Premiere by Alexander Ekman at the Paris Opera. Choreographer Alexander Ekman about modern ballet and social networks Alexander Ekman Swan Lake
The programs are named after the choreographers. Following the first - “Lifar. Kilian. Forsythe" - they showed the dance quartet: "Balanchine. Taylor. Garnier. Ekman. In total - seven names and seven ballets. The ideas of the persistent Frenchman, ex-etoile of the Paris Opera, are easy to read. Hilaire is in no hurry to lead the team entrusted to him along the historically established path of multi-act plot canvases, he prefers a serpentine of one-acts of different styles to them (two more programs of a similar format are planned). The troupe, which in the recent past survived the departure of almost three dozen young artists, recovered in record time and looks worthy in premiere opuses. The progress is especially noticeable, given that Hilaire does not yet open the gates of the theater to "invited" artists and diligently nurtures his own team.
The first in the premiere was George Balanchine's Serenade, which the Stanislavites had never danced before. With this romantic elegy to the music of Tchaikovsky, the American period of the great choreographer, who opened a ballet school in the New World in early 1934, begins. For his first students, who had not yet mastered the grammar of dance well, but dreamed of the classics, Balanchine staged the Serenade, Russian in spirit. Crystal, ethereal, weightless. The artists of the Muztheater lead the performance in the same way as the first performers. It is as if they are carefully touching a fragile treasure - they also lack internal mobility, which the choreographer insisted on, but the desire to comprehend something new is evident. Submission and reverence for a poetic creation, however, is preferable to vivacity and courage, with which the troupes, confident in their skill, dance the Serenade. Women's corps de ballet - the main thing actor opus - comes to life in the dreams of a sleepless night, when it is already receding before the morning dawn. Erika Mikirticheva, Oksana Kardash, Natalya Somova, as well as the "princes" Ivan Mikhalev and Sergey Manuilov, who dreamed of their nameless heroines, look great in the plotless mood composition.
Three other premiere productions are unfamiliar to Muscovites. "Halo" is a sunny, life-affirming gesture by Paul Taylor, a modernist choreographer who talks about the nature of movement. The dynamic spectacular dance is constantly transforming, reminiscent of an independent disposition, breaks the usual poses and jumps, the arms either braid like branches, or jump up like gymnasts jumping off sports equipment. The choreography, which was perceived as innovative half a century ago, is saved by drive and humor, lightning-fast switching from serious maxims to ironic escapades. Barefoot Natalya Somova, Anastasia Pershenkova and Elena Solomyanko, dressed in white dresses, demonstrate a taste for elegant contrasts in the composition. Georgi Smilevsky, the pride of the theater and its outstanding premiere, is responsible for the slow part, able to bring dramatic tension, style and festive beauty to the solo. Dmitry Sobolevsky is a virtuoso, fearless and emotional. Surprisingly, Handel's ceremonial music is easily "accepted" by Taylor's fantasies, unfolding a real dance marathon. Both performances, recreating different styles American choreography, accompanied by symphony orchestra theater under the direction of the talented maestro Anton Grishanin.
After Tchaikovsky and Handel - a phonogram and a duet of accordionists Christian Pache and Gerard Baraton "accompanying" a 12-minute miniature of the French choreographer Jacques Garnier "Onis". The performance to the music of Maurice Pasha was rehearsed by the ex-director ballet troupe Paris Opera and Laurent Hilaire's associate Brigitte Lefevre. In the Theater of Silence, founded by her together with Jacques Garnier, in a series of experiments with modern choreography Forty years ago, the first show of Onis took place. The choreographer dedicated it to his brother and performed it himself. Later he reworked the composition for three soloists, whose dance in the current presentation resembles tart homemade wine, slightly hitting the head. The guys, connected if not by kinship, then by strong friendship, provocatively and without any whining talk about how they grew up, fell in love, got married, nursed children, worked, had fun. An uncomplicated action to the unpretentious enumeration of nuggets-“harmonists”, which usually sound at village holidays, takes place in Onys, a small province of France. Yevgeny Zhukov, Georgi Smilevsky Jr., Innokenty Yuldashev are youthfully spontaneous and perform with passion, in fact, variety number flavored with folklore flavor.
