Ivan Vasiliev, with his irrepressible energy and thirst for action, is continuing to test himself as a choreographer. The dancer is confident that "not a single director knows what is inside of me better than I do myself.“ It was always stifling for Ivan to work within the confines of traditional ballet roles: "I don’t want to spend my whole life dancing fifteen versions of the same ballet,“ he says, with some exaggeration. "It’s better to delve into your head, give freedom to your thoughts and make something new.“
In April, Ivan Vasiliev’s three choreographic works will debut on the stage of the Hermitage Theatre. Ivan has shown only one of these single-act ballets before: Ballet No. 1. Set to the music of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, the piece was performed at the Barvikha Luxury Village concert hall last spring for one time only. The other two —Morphine and Blind Affair — are completely new, and are still undergoing development.
The director drew from literature for Morphine (a rather unorthodox title for a ballet), with Mikhail Bulgakov’s A Young Doctor’s Notebook serving as the inspiration for the piece. The character, which Ivan "approved himself to play“, tries to escape the phantoms that haunt him, but only sinks deeper and deeper into a nightmare. The ballet is set to the music of Gustav Mahler.
Blind Affair, set to the music of the contemporary English composer Max Richter, is about a society "where everyone is glued to their smart devices and no one sees anything else.“ The core message, according to Ivan is to demonstrate how "we live in our own little boxes and are convinced that the whole world is contained within them, but it isn’t so.“
The young choreographer takes an interest in what he sees around him, and does not shy away from his preoccupation with society and the public at large. "I want to stir up the crowd! I have always wanted to do this! That’s why I fly all over the world, dancing on various stages, and I will continue to do so in the same spirit for the next 120 years or so. It’s all for the sake of encouraging people: come on, take a look around and say how wonderful it is to be alive!“