Mats Ek: Three ballets that were considered a mockery. Biography Three "mockery" over the classics
“In my choreography, a lot depends on coordination, dynamics and weight distribution. This is my coordinate system."
Mats Ek
(from an interview with the Bolshoi Theatre)
This ballet does not tell any specific story. It simply gives a chain of scenes reproducing the events Everyday life occurring on the personal territory of a person - in the space of his apartment. Each part of it (living room, kitchen, bathroom) is indicated by one or another object - a bidet or an armchair, a door or a stove. But first you need to open the curtain behind which lies the essence - both the premises and the psychological etude that will be played out in it.
The fact that the musicians are located in the back of the stage becomes clear only during the performance. Mats Ek shows them to the audience somewhere in the middle of the performance. Each change of picture, each “movement” around the apartment is accompanied by a change in rhythm.
Despite the many jumps, the dance seems to be grounded: a lot of movements on the floor and a lot of squats. You constantly have to swing your arms, your legs are turned inward - all these attributes of modern dance, multiplied by the expression inherent in Mats Ek's choreography, once again present a test of strength to classical dancers, to resist the ballet canon, along the way also examining their sense of humor, because, as Mats says Ek, “whatever I do, there is always a certain comic shade in everything.” Situations, movements, gestures and cries are permeated with humor. The peppy, somewhat nervous "march of vacuum cleaners" looks comical, ending with the fact that the "ladies" who control these vacuum cleaners suddenly have a desire to find out a number recipes, and they will turn for them to the musicians who “beat” this whole story.
But, as always, the feeling of the weightless lightness of being in the opuses of Ek, endowed with psychological and philosophical overtones, is associated with a feeling of oppressive sadness of loneliness, misunderstanding, rivalry, enmity. Everything is like in a multitude of apartments outside the one recreated by Mats Ek in the space of his ballet.
Among the artists Bolshoi Theater, who have been cast by Mats Ek and are involved in his production, are the stars of the troupe Maria Alexandrova, Marianna Ryzhkina, Kristina Kretova, Semyon Chudin, Andrey Merkuriev, Denis Savin and other artists who are invariably attracted by the opportunity to master new system coordinates. The prima ballerina, who constantly collaborates with the Bolshoi, also takes part in the performance. Mariinsky Theater Diana Vishneva.
“This choreographer has always interested me, for many years I called his name when I was asked about my passions.<...>It was important for me to work with Ek. And in all the troupes where I worked, I asked if it was possible to dance his performance.
Diana Vishneva
(from an interview with the Bolshoi Theatre)
After a successful premiere at the Paris national opera(2000) the ballet went around many of the world's leading stages. Mats Ek's Apartment has been visited by the Great Canadian Ballet/Montreal (2003), the Bavarian State Ballet (2004), the Royal Swedish Ballet (2004).
Photos from the rehearsals of Mikhail Logvinov.
Festival "The Age of the Rite of Spring - the Age of Modernism" at the Bolshoi Theater. Part two
How late
Negotiations on staging Mats Ek's ballet at the Bolshoi have been going on for several years. There was even an idea to negotiate with the choreographer about the resumption of his The Rite of Spring especially for the festival dedicated to the centenary of Stravinsky's score. But in this matter the Swede remained adamant, considering his "Spring" a failure.
They chose between two names - "Apartment" and "Bernard", and in the end "Apartment" won.
The question arises - why did Ek's choreography appear in Russia so late?
Several times his "Giselle" was brought to Russia (in 1998 performed by the Bavarian Ballet, in 2010 - by the Lyon Opera), and the shows were always accompanied by a full house.
There are many reasons. The main thing is the ambitions of such theaters as the Bolshoi and the Mariinka.
Since 2001, when attempts began to include our main musical theaters any foreign novelties, the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky planned to order exclusive productions for such masters as John Neumeier, Mats Ek or Jiri Kilian. For some reason, they believed that the masters only dream of working with Russian artists. But
choreographers, whose time is scheduled for at least five years in advance, could only offer these theaters transfers of their old performances,
because on transfers b O Most of the work of getting into the style of a choreographer is done by assistants.
The Mariinsky Theater turned out to be faster - they asked Neumeier for three one-act performances, one of which would be a world premiere. In such a cunning way, the Mariinsky Theater received its exclusive.
