A modern ballet with music by cult US rock band The White Stripes has wowed Bolshoi Theater audiences, helping the company shake off a conservative image as it plans a return to its historic home.
Chroma, British choreographer Wayne McGregor’s 2006 exploration of the influence of psychology on movement that he created for Britain’s Royal Ballet, is a sharp contrast to the 19th-century narrative ballets that have been the staple of the Bolshoi repertoire.
Set to a pulsating, dissonant score of orchestrations of White Stripes songs as well as original music by British composer Joby Talbot, Chroma demands from its 10 performers a whole new vocabulary of dance.
Photo: AFP
Legs are flung out in extensions at all angles, arms whirled through the air and dancers intertwined in intricate couplings. The set resembles a gigantic white box with an open back whose color changes throughout the show.
With no tutu or pair of tights in sight, the dancers wear thin drapes that merge with their own bodies in a world that inhabits a different universe to the ritual formality of The Sleeping Beauty or Don Quixote.
However, the Moscow dancers and audiences have embraced the work’s stark modernity, earning the ballet’s creative team a rousing reception at its July 21 premiere.
“For the Bolshoi Ballet, Chroma is a breakthrough into a new era,” wrote Tatyana Kuznetsova, the ballet critic of the Kommersant newspaper. “The troupe has jumped into the 21st century.”
McGregor, who came to Moscow to rehearse the dancers, expressed amazement at their abilities and is now set to choreograph a new version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring specially for the Bolshoi in 2013.
“It’s a fantastic time for the Bolshoi to be experimenting with very modern choreography,” McGregor said. “They have these incredible dancers who can really do anything, so why not explore it. The dancers have great proportions, amazing limbs and they can do extraordinary things with their bodies — they have a real kind of elasticity, which is something that I really love.”
Artem Ovcharenko, one of the soloists in Chroma, said: “You hear the first chords of that music standing in the wings. You start to burn, you want to get on stage and to dance to this.”
The success of Chroma has come at a crucial time for the Bolshoi company which has in recent years been accused of being held back by its own traditions and being afraid of experimentation.
On Oct. 28, it is finally to resume performances in its historic theater, which closed in July 2005 for urgent restoration, the completion of which was embarrassingly put back year after year. In the interim, the company has performed on its New Stage theater nearby, whose smaller proportions have frustrated some of its stars.
The Bolshoi Ballet — run for three decades from its Soviet -heyday until 1995 by the -authoritarian Yuri Grigorovich — has endured a rocky time since the 2008 departure of modernizing director Alexei Ratmansky.
Ratmansky left allegedly because he fell out with the pro-Grigorovich old guard and the company appeared to tread water after his departure. This year a top candidate to become the new artistic director became embroiled in a dark campaign to smear him using pornographic images.
However, the Bolshoi then scored a coup by appointing as ballet director former dancer Sergei Filin, who had turned Moscow’s Stanislavsky Musical Theater into a rival of its more famous -counterpart by promoting innovative dance.
Along with Chroma, there is a new freshness in the repertoire of the Bolshoi, which has also taken on its first ballet by iconic Germany-based US choreographer William Forsythe.
The one-act Chroma is coupled in a thrilling evening of dance with the 1978 Symphony of Psalms by Czech choreographer Jiri Kylian, another new Bolshoi acquisition, and Rubies by George Balanchine, the Russian-born co-founder of New York City Ballet, who is only now being re-discovered in his homeland after his death in 1983.
“Five years ago it was hard to imagine that the Bolshoi would ever present Forsythe, Kylian or McGregor,” wrote critic Anna Galaida in the daily Vedomosti. “Now we have had premieres by all of these stars at the Bolshoi in one season.”
Meanwhile, the Bolshoi boasts possibly the most sought-after young dancers in ballet in Ivan Vasiliev and Natalya Osipova, a real-life couple who have dazzled the world with their heart-stopping jumps and dizzying spins.
Filin said the dancers had initially been nervous of the difficulties of McGregor’s choreography, but said he had now given the company whole new possibilities.
“We got even more than a McGregor ballet. We got artists who are capable of working and delivering a very great result.”
Traditions, however, are not entirely dead at the Bolshoi.
According to the theater’s general director Anatoly Iksanov, the first full-length ballet to go on show at the reopened theater will be The Sleeping Beauty, in an updated production of Grigorovich’s Soviet-era version.
Additional reporting by staff writer
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia