself, on stage. And the picture following it - the second act - is already in its purest form Marius Petipa, Petipa of the 70s - 80s, Petipa of monumental dancing frescoes. Antiquity and newness are inextricably intertwined here. The solemn procession of numerous mimams, the structure of the action, reminiscent of divertissement, the baroque construction of static mise-en-scenes - and something unprecedented in terms of the skill and scale of choreographic direction: the polyphonic development of heterogeneous themes, the polyphonic structure of mass scenes and corps de ballet episodes. Petipa's fantasy overflows, but Petipa's will keeps the fantasy within strict boundaries. And the famous finale of the second act, the scrapping of the holiday, the tragic twists and turns - in other words, the so-called "dance with the snake" - bears the same features of archaic eclecticism and fearless discoveries. This snake itself, made of calico and cotton wool, looks completely fake. Fokine wrote about a similar dummy with hatred, talking about the production of Egyptian Nights (shown in Paris under the name Cleopatra). discovery in the field of "expressive" dance.

Let us first note only the most obvious, namely, that Petipa extracts expressive possibilities that are in no way inferior to the expressive possibilities of modern “modern dance” from the bowels, from the recesses, from the hidden reserves of classical dance. There is "concentration" and "deconcentration", an unthinkable balance, implausible angles, impossible reversals. Without deforming academic movements and poses, Petipa creates the image of a deformed jump, under the influence of ecstatic passions, the illusion of a deformed arabesque. The dance with the snake is a ritual dance and at the same time a monologue of a wounded soul, and it is built on extremes and contrasts, on a sharp transition from one expressive pose to another, from one extreme state to another. There are intentionally no smooth transitions, intermediate forms and any psychological nuances: an instantaneous burst of energy is extinguished by an instantaneous and complete decline in mental strength; a frantic twisted flip jump ends with a dead pause, a breathless pose, a swoon of the jump; the body of the dancer, stretched out into a string, soars up, and then almost flattens out on the stage board; the vertical and horizontal lines of the monologue are sharply underlined and intersect each other as if on a cross; and this whole dance, successively torn in its first part, the dance of despair, the dance of supplication, explodes in the second part - and blows itself up - with a completely unexpected ecstatically (and even erotically) fiery tarantella. All this is the purest theatrical romanticism, or, more precisely, post-romanticism, in which the style of romanticism was extremely exaggerated, but also complicated, also extremely. And this whole second act, the square festival and the choreographic divertissement, is built according to the same postromantic scheme. As in La Sylphide, as in Giselle and other ballets of the 1930s and 1940s, the act is a vivid pictorial and no less vivid emotional contrast to the “white” act that follows it. But in La Bayadère this square act itself is made up of a series of internal contrasts. Each number is a kind of attraction, each number is resolutely different from the next and the previous one. This seems to be a violation of logic, all the rules of the game, and the most important among them - the unity of style. But, of course, this is not artistic chaos, but precise artistic calculation, which only enhances the main, general contrast between the flashes of choreographic fireworks on the square and the “white ballet” pouring like moonlight.

Indeed, Petipa's "white ballet" is a genuine choreographic tour de force, because this entire ensemble episode, which takes half an hour (the duration of a classical symphony of the Viennese school), consists of independent parts of a ballerina, three soloists and a large corps de ballet and includes separate parties into a common stream, into a complex interaction, into a skillful and unusually elegant contrapuntal game - this whole, I repeat, grandiose ensemble episode unfolds like a scroll (the dance of Nikiya-Shadow with a long veil in her hand, slowly unwinding half-rounds, literally realizes the metaphor of a scroll) , as one continuous and almost endless cantilena. With a skill of genius, surprising even for Petipa himself, the choreographer maintains this illusion, this mirage and this completely stable image for half an hour. First, a gradual and superhuman measured increase in quantitative impressions - the very appearance of the Shadows, one with each measure. Then there is an increase in tension in long, again inhumanly long pauses-poses maintained by thirty-two dancers in unison, and delicate, without convulsions and fuss, the removal of this tension by successive evolutions of the four rows of the corps de ballet. But in general - a slow and inevitable, like fate, but mathematically precisely measured increase in tempo: from a step on a plie to a run from the depths to the proscenium. There are no short bright flashes with which the previous act blinded, here one white flash, lasting half an hour, as if captured by a magical rapid. There are no sharp flip jumps, falls to the ground, throws, one smooth collective half-turn, one smooth collective kneeling. All this looks like a magic ritual, but if you look closely, then the pattern of the exit of the shadows (moving to an arabesque and an imperceptible stop with the body tilted back and arms raised up) and the pattern of the whole act reproduce, harmonizing and rounding it, Nikiya's wild dance in the finale previous act. Plotally and even psychologically, this is motivated by the fact that the scene of "Shadows" is a dream of Solor, who is haunted, multiplying as if in invisible mirrors, by the vision of the death of Nikiya the Bayadère. It turns out that Petipa is no stranger to similar considerations. He creates a picture of a nightmare, but only in the refraction of classical ballet. The nightmare is only implied, only in the subtext. The text, on the other hand, fascinates with its harmonious and, moreover, otherworldly beauty and its logic, also unearthly. The composition is based on the plastic arabesque motif. But they are given from different angles, and the movement changes its rhythm. That, in fact, is all that Petipa operates with; rhythm, angle and line are all his artistic resources.

And the line, perhaps, first of all - the line of tempo increases, the line of geometric mise-en-scenes, the line of the extended arabesque. The diagonal line along which, on the pas de bourre, Nikiya-Shadow slowly approaches towards Solor, the zigzag line of co-de-basque, in which her passion involuntarily comes to life - and betrays itself - the line, so reminiscent of the zigzag of lightning, in the finale of the performance burned the palace of the Raja and sketched on an old engraving. The slanting lines of widely deployed corps de ballet ecartes (a distant association with the mouth of an ancient tragic mask open in a silent scream), a serpentine line of the complex oncoming movement of shadow dancers, giving rise to an exciting undulating effect and, again, an association with the entrance of an ancient choir. A straight line of inevitable fate - that inevitable fate, which in the performance secretly leads the action and plot, and the course of which in the entre of Shadows is, as it were, demonstrated openly. The rock line, if translated into romantic language, the rock line, if translated into professional language. And in the language of art history, this means a neoclassical interpretation of romantic themes, Petipa's breakthrough into the sphere and poetics of neoclassicism. Here he is the direct predecessor of Balanchine, and the act of Shadows is the first and unattainable example of pure choreography, a symphonic ballet. Yes, of course, Balanchine proceeded from the structure of the symphony, and Petipa - from the structure of the big classical sh, but both built their compositions on the basis of logic and, therefore, the self-expression of classical dance.

La Bayadère is thus a ballet of three eras, a ballet of archaic forms, architectonic insights. There is neither unity of principle nor unity of text in it. However, it is designed for long life and does not break up into separate episodes at all. Other unities! hold the ballet together, and above all the unity of the technique. This technique is a gesture: La Bayadère is a school of expressive gesture. Here are all types of gesture (conditional, ritual-Hindu and everyday), and the whole history of it; one can even say that the evolution - if not epic - of gesture in the ballet theater is shown. Brahmin and Raja have the classicist gesture of Noverre pantomime ballets, in Nikiya's dance with a snake - an expressive gesture of romantic effective ballets. In the first case, the gesture is separated from the dance and from any personal properties, it is a royal gesture, a gesture of command, greatness, power, the dances of the bayadères dancing in the square and at the ball, there is no greatness, but there is some kind of humiliated, but not expelled to the end of humanity. The bayadère girls are reminiscent of Degas' blue and pink dancers (Degas made sketches of his dancers in the foyer of the Grand Opera in the same 70s). The gestures of the Brahmin in Raja, on the contrary, are completely inhuman, and they themselves - Brahmin and Raja - look like angry gods, frenzied idols, stupid idols. And the dance with the snake is completely different: a half-dance, half-life, a desperate attempt to fill the ritual gesture with living human passions. The classicist gesture, the gesture of Brahmin and Raja, is a manual gesture, a hand gesture, while the romantic gesture, Nikiya's gesture, is a bodily gesture, a gesture of two outstretched arms, a twisted body gesture. Brecht called such a total gesture the term gestus. And finally, in the Shadows scene, we see something unprecedented: the complete absorption of the gesture by classical dance, abstract classical poses and pas, but precisely absorption, and not substitution, because thirty-two unthinkably long - without support - Alezgons already seem to be some kind of collective super-gesture. Something divine carries this super-gesture, and on it is a clear stamp of sacredness. Here it is no longer a cry of gesture, as in a dance with a snake, here is silence (and perhaps even prayer) of a gesture. Therefore, the mise-en-scene is full of such inner strength and such external beauty and, by the way, evokes associations with the temple. In the first act, the facade of the temple with closed doors is painted on the back of the stage; the interior is closed to prying eyes, to the uninitiated. In the Shadows scene, both the mysteries and the very mystery of the temple seem to be revealed to us - in a mirage, unsteady, swaying and strictly lined, architectonically built mise-en-scene.

