15 June 2018 (Fri), 19:00 World famous Mariinsky Ballet and Opera - Mariinsky II (New Theatre) - Modern Ballet Evening of one-act ballets: Les Noces. Symphony in Three Movements. Concerto DSCH
Schedule for Evening of one-act ballets: Les Noces. Symphony in Three Movements. Concerto DSCH 2022
Piano: Eduard Kiprsky Piano: Sergei Redkin Piano: Alexander Maslov
Orchestra: Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra Ballet company: Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet
"Les Noces"
Performers
Sergei Redkin (piano) Zarina Shimanskaya (piano) Eduard Kiprsky (piano) Alexander Maslov (piano)
Credits
Scene plan, music and text by Igor Stravinsky (1923) Choreography by Bronislava Nijinska (1923)
Décor and Costumes: Natalia Goncharova (1923) Musical Director: Valery Gergiev Staged: Howard Sayette Décor reproduced: Boris Kaminsky Costumes reproduced: Tatiana Noginova Lighting: Vladimir Lukin
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
For over ten years Stravinsky was consumed with the idea of Les Noces, a choral work as "a sequence of typical wedding episodes, a reproduction from fragments typical of this ceremony of conversations." The composer sought out the musical form, the orchestral ensemble and the traditional folkloric text, which would represent a genuine Russian rite, and not describe a wedding plot in an à la rus stylisation. Stravinsky's proposed "idea of ritual and impersonal action" found its dazzling embodiment in the choreography of Bronislava Nijinska. It was to her, a classical dancer who had once been a worthy partner and co-conspirator of her brother Vaslav, and who in the post-revolutionary years had dedicated herself to seeking out a new movement, that Diaghilev entrusted the staging of this work that was so precious to him. And, as usual, he had not miscalculated. The Paris premiere of Les Noces in 1923 emerged as a forum, and it revealed to the world a choreographer for whom this production alone would have been enough to ensure entry to the pantheon of great 20th century choreographers. Responding to the nuances of the capricious rhythms and metrics of the music, in Les Noces the movement spoke and lived, needing no pantomime, stage props and realistic costumes. A dance of the ensemble. In the choreographer's mind, each dancer was to blend with the whole through the movement. The Bride and the Groom are mere parts of the combined ensemble, which conveyed the dramatic character of fate and the perpetuity of the protagonists in an old-style peasant wedding: just like in the maiden's braids, which before the wedding are unplaited into two parts and redressed in a woman's hairstyle, the maidens leaned their heads on each other's shoulders, bowing in ritual lamentation, leaned their heads as on an executioner's block. The extreme minimalism in subordination to the dance in the rather cool geometry of the choreographic drawing, in the insistent repetition of the monotonous movements, in the simplicity of the bicoloured brown and white costumes conceived by Natalia Goncharova and in the intentional impassivity of the performers – everything in the ballet was of its time in the context of the avant-garde of the 1920s. And in the sharp, contemporary nature of the ballet the primordial Russian nature of Les Noces was not lost – not cheaply popular and souvenir-like, but conditionally ritualistic, where the plot unfolds as if in a clockwork mechanism: the figures of the dancers intermingle monotonously, literally submitting to the will of one master, the ancient and immutable ritual. Olga Makarova
World premiere: 13 June 1923, Les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilev, Théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique, Paris Premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre:9 June 2003
Running time 20 minutes
Age category 12+
"Symphony in Three Movements"
Performers
Credits
Music by Igor Stravinsky Choreography by Radu Poklitaru Set and Costume Designer: Anna Matison Lighting Designer: Alexander Sivaev Video Graphics Designer: Alexander Kravchenko Assistant Choreographer: Sergei Kon
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Using a symphony in ballet is a 20th-century innovation. The impulse for the worldwide dissemination of the genre of the dance symphony came with a production by Fyodor Lopukhov in Petrograd in 1923 with a ballet set to the music of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony. George Balanchine, who took part in that avant-garde production, took up the idea of the plastique interpretation of the complex musical format, developing his artistic credo as a choreographer thus: “You see the music and you hear the dance.” Inspired by the nature of pure dance he rejected any plot and superfluous psychology, behind his movements, there were no human passions, there was just the music, its rhythm and structure defining the development of the choreographic image. Following the same lines, in 1972 Balanchine created his first dance version of the score of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements. And yet there was another path in the emergence of symphonic dance. In the 1930s the choreographer Léonide Massine brought to life a whole series of symphonic ballets in which, avoiding fairy-tale narrative in a sequence of allegories and metaphors he narrated dance stories. The path chosen by Radu Poklitaru for his production of Symphony in Three Movements at the Mariinsky Theatre is close to Massine’s. In his production, one can see a plot with a beginning, peripeteia and dénouement. The images conceived by the choreographer blend together with Stravinsky’s idea: the composer admitted that the third movement of his Symphony was a response to documental chronologies of the war years with lines of marching soldiers, and later with Poklitaru, it would seem, the troops come on-stage in the finale, without succumbing to the aggression of the first two movements... Olga Makarova