There is evidence that the planning department of the Bolshoi at the beginning of the 2000s wanted to ask Neumeier to stage M. Lermontov's Masquerade. Didn't they know that Lermontov was unknown in the West?
As a result, John Neumeier staged his old ballet A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Bolshoi,
and it was not a great success of the theatre.
Kilian has a similar story - four of his old ballets are danced in Russia, but he himself never came to the production.
And Ek - doubly busy man, as it is torn between drama theater and ballet.
In addition, he is not so overgrown with a system of production assistants. He always launches his wife and muse A. Laguna forward to show the artists some key moments of the performance, then another assistant rides, and Ek himself is the last to drive up. But Laguna herself still dances and plays in the theater, her time is very biased.
Nevertheless, Ek's ballets have been staged in theaters much less majestic than the Bolshoi for a long time, and we received his non-exclusive only in 2013.
Whose apartment?
"Apartment" was created by Ek especially for artists Paris Opera in 2000, as a friendly gesture to a company he loves and respects. By that time, the French repertoire already included Giselle and Bernard.
In the "Apartment" there are no main characters, no minor ones.
Here people are mixed with objects, and parts of the ballet with characters. Part 11: Bidet, TV, Pedestrians, Stove, Strange game, Waltz, Vacuum cleaners, Orchestra, Ensemble (when only the Flash Quartet musicians are visible), people - 12.
Ek himself describes his ballet as follows:
“Everything in it unfolds around objects that are associated with the name. The word "apartment" has a double meaning: it is the place where you live, but apart also means "apart". I tried to create something around these different meanings, show the relationship of various events. The music was created by the Flashquartet specifically for this performance, and the musicians are required to become important part"Apartments", wherever it is placed.
Ek's performances cannot be described as ballets, since Ek is theater, cinema, circus, and modern dance.
We tried to look at the work of the Swedish choreographer through the prism of Lacan's psychoanalysis and find the place of the "Apartment" within his multi-layered work.
Window in Eka
The world of M. Ek cannot be confused with anything. Through and through Magritte with its ironic objectivity according to the principle "this is not a pipe" - and at the same time poignantly lyrical in all its, even the most absurd manifestations.
From time to time, the junctions of lyricism and absurdity, as if by chance, disperse,
and in this universe suddenly there are gaps, gaps. As dazzling as a flash of lightning, in a moment's revelation they ruthlessly illuminate the space beyond meaning and language.
When Ek is asked what he wanted to say with this or that symbol, he usually annoyedly answers that he does not have any symbols at all: "A door is just a door." As in the famous psychoanalytic joke: "Sometimes a banana (variants: cigar or cucumber) is just a banana."
However, sometimes a pipe is not even a pipe at all.
Ek was asked: why did Aurora lay a black ostrich egg in his "Sleeping"? Answer: Because Carabosse was a Negro...
Ek was asked about the door in connection with his “Apartment”. In the ballet, which at first glance seems to consist of funny and touching everyday mini-scenes (peeped by Ek from the window of a Parisian bistro), such a stunning gap appears in the fourth episode under the unpretentious name "Stove".
Man and woman ( married couple?) at the stove, a woman is cooking something in the oven, a man is languishing with curiosity, what is there. And smoke begins to pour from the stove - the first harbinger of an alarming split: the gentle smoke of love languor in Eco's ballet "Smoke"? or smoke from a macho cigar in the mouth of his own Carmen? The couple are arguing loudly.
Finally, the wife jerks open the oven door, removes the charred baby from there and calmly leaves.
An absolutely crushed husband with a baby in his arms slowly falls into the abyss that opens up under his feet.
Metaphors away
There are no symbols or metaphors here. Well, except at the level of the language game - in English language there is, for example, such a slang expression: “put a bun in the oven”, “put a pie in the oven”, that is, make a woman pregnant. Perhaps there is a similar expression in Swedish. In any case, there is a stove (oven) with a terrible “pie” here. And a baby is just a baby.
An epic dimension suddenly opens up before us ancient Greek myths and tragedies.