Add to this that the multiplication of a gesture, the addition of a gesture, is Petipa's theatrical discovery, a discovery in pure, ideal form, made long before Max Reinhardt came to the same in his famous production of Oedipus Rex and - already closer to us - Maurice Béjart in his version of The Rite of Spring.

And the liberation of gesture from gesticulation - artistic problem and the artistic result of La Bayadère is the problem and the result of the development of the poetic theater of the 20th century.

As applied to La Bayadère and, above all, to the act of Shadows, this result can be defined as follows: a romantic gesture in a classicist space. At the point of intersection of all ballet plans, at the focus of all contrasts, conflicts and stylistic play, at the center of intrigue, finally, is the main character, Nikiya, she is also a bayadère in colorful shalwars, she is also a white shadow, she is a dancer at a holiday, she is the personification passions, dreams and sorrows. The ballet theater has never known such a multifaceted image. In such - extremely contrasting circumstances - a ballerina, a performer leading role, hasn't hit yet. The question involuntarily arises - how justified are these metamorphoses, and are they motivated at all? Isn't La Bayadère a rather formal montage of classical ballet situations - festivities and sleep, love and deceit? After all, the librettist of La Bayadère, ballet historian and balletomane S. Khudekov, built his script according to existing schemes dear to his heart. But that's not all: the very composition of the title role raises many questions. The ballet tells a love story, but why is there no love duet in the first act, an idyllic act? There is Khudekov in the libretto, but there is no Petipa in the performance (and the one that we see now was staged by K. Sergeev in our time). What is this? Petipa's mistake (corrected by Sergeev) or an indication of some non-trivial case? And how to explain the strange logic of the "dance with the snake" - a sharp transition from despair to jubilant joy, from mournful plea to ecstatic tarantella? The libretto is not explained or is explained naively (Nikia thinks that the basket with flowers was sent to her by Solor). Perhaps Petipa is making some kind of miscalculation here, or, at best, is striving for false romantic effects?

Not at all, the role of Nikiya is carefully thought out by Petipa, like the whole performance as a whole. But Petipa's thought rushes along an unbeaten path, he discovers a new motive, not alien, however, to the ideology of the genre. Khudekov's libretto "La Bayadère" is a story of passionate love, but composed love. Nikiya in ballet is an artistic person, not only an artist, but also a poet, a visionary, a dreamer. He lives in mirages, from which the act of “Shadows” is born, shuns people, despises Brahmin, does not notice the bayadere-girlfriends, and is drawn only to Solor - both as an equal and as a god. She fights for him, she is ready to go to the stake for him. The Tarantella is danced not because Nikiya receives flowers, but at the moment of the highest readiness for sacrifice. In the tarantella there is an ecstasy of self-sacrifice that has replaced despair, as happens with irrational natures, with deep natures. Solor is completely different: not a divine youth, not a dreamer-poet, but a man of this world and an ideal partner for Gamzatti. Here they are dancing a duet (in the current edition transferred to the second act from the last one), here they are equalized in the dance. The effective completion of the entre, when, holding hands, they fly to the proscenium from the depths with great leaps, is a very accurate theatrical demonstration of their equality and their unity. Even if this move was composed by Chabukiani (one of the authors of the revision carried out in 1940), he conveyed Petipa's thought, at least in this episode. The move to the forefront, like the whole duet, is festive and brilliant, here is the apotheosis of the entire festive element of ballet. And this is a very important moment for understanding the essence of the performance. In the libretto, the situation is habitually simplified: Nikiya is a pariah, Gamzatti is a princess, Solor chooses a princess, he is a noble warrior, “a rich and famous kshatriya”, and his choice is a foregone conclusion. In the play, Solor is looking for a holiday, not status and wealth. The light Gamzatti has a holiday in her soul, and in vain she is played so arrogantly. And Nikiya is terrified in her soul. At the celebration of the second act, she introduces a heart-rending motive; at the celebration of the last act, she appears as a frightening shadow. All these noisy gatherings are not for her, and in the act of "Shadows" she creates her own, silent holiday. Here her soul calms down, here her wild unrestrained rebellious passions find harmony. Because Nikiya is not only an artist and a magician, she is also a rebel, also a savage. Her dance is the dance of fire, but only performed by a professional dancer, a temple bayadère. Her plasticity is created by a sharp spiritual impulse and a soft movement of the hands and the camp. This fire is simplified, but not completely, and it is no coincidence that she rushes with a dagger in her hands at her rival, at Gamzatti.

Having painted such an unusual portrait, Petipa threw a veil over him, surrounded Nikiya with an aura of mystery. Of course, this is the most mysterious character in his ballets. And of course, this part creates a lot of problems for the ballerinas. Moreover, technically it is very difficult, since it requires a special kind of virtuosity, the virtuosity of the 70s, based on ground evolutions without support and at a slow pace. The first performer of the title role was Ekaterina Vazem - as Petipa wrote in his memoirs, "a truly wonderful artist." All technical, and indeed all stylistic difficulties, she, apparently, overcame without difficulty. But we can assume that Vazem did not appreciate the full depth of the role. Vazem herself says that at the rehearsal she had a conflict with Petipa - in connection with the "dance with the snake" Scene "Shadows" from the ballet "La Bayadère". and theatrical costume. It is unlikely, however, that the whole thing was in the shalwars. The reason is different: Vazem was not at all an irrational actress. Natures like Nikiya were alien to her. It is difficult to imagine a brilliant and highly enlightened representative of the St. Petersburg academic school, the author of the first book written by a ballerina's hand, with a dagger in her hand and unbearable torment in her heart. But it was Vazem who gave Nikiya a regal stature, and it was she who created the tradition of a noble interpretation of this role. And it is important to recall this, because immediately after Vazem, another tradition arose - and has survived to this day - that turned the tragic ballet into a bourgeois melodrama. The key to La Bayadère is, of course, here; to interpret La Bayadère means to feel (even better, to realize) its genre nobility. Then there will be no trace of petty-bourgeois melodrama, and the mighty charm of this incomparable ballet will be revealed in its entirety. There are at least three such deep interpretations. All of them are characterized by historical significance and transparent purity of artistic discoveries.

Anna Pavlova danced La Bayadère in 1902. Since that time, a new history of ballet began. But Pavlova herself, apparently, found her image in La Bayadère. The role was prepared under the supervision of Petipa himself, as was Pavlova's next big role - the role of Giselle (which is indicated in the choreographer's diary). We can therefore regard Pavlova's performance in La Bayadère as a testament of the old maestro and as his personal contribution to the art of the 20th century. Five more years were to pass before Fokine's "The Swan", but the eighty-four-year-old man, who suffered from illnesses and was openly accused of being old-fashioned, blue-eyed and incapable of understanding anything, again turned out to be at his best and again coped with the requirements that a new personality presented him and which the new time has set before him. Pavlova's first triumph was Petipa's last triumph, a triumph that went unnoticed but did not pass without a trace. What struck Pavlova? The freshness of talent, above all, and the unusual lightness of the stage portrait. Everything shabby, rough, dead, which has accumulated over a quarter of a century and which has made the role heavier, has gone somewhere, disappeared at once. Pavlova literally smashed the cumbersome ballet, brought into it a weightless play of chiaroscuro. We dare to suggest that Pavlova carefully unembodied the too dense choreographic fabric and broke somewhere on the threshold of half-meter-link, half-mystical revelations. In other words, she turned the setting ballet into a romantic poem.