Swede Alexander Ekman is known as a joker and a master of curiosities. At the Benois de la Danse festival, for his Lake of the Swans, he wanted to install the main Russian theater a pool with six thousand liters of water and run dancing artists there. Was refused and improvised a funny solo with a glass of water, calling it "What I think about in Bolshoi Theater". A scattering of eccentric finds was also remembered by his "Cactus".
In "Tulle" Ekman dissects not the dance, but the theater life. Shows its sweaty inside, ritual basis, ironically over the ambitions and clichés of the performers. An overseer in black at Anastasia Pershenkova's wobbling gait on pointe shoes, from which her troupe heroically does not descend, mows down under a coquettish model diva. The artists are concentrating on the stupidities of naive pantomime, again and again repeating boring steps of exercise. The tired corps de ballet falls into despair - exhausted artists lose their synchronism, bend in half, stomp their feet, slap the stage heavily and with full feet. How can you believe that they recently slipped on your fingertips.
And Ekman never ceases to amaze with eclecticism, bringing to the stage either a couple from the court ballet of the “Sun King” of Louis XIV, or inquisitive tourists with cameras. Against the backdrop of mass madness that has engulfed the stage, the orchestra pit “jumps” up and down, the screen images of unknown eyes and faces change, the running line of translation rushes at a gallop. Score compiled by Mikael Karlsson from hit songs dance rhythms, cod and noise, the clatter of pointe shoes and claps, the scores in the rehearsal room and the lowing of the corps de ballet, practicing the swan step, makes you dizzy. Excessiveness harms the harmony of a humorous plot, taste suffers. It is good that artists are not lost in this mass choreographic fun. Everyone bathes in the elements of a playful game, joyfully and lovingly making fun of the crazy world behind the scenes. The best scene of Tulle is the grotesque circus pas de deux. Oksana Kardash and Dmitry Sobolevsky in clown outfits are having fun with their tricks, surrounded by colleagues counting the number of fouettes and pirouettes. Just like in the movie "Big" by Valery Todorovsky.
The Music Theatre, always open to experimentation, easily masters the unfamiliar expanses of world choreography. The goal - to show how the dance developed and how professional and audience preferences changed - has been achieved. The performances are also arranged in strict chronology: 1935 - "Serenade", 1962 - "Halo", 1979 - "Onis", 2012 - "Tulle". In total - almost eight decades. The picture turns out to be curious: from the classic masterpiece of Balanchine, through the sophisticated modernism of Paul Taylor and the folkloric stylization of Jacques Garnier, to the brawl of Alexander Ekman.
Photo on the announcement: Svetlana Avvakum
The Opera Garnier hosted the most intriguing event of the Paris season - the world premiere of the ballet "Play" ("The Game") by composer Mikael Karlsson, staged and set by one of the most sought-after young choreographers Alexander Ekman. For Swedish creative duet this is my first experience with the Paris Opera Ballet. Tells Maria Sidelnikova.
The debut of 33-year-old Alexander Ekman at the Paris Opera is one of the main trump cards of Aurélie Dupont in her first season as artistic director of the ballet. The success of the choreographer in Sweden and neighboring Scandinavian countries turned out to be so contagious that today he is in great demand both in Europe and in Australia, and even the Moscow Stanislavsky Museum Theater recently performed the Russian premiere of his 2012 performance "Tulle" (see "Kommersant" dated November 28 ). Dupont lured Ekman to a full-fledged two-act premiere, providing carte blanche, 36 young artists, historical scene Opera Garnier and an enviable time in the schedule - the December holiday session.