J. Lacan, the famous French psychoanalyst, who significantly influenced the development of philosophy in the 20th century, true woman(in its ultimate, extreme incarnation) called Medea. Out of love for the Argonaut Jason, she leaves everything behind: her homeland, her family, she kills her brother. In myths and tragedies, she appears ideal loving wife and mother, albeit a little foreign witch. However, when Jason betrays her, she does not enter into any "reasonable" negotiations.
Her revenge is not to kill Jason - that would be too easy - but to take away his most precious thing - the children.
But since these are also her children, whom she deeply loves, this gesture at the same time turns out to be a total sacrifice. With this gesture, she makes a hole in her beloved man, which from now on he cannot fill with anything. She is fully invested in her monstrous act, finding her most effective weapon in her very helplessness.
A true woman finds herself in a relationship with a man not as a wife or mother, but as one that goes beyond language, meaning, into the unknown territory of the absurd.
There, where there are no laws, including the laws of human attachments, where there is no possession - but there is pure being without boundaries.
To this enchanted land Medea, again a goddess, and not the wife of a mortal, is carried away on a solar chariot drawn by dragons. Jason is destined to die an inglorious death under the wreckage of the dilapidated ship Argo.
In a collision with the violent and immeasurable world of women, men retreat, fearing to lose themselves,
their narcissistic ego, to lose what they think they still own. At this point Lacan's description is not very flattering...
Medea Women
Being beyond the boundaries of language and meaning in terms of psychoanalysis is called Real. Here it often rhymes with madness.
Ekovsky Giselle easily slides into madness, because she always balances on its very edge,
E. Piaf and C. Chaplin in one person performed by A. Laguna. A wild forest animal, she fawns over Albert, and with a sudden ingenuous gesture, clearly imitating childbirth, she removes a shapeless red object like a pillow from under her skirt. Albert immediately acknowledges his paternity, rocking the pillow like that ill-fated father from The Stove, or like Prince Desire, to whom Aurora gives birth to the proverbial giant black egg.
Strange things lurk inside a woman, mysterious objects that frighten her, canceling the very idea of \u200b\u200bmotherhood.
Aurora, another insane (drug addict, according to Ek), endowed with the angular frenetic plasticity of a teenager, is trying to escape from the captivity of the caricatured bourgeois comfort, where she is returned by Desire, who "saved" her. The black egg, from which she crawls away in horror, is another such typical Ek gaping.
There are plenty of giant eggs of this kind in "Giselle", and in "Carmen" it rises like a black frightening pedestal in the very center of the composition.
male embryos
Love pushes Giselle beyond the brink of madness. The Jeeps turn out to be patients in a lunatic asylum, but again on an epic scale - a kind of maenads, tearing off the last covers from Albert, so that he crouches naked in a fetal position at their feet.
The embryo is the typical position of the Ekovian male hero.
In the "Apartment" one of the episodes is called "Embryos". It is placed immediately after the episode with the victorious step of self-sufficient women with phallic vacuum cleaners. In "Sleeping" instead of cleaners with vacuum cleaners there will be fairies with mops or creepy old women with purses, in "Giselle" - all the same crazy maenads, and also village girls with ostrich eggs, in "Carmen" - dances in the style of flamenco, and in "Swan", of course, - alien swans.
The prince from swan lake” writhing like an insensible embryo, suddenly seeing his naked mother instead of the buffoon Rothbart.
This hiatus is already just Freud's "primal scene".
Even in the extremely lyrical "Place" the hero of Baryshnikov, who is always on the verge of a heart attack from the intensity of feelings directed at him by the heroine of Laguna, habitually forms a semi-embryo under the carpet.
All about my mother
soft boneless male bodies bend, dutifully fall under the pressure of female integrity, slipping away from the boundless loving concentration of their girlfriends. One of the heroes of the "Apartment", sprawled in front of the TV, flows around all the twists of his chair, from where his girlfriend, who has just emerged from the abyss of her own little madness - a dance with a bidet on her head, is trying to pick it out.
Another heroine in love drags her man like a doll, gently trying to ignite passion in him,
and then hanging it on that very door, then pulling it out of there and always trying to get through to it. It is enough for the heroines to poke a man with a finger or knock with his knee, or just stroke him a little - and he immediately falls, as if knocked down, at her feet, as if pulled out of a socket.