The famous elevation of Pavlova played a necessary role, becoming an expression of her artistic, and partly female freedom. At the end of long and dramatic epochs, such heralds of coming changes appear who are no longer held in a vice and are not dragged down somewhere by the heavy burden of the past century. Unburdened by the past is the most important psychological trait of Pavlov's personality and Pavlov's talent. Her La Bayadère, like her Giselle, was interpreted by Pavlova in precisely this way. Passionate Nikiya easily reincarnated into a disembodied shadow, the Hindu theme of reincarnation, the transmigration of the soul quite naturally became the leading theme of the Hindu ballet. Petipa outlined it, but only Pavlova managed to imbue it, giving the traditional ballet game the indisputability of the highest law of life. And the ease with which Nikiya Pavlova was freed from the burden of passionate suffering and transferred to the Elysium of blissful shadows was no longer too amazing: this Nikiya was already in the first act, although she was not a shadow, but was a guest on this earth, to use Akhmatov's word. After visiting, sipping the poison of love, she flew away. The comparison with Maria Taglioni's Sylph suggests itself, but Pavlova-Nikia was an unusual sylph. There was also something of a Bunin schoolgirl in her. The sacrificial flame of La Bayadere attracted her like a butterfly - night lights. A bizarre light lit up in her soul, in strange harmony with the light breath of her dance. Anna Pavlova herself was a wandering light, flashing here and there for three decades, on different continents and in different countries. Marina Semyonova, on the contrary, danced in such a way that her Shadow became, as it were, a legend of the surrounding places, an indelible and indestructible legend. Then, in the 1920s and 1930s, it somehow correlated with Blok's presence on Officerskaya or Ozerki, now, even today, it can be likened to Pasternak's shadow in Peredelkino or Akhmatov's in Komarovo. This is a very Russian theme - an untimely death and a posthumous celebration, and Petipa knew what he was doing, filling his Hindu ballet with such pathos and such sadness. Semyonova danced both this pathos and this sadness, in a mysterious way, both at the same time. Complex emotional states were always subject to her, but it was here, in the silent scene of "Shadows", that Semyonova kept the auditorium in particular tension, slowly unfolding a scroll of movements, both mournful and proud. La Bayadère by Semyonova is a ballet about the fate of an artist and, more broadly, about the fate of art. Lyrical motives performances were preserved and even strengthened: along with the main plot - Nikiya and Solor - the secondary plot, which ceased to be secondary - Nikiya and Brahmin, came to the fore: Brahmin's harassment was rejected by Semyonova's characteristic imperious gesture. And all these vicissitudes of female love were included by Semyonova in an equally significant plot, and the ballet about the fate of a temple dancer became a ballet about the fate of classical dance in general, about the fate of the tragic genre, the noblest genre of classical ballet.

Semyonova danced La Bayadère at the end of the 1920s, still at the Mariinsky Theatre, while still attending the Vaganova class and with a sense of the special mission that fell to her lot. The consciousness of this mission filled with pride any Semyonov stage portrait, any Semenov stage detail. Semyonov was called upon to save and defend classical dance, inject fresh blood into it and win the duel with other systems that monopolistically - and aggressively - claimed modernity. This was the subtext of all her roles, in Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Raymond. And in the act of "Shadows" with undeniable clarity, striking both amateurs and connoisseurs, Semyonova demonstrated what can be called superdance, the rarest gift of a continuing symphonic dance. Petipa had just such a dance in mind when he staged the entrance of the Shadows, repeating the same choreographic phrase thirty-two times. This bold and, in essence, Wagnerian idea, which could only be realized by the corps de ballet (and which the composer could not cope with, who built the entre on not one single, but two musical themes), this visionary idea, ahead of its time and unrealizable for the virtuosos of the second half XIX century, Semyonova already realized as a ballerina of our century, dancing a suite of successive numbers, including pauses, exits from the stage, and a swift diagonal as a continuously flowing symphonic episode, andante cantabile of classical ballet. Thus, the duel with the antagonists was won, the dispute was resolved, resolved unconditionally and for a long time. But in the same scene of "Shadows" another Semyonov's gift, the gift of incarnation, the gift of plastic expressiveness, an almost relief fixation of elusive movements and poses, an almost sculptural deployment of any fleeting shade, any transient phrase, manifested itself in its entirety. And this combination of cantilena, relief, non-stop movement and pause-poses (on which the corps de ballet performance of "Shadows" is based), a combination that contained three-dimensionality and impressionism, gave academic dance Semyonova needed exciting novelty and made Semyonova a great ballerina.

The act of "Shadows" became for Semyonova an unusually long culmination of the ballet stretched out in time. But there were two climaxes, and the first, concentrated and short, was “a dance with a snake,” the secret meaning of which Semyonova understood, perhaps the first in the history of this ballet. “Dance with the snake” is a continuation of the dispute with Gamzatti, the duel with fate, the desperate struggle for Solor, but not in a fight, not with a dagger in his hands, but as if on the stage. All the strength of character and all the strength of the soul, all her will and all her talent, Nikiya Semyonov put into the “dance with a snake”, the performance of which so captured the auditorium that there are cases when the audience got up from their seats, as if under the influence of hypnosis or some kind of sometimes unknown - known only to Hindu fakirs - forces. The magical, sorcerous theme of La Bayadère, which we usually perceive as a tribute to sham exoticism or do not perceive it at all, was almost the main one with Semyonova, although Semyonova did not endow her Nikiya with any characteristic, let alone gypsy features. In the first two acts, Nikiya-Semyonova looked even simpler than Semyonov's inaccessible heroines usually looked. If there was anything gypsy, it was what Fedya Protasov in The Living Corpse calls the word "will." Yes, will, that is, boundless freedom, freedom of movement, freedom of passion, freedom of anguish animated this dance, in which the dancer now and then found herself on the floor, on her knees, with her body thrown back and arms outstretched. An ancient, even ancient rite was played out, the ecstasy of suffering took possession of the dancer entirely, forcing her to make heartbreaking leaps, unthinkable in terms of breadth and internal tension, the salto mortale of a burning soul; the body bent in invisible fire, rose and fell, fell and took off, so that the somewhat speculative metaphor conceived by the choreographer - the convergence of Nikiya's dance with the image of a flame swaying in the wind - this metaphor became a stage reality, took on theatrical flesh, turning from an abstract sign into living and bodily symbol. Symbol of what? Tragedy, high tragic genre. For Semyonova maximally expanded not only the spatial range of pas de bras and jumps, but also - accordingly - the genre boundaries of the role. A tragic role was played in a brilliant but not tragic performance. An unexpected, and perhaps not fully foreseen, counterpoint arose: an actress of tragedy in the midst of a festive corps de ballet. The situation was translated into a purely aesthetic, theatrical plan, which in the 30s had a terrible reality, became the fate of many: to the joyful cries of the crowd, to the jubilant music of radio marches, they said goodbye to loved ones, said goodbye to long years, goodbye forever. Oh, those 30s: endless holidays and innumerable tragedies all over the country, but the holidays were given a green street, a big road, and above all in the Bolshoi Theater, near the Kremlin, and a ban was imposed on tragedy, disgrace was imposed, and this disgraced the genre, in full awareness of its untimeliness and risk to itself, dances Semyonova in La Bayadère. She dances tragic suffering in the "dance with the snake", dances tragic beauty in the act of "Shadows", preserving until better times the sacred fire of classical tragedy, the sacred fire of classical ballet.