Premiere: 30 December 2015, Mariinsky Theatre
Age category 12+
"Concerto DSCH"
Performers
Credits
Music by Dmitry Shostakovich Choreographer: Alexei Ratmansky Assistant Choreographer: Tatiana Ratmanskaya Lighting Designer: Mark Stanley Costume Designer: Holly Hynes
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Concerto DSCH to the music of Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto is Alexei Ratmansky’s seventh ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre. Today the theatre’s repertoire includes three of his “plot” ballets – the witty and ironic Cinderella and The Little Humpbacked Horse and the laconic Anna Karenina. The company also has experience of performing Ratmansky’s plot-less ballets – fifteen years ago he staged the strikingly emotional and stylishly refined Middle Duet and the flowing and heartfelt Le Poème de l'extase. Concerto DSCH, which has no literary plot, is different – joyful, witty and totally filled with movement. It is as if Ratmansky is almost afraid of permitting a musical motif that is suitable for dance. Such miserliness in the movements, such concentration of the choreographic text is beguiling for both the dancers and the audience. Ratmansky is an inarguable master of plot-less dance who can create, with virtuoso ease, forms of virtuoso solos, duets, trios and crowd scenes and, with impeccable taste, fill them with amazing dance combinations. Concerto DSCH is just one such example. Solving the puzzle of his incredibly musical combinations has proved an engaging task for the Mariinsky Ballet. This ballet was created in 2008 for the New York City Ballet, and it is ideal for a company that is focussed on the instrumentalism of dance and ensemble-performance. Moreover, Ratmansky refers to it as a “portrait of that company”. On the other hand, the text of Concerto DSCH and the style of the scenes it contains are full of references to Soviet realities that cannot be fully understood by American performers, while for Russian dancers and audiences it brings a whole bag of associations and raises an emotional response on more than just the choreographic content. For those unfamiliar with Soviet sculpture and have no idea of the athletics displays and well-loved-techniques of Soviet cinema from the 1920s–50s, many of Ratmansky’s high supports are simply conjured-up poses, and the gestures mere original ideas of a ballet-master. To feel and convey the energetic purposefulness of an adagio one has to see at least a few Soviet films that celebrate the sincere simplicity of meetings in the evening between loves who live next door, where a shyly stolen kiss was the limit of what was allowed. And in the energetic drive of the final crowd scene, breathing with its life-giving optimism, one can recognise the generally-accepted Soviet concept about doubts of a happy future. Ratmansky is obviously captivated by Shostakovich’s music and the spirit of his time, and in his ballet, he tenderly revives this. In the title of his ballet, the choreographer uses the composer’s musical autograph (D.Sch in the German musical notation), which has no direct link to the Second Concerto but which does identify with the ballet’s style. Just like Balanchine, paying tribute to the Imperial Russian Stage, named his own ballet to piano the music Ballet Imperial by Tchaikovsky. Concerto DSCH is Ratmansky’s second “Russian” ballet, staged abroad and brought to a Russian theatre in which much can only be fully felt and understood by Russian performers. The first was the Russian Seasons (also created with NYCB) that featured motifs of Russian folklore. Apparently, paradoxically to westerns critics, the choreographer’s journey across the ocean in search of his cultural roots allowed him to distance himself from the strong traditions of the stage presence of those cultural roots and has helped him present them in a new light. With Concerto DSCH it was the same story. The production for NYCB demonstrated Ratmansky’s talent in creating varied and engaging combinations, yet always logical compositional constructions and drawings, enchanting with the free nature of his dance. The same production for the Mariinsky Theatre also brought to light a subtle stylist who can put an entire history of the Soviet era into a one-act ballet. Olga Makarova
Premiere: 28 May 2008, New York State Theater, New York Premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre: 4 July 2013
Running time: 20 minutes
Dmitri Shostakovich was a fan of ballet and composed numerous dance scores in the 1930s, including The Bolt and The Bright Stream. Alexei Ratmansky has choreographed both of those works for the Bolshoi Ballet, and for New York City Ballet's 2008 spring season, Ratmansky created another work to a score by Shostakovich, this time the Piano Concerto No. 2. Shostakovich wrote the concerto in 1957 as a birthday gift for his 19-year-old son Maxim, and it displays the composer's optimistic energy after the repressions of the Stalinist era. The opening allegro evokes a brisk military march with the piano referencing the British melody Drunken Sailor. By contrast, the andante movement basks in Russian soulfulness for the strings, piano, and solo horn. The brief, invigorating allegro finale takes on a 7/8 meter as the entire orchestra sprints to the finish. The ballet's title refers to a musical motif used by Shostakovich to represent himself, with four notes that, when written in German notation, stand in for his initials in the German spelling (D. Sch.).
Age category 12+
Schedule for Evening of one-act ballets: Les Noces. Symphony in Three Movements. Concerto DSCH 2022
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