In the scene “Pedestrians” (“Apartment”), they are just stacked on a footpath. Even the heroic and daring Jose in Carmen is, of course, a puppy in front of an older woman.
Effortlessly, she pulls the ribbon-heart out of his chest, the ribbon from the groin of the bullfighter, and the ribbon from the back of another youngster.
She dearly loves them all, but the witch essence takes over. That is her nature. The prince successfully marries Odette, but immediately after the wedding, she turns to him with her black, olivia side. And he is again a child in the hands of an imperious and loving mother.
There is nothing unambiguous in Ek's universe, he safely avoids any clichés,
always keeping in a lively, quivering, gentle and ironic register of relations, never allowing falsehood and pathos. That is why he manages to reach pure structures, the creative play of the unconscious, free from the dictates of false truths.
His woman is tender, crazy, dangerous, passionate, a bit of a witch, a bit of a mother, but always in dialogue with a man, always calling for love.
The only time Ek explores the image of a truly scary and merciless woman is a mother holding her daughters captive and turned off from love relationships, - he appoints a man to this role.
Such is Bernarda from Bernarda's House. And her erotic dance, mixed with Catholic pathos on the verge of blasphemy, is not a dance with her lover, but with a doll taken from a wall crucifix. A weak but humane man (that is, as we would say in the language of psychoanalysis, who has passed through the inevitable law of castration, the prohibition of incest) Bernard does not need. She needs a deity from the realm of the Real. And at the same time, the Jesus doll in her incestuous embrace, whom she/he voluptuously presses to her naked torso, is a baby boy completely belonging to her. She will not sacrifice him in a fit of despair and love, like Medea, but simply devour him herself. That is why she will never be a true woman, but just a fake transvestite.
The inhabitants of the "Apartment" in the Bolshoi
It cannot be said that the artists of the Bolshoi Theater ideally got used to the characters created by Ek for the Parisian troupe. Ours have mastered well the Ek language, which they had known before through epigone ballets, which filled the niche of the avant-garde here in Russia in the absence of originals.
Mats Ek photography
Mats Ek is the most important Swedish choreographer and one of the cult figures ballet theater end of the twentieth century. He belongs to that generation of intellectual choreographers who started staging in the 70s. Colleague and peer of John Neumeier, William Forsythe, Jiri Kilian, he was the only one who did not go through the “study” with John Cranko in Stuttgart. In contrast to the aforementioned Stuttgartians, he almost never turns to classical dance in his productions, which he knows, loves and respects. But all the major "key ballets" Ek staged on the material classical heritage ballet theater of the XIX century, encroaching on the "holy of holies". He offered completely independent versions of Swan Lake (1987), Sleeping Beauty (1996) and even Carmen (1992). Ekov's "Giselle", which he composed at the fatal age of 37, opened this list.
From the moment of birth (April 18, 1945), Mats was doomed to both the theater (mother - the famous choreographer, father Anders Ek - the largest dramatic actor) and rebellion. Others - children like children - immediately followed in their parental footsteps (sister became an actress, brother - a famous dancer), and after studying he worked in puppet theater, then Bergman's assistant in the cinema. He returned to the dance late, but forever. At the age of 27, yes, at the call of the soul, having accumulated extensive artistic experience and intellectual baggage. Having danced in the troupe of his mother, he soon began to stage. Among his first works is Saint George and the Dragon. With the "dragon" - the subconscious, Freud's complexes and Jung's collective unconscious - then he will "fight" all the way. Opening one or the other "valve" of the hellish cauldron, so that it "does not explode." IN big ballets, in miniatures such as "Wet Woman", "Smoke", created for the classic superstar Sylvie Guillem, this "Mademoiselle Net", who, like Ek, "explodes" the classic form from the inside.