Remembering Semyonova in the scene of "Shadows", Alla Shelest uttered (in a long-standing conversation with the author of these lines) only two, but expressive and accurate words: "royal detachment." Royalness to her, to Alla Shelest herself, was also given, but not Semyonov’s, northern, Tsarskoe Selo, but some kind of southern, exquisite royalty of young Egyptian queens, Cleopatra or Nefertiti, Aida or Amneris. Probably, Petipa dreamed of such a silhouette and a similar face when he staged "The Pharaoh's Daughter", but God did not give Alla Shelest detachment, and even in the act of "Shadows" she remained Nikiya, who never managed to throw a monastery veil over herself, never who wanted to cool the heat and ardor of her unconscious, reckless, immeasurable passion. The spell of passion became the spell of the role, the most romantic role in the Russian ballet repertoire. And the gloomy romanticism of La Bayadère sparkled in its charm and beauty. The depth of the role was given by heightened psychologism, because in addition to the spell of passion, Shelest also played the severity of passion, that disastrous attachment on the verge of madness, from which Solor would have to flee in search of a calm haven, if the performance extended the logic of motivations to his role. proposed by Alla Shelest.

The heyday of Shelest fell on the years of the decline of the so-called "drambalet", but it was she who, almost alone, went in the direction in which the drama ballet went in the 30s - in the direction of psychological theater. Here, discoveries awaited her in a few new roles, and in many roles of the old repertoire. On the verge of the 1940s and 1950s, she interpreted La Bayadère as a psychological drama, moreover, one that was not and could not be written here, but which was being written in those years in far and inaccessible Paris. Of course, no one then read Anuyev's Medea. And few people understood that a rejected passion can destroy the world, or at least incinerate the strongest palace in the world. After all, we were brought up in a moral lesson taught by Giselle, and Giselle is a ballet about forgiveness, not about revenge. And only Shelest, with her sophisticated artistic instinct, felt (and understood with her refined mind) that in La Bayadère Petipa was having a temperamental argument with Giselle, that there was a different philosophy of passion and a different love story, and that the missing act in which lightning destroys the palace , there is a necessary resolution of the conflict, a psychological, and not a conditional plot denouement. Shelest, as it were, foresaw this non-existent act in the scene of “Shadows”, where her Nikiya-Shadow with her silent dance weaves a lace of such blood, albeit invisible ties that neither she nor Solor can break. But even earlier, in the “dance with the snake”, Shelest, also, perhaps unknown to herself, introduced obscure, but also ominous reflections. And then the "drambalet" ended and the metaphorical theater began. “Dance with a snake” is an acting epiphany and an acting masterpiece by Alla Shelest. In this tangle of twisted movements, clouded mind and confused feelings, from time to time, as in momentary flashes in a movie, Nikiya's psychological profile appeared, a clear outline of her true being, a clear picture of her true intentions. Self-immolation was played, which is what is provided for by the non-random episodes of the first act. And in the flexible and light body of Nikiya-Rustle, a maiden of fire was guessed, a salamander was guessed. The element of fire fascinated her, like Nikiya-Pavlova the element of air, and Nikiya-Semyonova the element of art.

The theoretical understanding of "La Bayadère" meanwhile went on as usual. Petipa's old ballet was appreciated only in the 20th century. First, in 1912, this was done by Akim Volynsky, who, with some surprise, stated - in three newspaper articles - the enduring virtues of the "Shadows" act. Then, more than half a century later, F. Lopukhov published his famous study of the act of “Shadows”, postulating and proving an unexpected thesis according to which “in terms of the principles of its composition, the scene of “Shadows” is very close to the form according to which the sonata allegro is built in music” Among the numerous ballet studies discoveries of Fyodor Vasilyevich Lopukhov, this discovery belongs to the main, most daring. Then Y. Slonimsky, in his excellent book The Dramaturgy of a Ballet Performance of the 19th Century (Moscow, 1977), for the first time allowed himself to evaluate La Bayadère in its entirety, although he cooled his research enthusiasm with numerous reservations so characteristic of him. Slonimsky considers "La Bayadère" in connection with the ballet "Sakuntala", staged in 1858 on the stage of the Paris Opera by Marius Petipa's elder brother Lucien. But! - and Slonimsky writes about this himself - in "Sakuntala" there is neither the image of the Shadow, nor, accordingly, the scene of "Shadows", and therefore the question of the sources of "La Bayadère" in its most important part remains unclear. What Slonimsky did not do, I. Sklyarevskaya did, already in the 80s, in the article “Daughter and Father”, published in the journal Our Heritage (1988, No. 5). Sklyarevskaya established and analyzed the lines of succession that connected La Bayadère with the ballet The Shadow, staged in St. Petersburg in 1839 by Taglioni the father for his daughter Maria. Sklyarevskaya has articles specially dedicated to La Bayadère. And so, for seventy-five years, enlightened Petersburg ballet researchers mastered this masterpiece, which at the beginning of the century seemed an outdated unique, a desperate anachronism. There is not much to add to what has already been written. But something is opening up now - to an unbiased look.

Of course, Slonimsky does not make a mistake when he recalls Sakuntala by Lucien Petipa, and Sklyarevskaya is absolutely right when she elevates La Bayadère to Filippo Taglioni's Shadow. The purely ballet origin of La Bayadère is obvious even to us, while the audience of the premiere had to catch the eye and, what is more important, it became a source of sharp, and for some, deep artistic impressions. La Bayadère is the first ever ballet on the themes of ballet. It is no coincidence - and we have already talked about that - one of the librettists was S. Khudekov, ballet historian and passionate balletomaniac, who lived all his life in the circle of ballet images and ballet associations. But it is possible to expand this circle and see La Bayadère from a wider perspective. La Bayadère is a grandiose montage, Petipa composes his performance, connecting the two main directions of romantic ballet theater: a colorful exotic ballet in the spirit of Coralli, Mazilier and Perrot and a monochrome "white ballet" in the style of Taglioni. That which competed and quarreled in the 1930s and 1940s, challenging the primacy, fighting for undivided success, was reconciled in the 70s, found its place and acquired its final meaning in the broad bosom of the great St. Petersburg spectacle. La Bayadère by Petipa is a virtuoso play with legendary artistic motifs, their skillful composition, polyphony of reminiscences, counterpoint of reflection and theatrical shadows. From an art history point of view, this is post-romanticism, a phenomenon somewhat similar to what we observe in modern postmodernism. But the difference is big. And it's completely obvious.

La Bayadère is not just a game, but also a further development of the original motives. And more than that - the limit, the fullness of the incarnation, the last word. The Parisian theater did not know such a bright exotic ballet, and never before has the "white ballet" received such a complex development. Petipa creates not only an extravaganza, but also an apotheosis, from ephemeral memories he builds an almost indestructible building, an almost miraculous form. There is no irony here that colors modern postmodernism. Moreover, there is no evil irony, no cynicism. On the contrary, everything is full of purely artistic passion. The artist Petipa passionately defends a model that already in his time, and even in his own eyes, seemed long outdated. Considerable courage was needed so that in 1877, already after Offenbach, who had buried romance, had died down (and echoes of the cancan are heard even in the music of La Bayadère), already after Arthur Saint-Leon, who had an unmistakable sense of the time, presented romantic dream as a delusion, as a disease from which it is necessary - and not difficult - to be cured (and Petipa himself did almost the same thing in Don Quixote), after all this and much more, at the time of the heyday of the everyday repertoire, which affirmed common sense as the highest the value of life and as a salvific landmark - at this very time to glorify the "white ballet", the theater of a great dream, and sing a song of praise to an unbridled savage girl. A savage who defends her mirages against the obvious and against the darkness of low truths.

Neither the "white ballet" nor the image of the savage Petipa will ever return. He will be beckoned—or forced—by the grand imperial style. Like Solora, he will be carried away by the eternal holiday; like Solor, he will trade freedom for a palace. Isn't that why the fiery, brightly sensual La Bayadère is so elegiac? Isn't that why such an exciting lyrical atmosphere fills the ballet? Its secret is that this is a farewell performance, farewell to the romantic repertoire. A long, painful and sweet farewell, if we mean the act of "Shadows", a short and terrible farewell, if we mean the "dance with a snake", the artist's farewell, if we mean the whole performance, the artist's farewell to his favorite characters, unforgettable companions of the burn life.