However, artistic, and even more so commercial risks in the case of Ekman are small. Despite his youth, the Swede managed to work in the world's best troupes both as a dancer and as a choreographer: in the Swedish royal ballet, Ballet Kulberg, in NDT II. And I got the hang of making high-quality synthetic performances, in which, as in a fascinating hypertext, a lot of quotations and references are piled up - and not only on the ballet heritage, but also on Parallel Worlds contemporary art, fashion, cinema, circus and even social networks. Ekman seasons all this with the “new sincerity” of the new century and creates as if his concern is to cheer up the viewer so that he leaves the performance, if not like from a reception at a good psychotherapist, then like from a good party. Local balletomanes-conservatives pronounced their verdict on such a “IKEA” attitude to the venerable ballet art long before the premiere, which, however, did not affect the general excitement.
Ekman starts his "Game" from the end. On a closed theatrical curtain, credits run with the names of all those involved in the premiere (there will be no time for that in the final), and a quartet of saxophonists - street musicians - is playing something uplifting. The entire first act flies by on an unpretentious note: young hipsters frolic uncontrollably on the snow-white stage (from the scenery there is only a tree and huge cubes that either float in the air or fall onto the stage; the orchestra sits right there - in the depths on the built balcony). They play hide and seek, pretend to be astronauts and queens, build pyramids, jump on trampolines, walk around the stage with a wheel, kiss and laugh. There is in this group a conditional ringleader (Simon Le Borne) and a conditional teacher who tries in vain to rein in the naughty. In the second act, grown-up children will turn into blinkered clerks, playful skirts and shorts will be changed to business suits, cubes will turn into dusty workplaces, the green tree will defiantly dry up, the world around will turn gray. In this airless space, if there is smoke like a rocker, it is only in the office smoking room. Here they played, now they stopped, but in vain, says the choreographer. For the completely dull, just in case, he main idea pronounces, inserting in the middle of the second act a "manifesto about the game" as a panacea for all ills modern society, and in the finale, gospel singer Calesta Day will also sing instructively about the same.
But still, Alexander Ekman expresses himself most convincingly in the choreographic language and visual images, which are inseparable for him. So, in the children's games of the first act, a completely unchildish scene slips through with the Amazons in corporal tops and boxers and in horned helmets on their heads. Matched appearance Ekman picks up moves well, alternating sharp pointe combinations and predatory, icy pas de chas with two bent legs following the line of the horn. He loves a spectacular picture no less than the same Pina Bausch. The German woman in her The Rite of Spring strewed the floor of the stage with earth, making it part of the scenery, and Ekman covered the Stockholm Opera with hay (Dream in midsummer night”), drowned the Norwegian Opera in tons of water (“Swan Lake”), and a hail of hundreds of plastic balls rained down on the Opera Garnier stage, arranging orchestra pit ball pool. Young people make an enthusiastic face, purists - peevish. Moreover, unlike the Norwegian trick with water, from which Ekman could not swim anywhere, in the "Game" the green hail becomes a powerful culmination of the first act. It looks like a tropical downpour promising rebirth: the rhythm that the balls beat as they fall sounds like a pulse, and the bodies are so contagiously light and loose that you want to put an end to it. Because after the intermission, this pool will turn into a swamp: where the artists just dived and fluttered carelessly, now they are hopelessly bogged down - no way to get through. Each movement requires such effort from them, as if plastic balls were indeed replaced with weights. Voltage adult life Ekman puts them into the bodies of the dancers - “turns off” their elbows, circles “two shoulders, two hips”, makes their backs iron, mechanically twists their torsos in given poses in given directions. It seems to repeat the merry classic pas de deux of the first act (one of the few solo episodes - the Swede really feels freer in crowd scenes), but the same strokes, attitudes and support in arabesque are dead and formal - there is no life in them.
You get drawn into Ekman's complex "Game" during the performance: all you have to do is solve the compositional puzzles, without being distracted by the scenographic sweets that he throws up to the audience every now and then. But this is not enough for the choreographer. To play like this - already after the curtain falls, the artists again come to the fore to launch three giant balls into the hall. The dressed-down premiere audience picked them up, tossed them along the rows and with pleasure threw them to the Chagall ceiling. It seems that even jury snobs from the stalls sometimes miss not the most intellectual games.
Again Laurent Hilaire arranges an Evening one-act ballets, again studying the choreography of the 20th century, go to MAMT. In two trips, it is now possible to cover seven choreographers - first Lifar, Kilian and Forsyth (), and then Balanchine, Taylor, Garnier and Ekman (premiere on November 25). "Serenade" (1935), "Halo" (1962), "Onis" (1979) and "Tulle" (2012) respectively. Neoclassical, American modern, French escapism from neoclassical and Ekman.
Troupe musical theater Balanchine is dancing for the first time, and Taylor and Ekman have never been staged in Russia. According to the artistic director of the theater, the soloists should be given the opportunity to express themselves, and the corps de ballet - to work.
« I wanted to give young people the opportunity to express themselves. We do not invite outside artists - this is my principle. I think that the troupe has amazing soloists who work with great appetite and reveal themselves in the new repertoire from a completely unexpected side.(About "Onis")
…Great choreography, great music, twenty women - why turn down such an opportunity? In addition, having prepared two compositions, it is possible to occupy most of the women of the troupe.(about "Serenade")" from an interview for "Kommersant".
Photo: Svetlana Avvakum Balanchine created "Serenade" for adult students of his ballet school in America. " I just taught my students and did ballet where you can't see how bad they dance". He denied both the romantic interpretations of the ballet and the hidden plot and said that he took a lesson at his school as a basis - then someone will be late, then he will fall. It was necessary to take 17 students, so the drawing turned out to be asymmetrical, constantly changing, intertwining - often the girls hold hands and braid. Low light jumps, mincing dashes, blue translucent chopins that the dancers deliberately touch with their hands - everything is airy marshmallow. Not counting one of the four parts of Tchaikovsky's serenade "finale on a Russian theme", where the dancers almost start dancing, but then folk dance veiled by the classics.
Photo: Svetlana Avvakum After the neoclassical Balanchine, the contrast is the modern of Paul Taylor, who, although he danced with the first in Episodes, worked in the troupe of Martha Graham. "Halo" to the music of Gendal is simply a textbook on modern movements: here are V-shaped hands, and a toe on oneself, and a jazz preparatory position, and a pass in the sixth from the hip. There is also something left of the classics here, but everyone dances barefoot. Such antiques already look more like in a museum, but the Russian public took it even too enthusiastically.
Halo by Paul Taylor Photo: Svetlana Avvakum As well as "Onis" by Jacques Garnier, who at one time ran away from academicism and plot, focusing on the dance itself and human body. Two accordionists in the corner of the stage, three dancers are lying. They stretch, sway, get up and start a dashing dance with rotations and stomping and slapping. Here is folklore, and Alvin Ailey, whose technique Garnier studied in the USA (as well as Cunningham's technique). In 1972, together with Brigitte Lefebvre, he left the Paris Opera and created the Theater of Silence, where he not only experimented, but also led educational activities and one of the first in France to include the work of American choreographers in his repertoire. Now Lefebvre has come to Moscow to rehearse Garnier's choreography, which obviously appealed to Russian dancers, and Lefevre herself even discovered new nuances of this choreography thanks to them.
Onis by Jacques Garnier Photo: Svetlana Avvakum But the main premiere of the evening was the ballet "Tulle" by the Swede Alexander Ekman. In 2010 he was invited by the Royal Swedish Ballet to do a production. Ekman approached this matter philosophically and with irony (in other respects, as well as to his other creations). “Tulle” is a reflection on the topic “what is classical ballet". With the inquisitiveness of a child, he asks questions: what is ballet, where did it come from, why do we need it and why is it so attractive.
“I like the tutu, it sticks out in all directions”, “ballet is just a circus”- say the unknown at the very beginning, while the dancers are warming up on stage. Ekman, as if with a magnifying glass, considers the concept of "ballet", just as in a video projection on the stage, the camera lens slides over ballet tutu- in the frame there is only a grid, everything looks different up close.