As evidenced by his productions, almost Spanish fanatical passions are raging in a calm, seemingly sensible representative of a harsh Protestant country. Isn't this the reason for the craving for compensation in the form of essays on Spanish themes? His ballets "Bernard's House" after Garcia Lorca, "Carmen" speak for themselves. Even his absolutely anti-classical muse Ana Laguna was Spanish, for whom he staged almost all the central parts of his ballets ... Mats Ek is undoubtedly a man of great culture and knowledge, moreover, a lively, emotional, passionate one. Simple, logical and clear in its plasticity. Minimalist with maximum impact. /?/ In his choreography there is an abundance of hidden quotations from the classical version of the ballet, his own paraphrases on famous dance motifs. No pointe shoes, almost everyday suits. His own choreographic "handwriting", which grew out of an original symbiosis of classics, modern, minimalist gestures. He is always recognizable. According to the symbolic favorite combinations of movements, ironic comparisons, comic counterpoints. /…/ more>>
In 2015, Matsu Ek turned 70, and already at the beginning of 2016 he announced his departure from dance world. And with him all his works will go - from all the theaters of the world. He believes that he should control the productions of his ballets himself, and now he no longer has the strength to do so.
“I have been on stage for 50 years. Better to stop before you are asked to do so. Life lasts longer than work."
Ballet de Opera de Lyon, Giselle
Three "mockery" over the classics
His departure, along with all the works, means that now no one will ever see his ballets live (those who did not have time are late). Only on video. In connection with this bleak event, I would like to recall and once again revise the three classics rethought by Ek.
Giselle (1982)
Classic: The ballet tells the love story of a peasant woman Giselle: she loves Albert, who did not tell her that he was a count and, even worse, that he was engaged. Upon learning of this, Giselle immediately dies and naturally turns into a vilisa. One night, a grieving Albert comes to her grave, and then the Wilis appear, thirsting for revenge. But Giselle appears and saves him.
The image of Giselle is a classical ballerina of the era of romantic ballet - a weightless fairy in a chopin skirt and with wings (often confused with the Sylph).
Ek: Giselle is an ordinary girl, naive and wonderful; Albert is not an earl, but a city dandy. However, she does not die, but goes crazy, and instead of a cemetery, she ends up in a psychiatric hospital. The back of the stage is replete with dismemberment, Giselle with a bandaged head shows Albert new world, Albert ends up naked—i.e. updated. This interpretation was negatively perceived by the ossified ballet world, however, the ballet was eventually shown in 28 countries and found its recognition.
Swan Lake (1987)
Classic: The most famous ballet in the world. When they say “ballet”, Odette immediately appears. The libretto (albeit vaguely) is known to everyone: Prince Siegfried falls in love with an enchanted swan girl, but is later fascinated by the sorcerer's daughter Odile, who in subsequent editions became a black swan. The endings changed all the time - sometimes Odette died, then everything ended well.
Ek: "Swan" is just the holy of holies in ballet. However, this is also an inexhaustible storehouse for interpretations: here are the complex relations between the prince and his mother, and different interpretations of the prince himself. white swan like a dream, an ideal. But in almost all interpretations, swans are beautiful and graceful, slowly swimming in their lake. At Ek, the swans crawled out onto land, but here they are no longer so beautiful: short-legged and clumsy, they spank with their flippers, waddling from paw to paw. All the dancers are “bald”, awkwardly dancing on crooked legs, ugly bending and shaking their backs. Many took this as a mockery of the holy.
(here we publish only the first part, you can watch the remaining 10 on our youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwlETpYGULTbDGEef3oCDBJAbnhL95a04)
Sleeping Beauty (1996)
Classic: There is no point in talking about the libretto - everyone has read the fairy tale of Charles Perrault. Plus an abundance of different fairies and heroes of other fairy tales by Perrault.
Ek: In his version, it doesn’t even smell like a fairy tale, and it’s better not to watch ballet for children under 18. The idea for the production came to him when, in a European town, he stumbled on the street on staggering girls from glassy eyes and syringes scattered around them. Here she is the "sleeping beauty" of the 20th century - she sleeps awake and sees heroin dreams. One kiss will not save the prince. No one has ever set this to Tchaikovsky's music.
These three remakes of him are often erroneously referred to as a "trilogy" and a "mockery". However:
« There was no idea to make a trilogy. I have no such ambitions at all -
break, destroy, penetrate the facade .. On the contrary, I live with a feeling
respect for three hundred years of history classical dance and his own
development ways. I don't want to touch it at all. And I don't want to argue. So I
I don't make any edits, I make my own versions. Using cultural
heritage - music, these fairy tales that underlie the libretto .. So does
any interpreter, even one that works with traditional versions
classics. I am just a link in the chain.«