But in the sadness that is spilled in the scene of "Shadows", another motive, unexpected and bringing hope, comes through with a barely audible undertone. Strange to say, but with its internal logic this archaic (partly archival) ballet resembles nothing more than Chekhov's The Seagull. Here are the words of Nina Zarechnaya from the last scene of the fourth act: “And now, while I live here, I keep walking, I keep walking and thinking, thinking and feeling how my spiritual strength grows every day.” There is, of course, a difference between the Russian “walking” and the French pas de bourree, and this difference is great, but if Nina’s artless words are translated into the brilliant language of the Shadows act, then exactly what happens in this act will turn out. The canonical increase in tempo - from a slow entry-entre to a swift coda in the finale - also contains an unconventional subtext: the theme of liberation and spiritual growth. The appearance of Nikiya-Shadow herself in the entre, as it were, continues her life in the previous act. With joyless forced pas de bourre, she approaches Solor, who is standing motionless. Some invincible force draws her to him, some invisible bonds still bind and do not let her free. But then everything changes, changes before our eyes. Variations of Nikiya are steps towards liberation, liberation from the duet. Now Solor rushes to her. And in the author's edition, he did the same co-de-basques as she did, he himself became her shadow. The whole scene is a silent dialogue, reminiscent of the dialogue between Treplev and Nina. Having lost Nikiya, Solor lost everything. Nikiya, almost perishing, but having withstood a terrible blow, found herself in a new field - in art.

Fedor Lopukhov. "Choreographic revelations". M., 1972. S. 70

La Bayadère (1877) is Marius Petipa's last tragic ballet and the first in a series of his masterpieces. This is a colorful, slightly nostalgic farewell of the 58-year-old master of the St. Petersburg ballet with romantic illusions and melodrama close to his heart.

Until a very old age, Petipa remained a gallant admirer of the fair sex. For him, a woman is a symbol of ballet. Petipa assigned the modest role of the gallant cavalier of a beautiful lady to the man. This is the basis of his ballet aesthetics, according to the canons of which La Bayadère was created. The ballerina Ekaterina Vazem, the creator of the party Nikiya, writes about this in her memoirs. Her partner at the premiere at the St. Petersburg Bolshoi Theater was Lev Ivanov, the future director of the immortal swan scenes in Swan Lake.

"La Bayadère" - exemplary work one of the stylistic trends of the nineteenth century - eclecticism, which the French call either the style of Napoleon III, or neo-baroque. The era of eclecticism left wonderful works of art to posterity - the luxurious building of the Paris Opera and the casino in Monte Carlo by the architect Charles Garnier, paintings and engravings by Gustave Doré and Gustave Moreau.

What just "didn't mix up" in the first "La Bayadère"! A melodramatic story about the love of two perjurers, a classicist conflict of love and duty, a class conflict - the rivalry between a poor bayadère and the daughter of a rajah, even a finale blasphemous for the imperial scene: the death of rulers and courtiers under the ruins of a temple during the marriage of Solor and Gamzatti ... Moreover, it contains there was a huge number of solo, ensemble classical and character dances, majestic processions and game pantomime episodes, among which the famous “jealous scene of two rivals” - Nikiya and Gamzatti, was especially popular. But in La Bayadère there is both mysticism and symbolism: the feeling that from the first scene a “sword punishing from heaven” is raised above the heroes.

Ballet within a ballet

Of course, many creative personalities of the positivist nineteenth century gravitated towards mysticism, experienced an irresistible need for knowledge of the occult sciences, the homeland of which was considered the East. It is unlikely that Petipa belonged to them, most likely he unwittingly created his own “metaphysics”, his own “white East” in La Bayadère. The act of shadows (like the Ivanovo swans) is a ballet for the ages. A round dance of shadows descends along the gorge among the Himalayas (a shadow in the romantic tradition is the soul). Dancers in white tunics with hoops on their heads, to which, as well as to their arms, white balloon scarves imitating wings are attached. (The main character, Nikiya, also dances a variation with a scarf.)

An endless prayer or an oriental melody is reminiscent of their almost meditative move. They descend from the heavenly world in a symbolic "snake", and then line up in a rectangle - a sign of the earth. The number of shadows is also eloquent: at the premiere at the Bolshoi Kamenny Theater in St. Petersburg there were 64 (a perfect square!), later at the Mariinsky Theater - 32. These magic numbers will be encountered more than once in classical ballet - thirty-two swans in Swan Lake, sixty-four snowflakes in The Nutcracker. The dance of shadows hypnotizes, invariably plunging the audience into a state of unconsciously enthusiastic contemplation of beauty. Along the way, the act depicts the process of Solor's spiritual enlightenment. It begins with a lyrical nocturne, a memory of the "beloved shadow", and ends with a jubilant coda "forever together."

The fate of "La Bayadère" after Petipa

Over time, La Bayadere at the Mariinsky Theater (then the Kirov Opera Ballet Theater) underwent numerous alterations. The last act with the earthquake and the destruction of the temple has sunk into oblivion in the post-revolutionary years, then there were no technical means to show it. And the ballet itself was thoroughly edited and enriched with dances in 1941 by Vladimir Ponomarev and Vakhtang Chabukiani. For himself and Natalia Dudinskaya (Nikia) Chabukiani composed a duet meeting of the heroes in the first act, a large wedding pas of Solor and Gamzatti, including a male variation, in the second, using the music of the last, lost act. The ballet ended with the hero's suicide. But this scene was subsequently replaced by another one: Solor simply remains among the shadows... In 1948, Nikolai Zubkovsky staged for himself the famous most virtuoso variation of the Golden God, and Konstantin Sergeev staged a duet of Nikiya and a slave in the Raja's palace, when the bayadère comes to bless his daughter.

La Bayadère at the Bolshoi Theater

In 1904, choreographer Alexander Gorsky brought La Bayadère to the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre. Among the Moscow Nikiyas were Lyubov Roslavleva and Ekaterina Geltser. And the party of Solor was played by both the temperamental violator of the academic "calm" Mikhail Mordkin, and the orthodox classic Vasily Tikhomirov. Subsequently, Gorsky turned to this performance more than once. And in 1917 he composed his own edition, which was designed in the "Hindu" spirit by Konstantin Korovin. Being influenced by Siamese ballet and monuments of Hindu fine arts, especially coinage, Gorsky the innovator abandoned Petipa's compositions. For the sake of plausibility, he dressed the shadow performers in colorful sari-like costumes. The culmination of Gorsky's "La Bayadère" was the "wedding feast", which was replete with groups with bizarre dance lines and patterns.

In 1923, a supporter of classical ballet Vasily Tikhomirov restored the act of shadows in the choreography of Marius Petipa, placing additional pupils of the school on ledges and cliffs, which repeated the movements of the corps de ballet. This edition was the Moscow debut of Marina Semyonova, one of the best Nikias of her time. During the war years, the ballet was resumed in a branch of the theater, the main part was danced by Sofya Golovkina. Then twice (in 1961 and 1977) only the Kingdom of Shadows appeared in the repertoire, where Solor's variation was transferred.

And only in 1991, Yuri Grigorovich returned Marius Petipa to the Bolshoi Full-length Ballet, reviving the Mariinsky Theater original if possible. Grigorovich retained the old choreography, many mise-en-scenes, but "strengthened" the direction of the ballet. He composed a number of new dances for fakirs, negro children, corps de ballet, enriched the dances of the parts of Gamzatti and Solor, which now have new variations both in the palace scene and in the wedding grand pas.

Violetta Mainiece
(text from the booklet to the performance, given with abbreviations)

Replica of an old play

When the historical building of the Bolshoi was closed for renovation, La Bayadère began to be given for New stage. And then, upon completion of the repair, they returned it to its rightful place, rightfully belonging to it. During the performance of the performance, the scenery has noticeably aged. In addition, they had to be adapted to the much smaller scale of the New Stage.