"Tulle" Alexander Ekman Photo: Svetlana Avvakum So what is ballet?
This is a drill, counting - on the stage, ballerinas synchronously do exercises, in the speakers there is a loud clatter of their pointe shoes and confused breathing.
These are five positions, unchanged - tourists with cameras appear on the stage, they snap the dancers as if in a museum.
This is love and hate - ballerinas talk about their dreams and fears, pain and euphoria on stage - “ i love and hate my pointe shoes”.
This is a circus - a couple in harlequin costumes (the ballerina has feathers on her head like horses) perform complex tricks to the hooting and screams of the other dancers.
This is power over the viewer – the American composer Michael Karlsson has made an electronic adaptation of “Swan” with aggressive beats, the dancers perform snippets of quotes from the ballet-symbol of the ballet with cold-blooded grandeur, and the viewer is nailed like a concrete slab by this powerful aesthetics.
“Tulle” is a light preparation of ballet, ironic and loving, when silent art is given the right to vote, and it argues, ironically, but confidently declares its greatness.
Text: Nina Kudyakova
The Opera Garnier hosted the most intriguing event of the Paris season - the world premiere of the ballet "Play" ("The Game") by composer Mikael Karlsson, staged and set by one of the most sought-after young choreographers Alexander Ekman. For the Swedish creative duo, this is the first experience of working with the Paris Opera Ballet. Tells Maria Sidelnikova.
The debut of 33-year-old Alexander Ekman at the Paris Opera is one of the main trump cards of Aurélie Dupont in her first season as artistic director of the ballet. The success of the choreographer in Sweden and neighboring Scandinavian countries turned out to be so contagious that today he is in great demand both in Europe and in Australia, and even the Moscow Stanislavsky Museum Theater recently performed the Russian premiere of his 2012 performance "Tulle" (see "Kommersant" dated November 28 ). Dupont, on the other hand, lured Ekman to a full-fledged two-act premiere, providing carte blanche, 36 young artists, the historic stage of the Opera Garnier and enviable time in the schedule - the December holiday session.
However, the artistic, and even more commercial risks in the case of Ekman are small. Despite his youth, the Swede managed to work in the world's best troupes both as a dancer and as a choreographer: in the Royal Swedish Ballet, the Kulberg Ballet, in NDT II. And he got the hang of making high-quality synthetic performances, in which, like in the most fascinating hypertext, a lot of quotes and references are piled up - not only to the ballet heritage, but also to the parallel worlds of modern art, fashion, cinema, circus and even social networks. Ekman seasons all this with the “new sincerity” of the new century and creates as if his concern is to cheer up the viewer so that he leaves the performance, if not like from a reception at a good psychotherapist, then like from a good party. Local balletomanes-conservatives pronounced their verdict on such a “IKEA” attitude to the venerable ballet art long before the premiere, which, however, did not affect the general excitement.
Ekman starts his "Game" from the end. On a closed theatrical curtain, credits run with the names of all those involved in the premiere (there will be no time for that in the final), and a quartet of saxophonists - street musicians - is playing something uplifting. The entire first act flies by on an unpretentious note: young hipsters frolic uncontrollably on the snow-white stage (from the scenery there is only a tree and huge cubes that either float in the air or fall onto the stage; the orchestra sits right there - in the depths on the built balcony). They play hide and seek, pretend to be astronauts and queens, build pyramids, jump on trampolines, walk around the stage with a wheel, kiss and laugh. There is in this group a conditional ringleader (Simon Le Borne) and a conditional teacher who tries in vain to rein in the naughty. In the second act, grown-up children will turn into blinkered clerks, playful skirts and shorts will be changed to business suits, cubes will turn into dusty workplaces, the green tree will defiantly dry up, the world around will turn gray. In this airless space, if there is smoke like a rocker, it is only in the office smoking room. Here they played, now they stopped, but in vain, says the choreographer. For those who are completely dull, just in case, he pronounces his main idea, inserting in the middle of the second act a “manifesto about the game” as a panacea for all the ills of modern society, and in the finale, the gospel singer Calesta Day will also sing instructively about this.