So, for the solemn return to the historical stage of the Bolshoi Theater, it was decided to create a new stage edition, “dressed” in new scenery and costumes. Yuri Grigorovich turned to his longtime colleague - Valery Leventhal, who had been the chief artist of the Bolshoi Theater for a long time, who in 1991 led a team of scenery and costume creators based on the sketches of the first St. Petersburg production (1877).

It was no longer possible to assemble that team in the previous composition. However, Nikolai Sharonov, a student of Valery Yakovlevich Leventhal, who in 1991 was practically just starting his career as a theater artist, “responded” to it. He - like twenty years ago, under the strict guidance of his master - created a new stage design for "La Bayadère" and dressed her characters in new costumes.

Nikolay Sharonov:

– In 1991, when we were working on our first La Bayadere, the general fascination with authenticity had not yet begun. And it was a brilliant foresight of Valery Yakovlevich Levental, who told us that we need to make a "replica of an old performance." What could be the most interesting and exciting - umber, sepia, patina of antiquity, the viewer watches the ballet, as if leafing through an old book. And we tried to create the image of such a performance ourselves, naturally, relying on the knowledge that we possessed, but without thoroughly reproducing any particular picture.

It was exciting game to some fictitious India, which I have now continued, but somewhat strengthening its Indian motif. Of course, this India is very conditional - a fantastic space, akin to China, which was in the imagination of Carlo Gozzi. And yet. The forest is now more like a jungle. I tried to enhance this feeling of the jungle, so that, on the one hand, the scenery looked more impressive and fresh, and on the other hand, a little more Indian, which, in my opinion, does not violate its conventions at all. The temple is more like a Hindu temple than a garden pavilion. It has acquired a specific pommel, has become more elongated in length, the window is not located fifteen centimeters from the edge of the wall. It is open, it glows from within... I reviewed a lot of material on Indian architecture - and not only on architecture.

I found a sacred tree - "religious ficus", as Boris Grebenshchikov sang... In the wedding scene, I wanted to emphasize the solemnity and festivity of the moment, for which the scenery was made more impressive and "detailed". And the Shadows in the last act are now descending towards us - all the angles of the movement of their "chain" were absolutely not affected, it was carefully verified - from the real mountains, to the middle of the stage, equally accessible to the eyes of everything auditorium.

Natalya Shadrina

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NOUVPO HUMANITARIAN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF MODERN DANCE DEPARTMENT OF DANCE DISCIPLINES

in the discipline "Composition and staging of dance"

Features of the composition of the act "Shadows" in Marius Petipa's ballet "La Bayadère"

student Darya Shulmina Supervisor: Kozeva Maria Borisovna

Yekaterinburg 201

Introduction

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

The object of this study is M. Petipa's ballet "La Bayadère".

The subject of the study is the features of the compositional structure of the act "Shadows" from the ballet "La Bayadère". The relevance of the study lies in the need to draw the attention of ballet theater practitioners to the masterpieces of the past, to the best examples of classical choreography, the importance of which in professional education and outlook has often been underestimated in recent times. The purpose of the study is to identify a number of theoretical conclusions, as well as practical opportunities that may be useful to ballet practitioners both when working with their own productions in the "ballet suite" genre in the field of "pure dance", and can help them acquire in-depth knowledge of the history of this issue. The research method is the study of historical and research material on the ballet "La Bayadère" and the scene of "Shadows" itself, as well as the analysis of the author's own spectator and practical experience, his understanding of the structure and style of this choreographic work. The materials for the study were the theoretical works of reputable ballet experts and choreographers, as well as viewing the canonical version of the play "La Bayadère" staged by the Mariinsky Theater. The significance of the work carried out is quite high both from a theoretical and practical point of view, since it analyzes in depth and detail the main features of the whole direction in choreography, which provides a large field for use and analysis contemporary choreographers. The structure of the work: the work consists of an introduction, three chapters (the first chapter gives a brief history performance and the scene itself, the second focuses on "Shadows" as a phenomenon of "pure dance", the third refers to the compositional and structural features of the suite), the conclusion and the scientific apparatus.

1. From the history of the creation of the choreographic painting "Shadows" in Marius Petipa's ballet "La Bayadère"

The ballet "La Bayadère" is one of the oldest ballet performances in the Russian ballet repertoire. Its premiere took place in 1877. According to the plot, the noble Indian warrior Solor falls in love with the temple dancer Nikiya, but marriage with her is impossible for him. However, Solor pledges his love to Nikiya. Further events develop tragically. Solor agrees to marry the daughter of Raja Gamzatti, who, having learned about the love of the bayadère and Solor, sets up the death of Nikiya during her performance of the wedding dance at the wedding of Solor and Gamzatti. However, this tragic love story does not end there. The inconsolable Solor meets his beloved again in magical visions. But in reality, all those responsible for the death of Nikiya are waiting for the punishment of the gods - during the wedding ceremony, the temple collapses, burying everyone under the rubble.

The part of Nikiya was created for the ballerina Ekaterina Vazem in her benefit performance, the role of Solor was played by the leading dancer, the future colleague-choreographer of Petipa himself, Lev Ivanov. The premiere of the performance traditionally took place at the Bolshoi Theater of St. Petersburg. The best theatrical artists have created a picturesque design for the ballet. The music was written by the theatre's staff composer Ludwig Minkus.

After the first performance, the performance went through a number of reconstructions. Even during the life of the author in 1884 and in 1900, altered editions appeared, mainly differing in design.

After the death of Marius Petipa, his legacy began to be actively rearranged and revised. The ballet "La Bayadère" was affected by this trend in 1912. Dancer of the Mariinsky Theater Nikolai Legat realized his version. The famous critic of those times, Akim Volynsky, was extremely skeptical about this version of the play. He reproached Nikolai Legat for simplifying the ballet, for unnecessary abbreviations, cuts. But nevertheless, the ballet remained in the repertoire. After the revolution, they decided to resume the ballet. In the new version, the role of Nikiya was performed by Olga Spesivtseva, Solora by Wiltzack and Gamzatti by Romanova, the mother of the outstanding Soviet ballerina Galina Sergeevna Ulanova.

An important fact in the history of the stage life of this ballet was that over the years the fourth act was abolished. There are many versions of the disappearance of the grand finale. In a series of legends and myths on this subject, the choreographer Fyodor Lopukhov testifies that the fourth act was not given because there were no workers who could destroy the temple. There is another version that in 1924 there was a flood in St. Petersburg, and the scenery of the fourth act perished. There is also an “ideological” version that the “wrath of the gods”, destroying the temple in the finale, is an inappropriate end to the Soviet ballet performance.

A new version appeared in 1941 with the participation of V. Chabukiani and V. Ponomarev. And today we see a performance of 1941 on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater. A number of inevitable choreographic changes were introduced into the production, but the general style, plot and finale remained the same. In another leading theater of the country, in the Bolshoi, today there is also a production by Y. Grigorovich that has become a classic.

In 2002, in St. Petersburg, the famous restorer of authentic versions of classical ballets, Sergei Vikharev, made an attempt to restore La Bayadère from the late 1890s, but it did not last long in the repertoire, showing the unviability of the original finale. And today we know the performance, which ends on a beautiful lyrical and sublime note - the scene of "Shadows".

Note that the experience whole line recasting, the performance retained the famous scene of "Shadows", which is one of the pinnacles of Petipa's work and an outstanding masterpiece choreographic art generally.

2. "Shadows" as the embodiment of the tradition of "pure dance"

choreographic ballet dance compositional

The ballet La Bayadère, created by the famous choreographer Marius Petipa in 1877, today is a ballet "classic" and is presented on all the leading world and Russian theater stages. Of course, there are reasons for this vitality of a ballet staged over a hundred years ago. One of them is undoubtedly the famous “Shadows” scene from the third act of the play, which “went down in the history of ballet as one of the most remarkable achievements of Petipa.” Let us turn to historical and research materials, as well as to the modern stage version of the performance (let's take the production of the Mariinsky Theater as canonical) and analyze what the choreographic genius, the features of the structure and imagery of this outstanding work of the ballet theater are.

The most authoritative researcher of the history of Russian ballet V. Krasovskaya writes: “The next act of La Bayadere went down in the history of ballet as one of the most remarkable achievements of Petipa. Solor, tormented by repentance, smoked opium, and, in a host of other shadows, the shadow of Nikiya appeared to him. In this act, any signs of national color were removed. Specific details disappeared, giving way to lyrical generalizations. The action was transferred to another plan. It stopped, or rather stopped. There were no events, but there were feelings. The dance here was likened to music, conveying both the background of the picture and its emotional and effective content.

First of all, we note that the main expressive means of this choreographic picture is the so-called "pure dance". It is customary to call pure dance in the ballet theater such passages in performances in which the movements themselves do not carry a certain semantic or effective load, but are a visible expression of music, the inspiration of the choreographer, and express not the vicissitudes of the plot, but an emotionally filled and sublime generalized choreographic action. Such scenes include the romantic "white-tunic" second acts from the ballets "La Sylphide" and "Giselle", as well as the famous swan paintings from the ballet " Swan Lake". Creating "Shadows" Marius Petipa as a whole repelled the achievements of the romantic ballet of the early 19th century, which brought "pure dance" to the stage. Undoubtedly, he recalled the dances of the light-winged sylphs from F. Taglioni's ballet and the most beautiful ensembles of the wilysses from J. Perrot's Giselle. The use of "pure dance" can rightfully be called one of the methods of ballet theater, which helps to create a special stage atmosphere and give stage action extraordinary expressiveness. The researcher writes, noting the relationship between La Bayadère and productions of the past: “La Bayadere itself feeds on the memories and reminiscences of the theater of the 1930s, this is a nostalgic ballet, the first nostalgic ballet in the history of ballet theater. The lyrics of nostalgia covertly permeate it, spiritualize the rough melodramatic fabric and openly pour out in the scene of "Shadows" - a grandiose choreographic round dance. What does Petipa remember? Young years romantic theatre.<…>The act of "Shadows" is full of memories of the era of "Sylphs" ... ".

But, we note that Petipa, the greatest master of the ballet theater of the second half of the 19th century, the real creator of Russian ballet, when creating the choreographic picture "Shadows" in the ballet "La Bayadère", did not just nostalgic and followed the romantic tradition, but repelled from his own experience, used his own choreographic dictionary and, within the framework of its style, refracted the ideas of “white ballet” and “pure dance”.

First of all, the strictness of the ensemble and constructions distinguish them from the romantic tradition of "Shadows". It is known that the ballet of the era of romanticism gravitated toward asymmetric groups, to attempts to depict “artistic disorder” on the stage, to create the illusion of drawings that did not clearly conceived and built in advance, but spontaneously appeared before the viewer. The Petipa tradition is the complete opposite. When staging mass dances, the choreographer always proceeded from the principles of order and symmetry. And the total number of dancers also testified to the intention of the choreographer to comply with his aesthetic principles. Initially, 64 corps de ballet dancers participated in the scene of "Shadows". Subsequently, this number was reduced to 32. However, in either variation, the dancers can be divided into 4 equal groups (or even fewer) so that they can fill the stage or disappear backstage in a strict order.

Separately, let's also say about the costumes, which also corresponded to the color of Petipa's ballets. The long "Chopin" tunics of the wilis and sylphs were replaced by identical white tutus with white gauze scarves covering the shoulders of the ballerinas at the beginning of the scene.

If you think about the semantic load of the "white ballet", then here Petipa absolutely obeyed the romantic tradition. There is no action in the scene, only the expression of music through dance, which Petipa's talent has made perfect. On the whole, the music of Minkus, which was divided into separate numbers according to the ballet tradition of those years, did not interfere with him. Petipa raised the music to the level of his ingenious choreography. The choreographer F. Lopukhov wrote in confirmation: “I consider “Shadows” as a composition of pure dance, built on the basis of sonata forms in music. Here Petipa has no equal. The former choreographers, and even the current ones, have no attempts to create the so-called grands pas classiques, that is, more works of classical dance on a sonata basis, with the participation of the corps de ballet and soloists. Perhaps F. Lopukhov is not quite fair to his contemporaries, rejecting their attempts to create detailed choreographic forms, but he is absolutely right in that it was Petipa who was the unsurpassed creator of dance scenes, but the beauty and harmony of construction similar to the symphonic form in music. Petipa, owning musical notation and professionally versed in music, he felt and understood the need for the main choreographic theme, counterpoint, melody in the dance suite, which is the “Shadows”. Here is one of the components of the success of this picture. The choreographer took into account and heard all the features of the musical material. Moreover, he worked out the musical material with the composer in advance, indicating what forms, tempos and emotional coloring he needed in different parts of Shadows.

As a result, Petipa created the most beautiful dance suite, which is completely in the field of "pure dance", but at the same time, being devoid of a plot and operating only in the field of generalizations, it has an incredible effect. emotional impact on the viewer. In fact, "Shadows" is a "ballet in a ballet", it is a complete choreographic work, an island of plotless "pure dance" within the framework of a large plot performance that carries its own meaning and has a special choreographic and figurative integrity.

3. Basic expressive means and compositional features Scenes of "Shadows"

Undoubtedly, the main expressive means of "Shadows" are the choreography itself and the composition of the choreographic picture. Petipa equally masterfully used and revealed both of these components. First of all, the master created beautiful and varied dances, in which he showed his entire arsenal of movements and deep knowledge of the classical vocabulary. Petipa also proposed a wonderful constructive solution for the scene and combined in it the compositional elements that make up an ideal whole.

A correctly composed composition is an opportunity for the choreographer to control not only what is happening on the stage, paying attention to different elements of the performance and combining them in the right proportions, but also a way to control the viewer's attention. The extended suite of dances is a complex genre that combines the dances of the corps de ballet, and variations of luminaries and pas de deux soloists. At the same time, it is necessary to create full-fledged choreographic statements for all participants in the action, while maintaining the hierarchy and placing the performers of the main parts in the center of the action. Too long corps de ballet dances can make the action blurry and boring. Variations of luminaries set too early will shift the semantic accents. Only the correct distribution of all these elements will bring success. It was in this skill, based on many years of staging experience, that Petipa helped create an ideal large form.

The suite begins traditionally, with the entrance of the corps de ballet. From the very beginning of the picture, the viewer is enveloped in a lyrical sensual haze of dance. The first appearance of shadows that seem to appear from a Himalayan rock is a famous episode that shows how the talent of a choreographer can create a whole symphony of dances from a few simple movements.

V. Krasovskaya very accurately describes this moment: “The first step of the shadow dancer was an arabesque directed forward. But immediately she leaned back, her arms stretched back, as if she were being drawn back to herself by the mysterious darkness of the cave. However, the next dancer was already standing there, repeating the begun plastic motive. In the endlessly repeating movement of the arabesque, a measured procession of shadows developed, gradually filling the entire scene. Forming groups and lines, the performers did not violate the symmetrical correctness of the dance. The leg slowly unfolded on the rise, the body bent after the arms thrown back, asserting in different versions the main ornament of the dance. It was as if the clouds swirled around the mountain peaks.

Further, following the already declared principle of symmetry and harmony, the shadows performed a series of movements in unison. It should be noted that all this antre, that is, the introduction, the first performance of the choreographic theme, is staged at a rather slow pace and lasts several minutes, which, nevertheless, does not make it boring or drawn out, but, on the contrary, allows you to immerse yourself completely in the metidativity of the dance and get into his mood. And this is an undoubted confirmation of the high talent of the choreographer.

Further, according to the principle of a large choreographic form, the general shadow dance begins with a number of transitions, with a repetition of the choreographic leitmotif. After a mass excerpt, but in a traditional pattern for Petipa, three soloists appeared in the ensemble and performed the so-called “trio of shadows”. At the same time, the corps de ballet also participates in the action, framing the dance of the luminaries.