But still, Alexander Ekman expresses himself most convincingly in the choreographic language and visual images, which are inseparable for him. So, in the children's games of the first act, a completely unchildish scene slips through with the Amazons in corporal tops and boxers and in horned helmets on their heads. To match the appearance, Ekman perfectly selects movements, alternating sharp combinations on pointe shoes and predatory, icy pas de cha with two bent legs, repeating the line of the horn. He loves a spectacular picture no less than the same Pina Bausch. The German woman in her The Rite of Spring strewed the floor of the stage with earth, making it part of the scenery, and Ekman covered the Stockholm Opera with hay (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”), drowned the Norwegian Opera in tons of water (“Swan Lake”), and Opera Garnier took the stage rained down a hail of hundreds of plastic balls, arranging a ball pool in the orchestra pit. Young people make an enthusiastic face, purists - peevish. Moreover, unlike the Norwegian trick with water, from which Ekman could not swim anywhere, in the "Game" the green hail becomes a powerful culmination of the first act. It looks like a tropical downpour promising rebirth: the rhythm that the balls beat as they fall sounds like a pulse, and the bodies are so contagiously light and loose that you want to put an end to it. Because after the intermission, this pool will turn into a swamp: where the artists just dived and fluttered carelessly, now they are hopelessly bogged down - no way to get through. Each movement requires such effort from them, as if plastic balls were indeed replaced with weights. Ekman puts the tension of adult life into the bodies of dancers - “turns off” their elbows, circles “two shoulders, two hips”, makes their backs iron, mechanically twists their torsos in given poses in given directions. It seems to repeat the merry classic pas de deux of the first act (one of the few solo episodes - the Swede really feels freer in crowd scenes), but the same strokes, attitudes and support in arabesque are dead and formal - there is no life in them.
You get drawn into Ekman's complex "Game" during the performance: all you have to do is solve the compositional puzzles, without being distracted by the scenographic sweets that he throws up to the audience every now and then. But this is not enough for the choreographer. To play like this - already after the curtain falls, the artists again come to the fore to launch three giant balls into the hall. The dressed-down premiere audience picked them up, tossed them along the rows and with pleasure threw them to the Chagall ceiling. It seems that even jury snobs from the stalls sometimes miss not the most intellectual games.
Alexander Ekman. Photo - Yuri Martyanov / Kommersant
Choreographer Alexander Ekman contemporary ballet And in social networks.
Tulle appeared in the repertoire of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater - the first ballet in Russia by Alexander Ekman, a 34-year-old Swede, the most prolific, sought-after and talented choreographer of his generation, who has already directed 45 ballets around the world, the last of them in Paris Opera.
– You have a rare gift for staging plotless comic ballets: in Tulle, for example, it’s not the characters and their relationships that are funny, but the very combinations of classical movements and the peculiarities of their performance. Do you think classical ballet is outdated?
I love classical ballet, it's great. And yet it's just a dance, it should be fun, there should be a game. I don't distort the classic movements, I just show them from a slightly different angle - it turns out to be such an easy absurdity. And misunderstandings can arise, especially on the part of artists: working like in a drama is not very usual for them. I always tell them, “Don't comedy. It's not you who should be funny, but situations.
- So, the theater is for you after all more important than ballet?
“A theater is a space where two thousand people can feel connected to each other, experience the same feelings, and then discuss them: “Did you see this? Cool, huh? Such human unity is the most beautiful thing in the theater.
- You introduce speech into your ballets - replicas, monologues, dialogues. Do you think the audience will not understand your idea without words?
“I just think it's more fun that way. I like to present surprises, surprises, surprise the audience. Consider speech as my trademark.