V. Krasovskaya describes the nature of the variations exhaustively and briefly: “The first was a chirping variation, all in small crystal drifts. The second was built on high cabrioles: the legs thrown forward, hitting one against the other, cut the air in front of the dancer, her arms opened wide and strong. The variation, almost masculine in pace, created the image of a Valkyrie prancing in the heavenly spaces. The drawing of the third was again femininely soft, creeping.

Petipa was not only a remarkable creator of slender and complete ballet ensembles and compositions. He also had an almost endless dance vocabulary and great combination. Therefore, each individual variation created by the choreographer is an independent little masterpiece of classical dance. Petipa also paid great attention to the use of different tempos and characters, which was expressed in three variations of shadows, in which small jumping and finger techniques are presented, “big” jumps, as well as aplomb and adagio tempos.

Speaking of the trio and not forgetting that Shadows belongs to the tradition of “pure dance”, let us recall three variations of the wilis from the second act of Giselle, which undoubtedly echo the dances from La Bayadère.

Throughout the entire scene, the corps de ballet continues to accompany the solo dances. Petipa here clearly creates not only an original dance, but is also the forerunner of the swan constructions that the witness and participant in the production of La Bayadère Lev Ivanov in the ballet Swan Lake will masterfully achieve. But the center of the picture is undoubtedly the duet of Nikiya and Solor, built according to all the rules of the classical pas de deux and consisting of adagio, variations and coda. In addition to being an independent element of the performance, this duet is, of course, interconnected with the wedding pas de deux of Solor and Gamzatti from the second act and is a lyrical counterpoint to the solemn and ceremonial style of dancing at the wedding.

It should be noted that the duet of Nikiya and Solor Petipa staged it in a completely different way, completely subordinating this dance to the general lyricism and cantilena of the action of "Shadows". We are accustomed to the fact that a large classical duet of a ballerina and a soloist is an action “for the public”, this is an opportunity to brilliantly show the dance technique, virtuosity. In "Shadows" there is absolutely no "delivery" of the dance. The most complex adagio with a scarf is performed in an elegiac slow-motion manner, showing not so much how stable the ballerina is during the spin, but how absorbed Solor is in the vision of dancing Nikiya. The variations, which in general, of course, demonstrate the technical arsenal of the artists, are also imbued with the atmosphere of the stage, its detachment and lyricism. The choreographer has made every effort here to ensure that the movements and poses do not demonstrate themselves, but sound like an endless beautiful dance symphony.

And again, V. Krasovskaya perfectly describes the essence of the scene: “Alternating with three variations of soloists, the ballerina’s dance, extremely virtuoso in form, was perceived as visible music - disturbing and passionate, sad and tender, although not one of the movements separately carried a specific content and only their whole complex created the emotional richness of the dance. The upward movements, the flying away accents of the poses merged with the ups and downs of the music: the simple melody became more complicated and ennobled by the harmonious harmony of the dance. The dancer ceased to be an actress."

Indeed, in this scene there is no Solor the war and Nikiya the bayadère as such. And instead, there are dancers who, with their movements and bodies, create a soulful dance group. This is precisely the essence of “pure dance”, which raises us above everyday topics, above the ordinary and takes us to the world of high art and beauty. And here once again we recall the identical white tutus of ballerinas, devoid of any national traits or simply dyeing, clearly symbolizing the generalized expressive sphere of the “white ballet”. We agree with F. Lopukhov that “in the white-tunic picture of the 3rd act there are no ghosts, just as there is no plot action of the ballet. This is a poetic allegory. The scene of shadows arising after the death of Nikiya is perceived as an image of the beauty and joy of being.

It should be noted that in the finale of the scene, the bravura music of Minkus sounds somewhat dissonant, who wrote the fast rhythmic coda, traditional for the final part of the grand pas, but even this musical theme Petipa managed to subordinate to his talent and fit into the fabric of the dance action. At the end of the general dance, after the spins of the ballerina and the virtuoso jumps of the premiere, all 32 shadows and soloists again gather in a strict composition in a strict mise-en-scène. The scene of “Shadows” and the performance are completed by an effective episode of the farewell of Solor and the spirit of the deceased bayadère leaving him. The point is set, the love story is completed.

In addition to the wonderful composition and incredible structural integrity that have already been revealed above, we note that one of the most valuable qualities of a choreographic work is its understandability for the viewer. And here Petipa reached great heights. Not only did he manage to give real lyrical power to Minkus' music thanks to ingenious choreography, the choreographer managed to create a masterpiece of choreographic art, the emotional sphere of which is able to reach every spectator, even if he is completely far from the world of choreography. The beauty of the dance, its lyrical power touches the soul, they achieve their highest goal, involving the viewer in what is happening and forcing them to empathize with the work of art. On the whole, summing up, we can say that the stage of "Shadows" is one of the pinnacles of Petipa's work, created before his collaboration with P. Tchaikovsky, but at the same time full of real dance symphony. Created in the field of "pure dance", the painting "Shadows" reflects all the main semantic features of this direction - it is built on a plotless dance, which itself is an action, it does not tell a household plot, but is an exalted hymn to feelings as such.

Petipa's "White Ballet" became not only a hymn to the master's talent and a lyrical manifestation of his talent, he was the conductor of this wonderful stylistic trend from the era of romanticism to the 20th century. If there were no "Shadows" by Petipa, Lev Ivanov would not have created magnificent "swan paintings" in "Swan Lake". If it were not for these two performances, it is quite possible that the genius of George Balanchine would not have been revealed, for whom the sphere of “pure dance” and “white ballet” became the leitmotif of creativity and who raised plotless dance to a new level. Thus, "Shadows" is both an independent choreographic masterpiece and a step towards the development of "pure dance".

Conclusion

In the undertaken study, one of the masterpieces of choreography of the 19th century was analyzed, namely, the scene of "Shadows" from M. Petipa's ballet "La Bayadère".

The ballet "La Bayadère" is one of the performances of the classical heritage, which has been included in the repertoire of the world's leading ballet theaters for a century and a half. The reasons for such viability are the talented choreography, the ideal construction of the performance, as well as its stage design. All these components are collected in La Bayadère, and the scene of Shadows is their real apotheosis. Created in the genre of "pure dance", the picture sang the beauty and emotional depth of classical dance, and also became one of the highest achievements of Petipa as the creator of large ensembles.

The theoretical experience of studying this dance work is an understanding of the style of one of the greatest choreographers of the 19th century, as well as the opportunity to trace the evolution of ballet art and specifically the sphere of “pure dance” from the era of romanticism to the 20th century. Also important is the opportunity to get to know a textbook performance for a ballet professional.

The practical application of this study is an opportunity for modern choreographers to understand in detail how classical ensemble dance was created, how the “large form” evolved, and what are the main features that distinguish “white ballet” and are its quintessence. Practitioners of choreography, creating their works, can rely on the experience of this study and on the main features of the dance suite, created in the field of "pure dance", identified in it. Also, professionals can better understand the essence of "white ballet" as a special phenomenon in ballet art.

List of used literature

1. 100 ballet librettos. L.: Muzyka, 1971. 334 p.

2. Ballet. Encyclopedia. M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1981. 678 p.

3. Choreographer Marius Petipa. Articles, studies, reflections. Vladimir: Folio, 2006. 368 p.

4. Vazem E.O. Notes of a ballerina of the St. Petersburg Bolshoi Theatre. 1867-1884. St. Petersburg: Music Planet, 2009. 448 p.

5. Gaevsky V. Divertissement. Moscow: Art, 1981. 383 p.

6. Krasovskaya V. Russian ballet theater of the second half of the XIX century. Moscow: Art, 1963. 533 p.

7. Krasovskaya V. Articles about ballet. L.: Art, 1971. 340 p.

8. Marius Petipa. Materials. Memories. Articles. L.: Art, 1971. 446 p.

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