The Moscow tour of Hamburg Ballet was a stunning triumph. Fights for extra tickets, a full house at the Stanislavsky Music Theater, standing ovations after the performances… this is certainly the right way to greet one of the world’s strongest troupes.
The hype and stir were caused not only by the magic of John Neumeier’s name and to the top level of his danseurs but also by the aptly compiled program. Besides choreographies on the symphonies by Gustav Mahler, Hamburg artistes also brought Nijinsky. And the power of this artiste’s tragic destiny always excites a great interest, regardless of the number of books published and the number of plays staged about this extraordinary personality.
John Neumeier’s version is a declaration of love for the legend. His Nijinsky is both a genius conquering creativity highs and an absolute infant, helpless and sensitive. And though madness is the key leitmotif, pathological deviations are the least concern for Neumeier.
Our world steadily going mad is a subject worthy of the most prominent contemporary choreographer. It’s quite natural that through this prism the hero’s personality is elevated to unattainable highs. Nijinsky in the eponymous ballet is an absolute value. Everything else is relative and phantasmal, like visions, dreams or biographical events, dashingly sinking into oblivion.
Vaslaw Nijinsky (Alexander Ryabko) starts dancing and a modest narrative grows into an epic of his fate. In the whirligig of recollections there seems to be no distinction between theatre and reality. Shahrazad by Rimsky-Korsakov whips up ubiquitous agitation. The sharp runs and edgy leaps of corps de ballet crowds rushing to and fro create the impression of several rehearsals going on at one time. Fluttering around the danseur is Harlequin, Rose Specter, Golden Slave…
The parts are the actor’s look-alikes, materialized moods, emotions and desires, whereas his colleagues, loved ones, friends and enemies often seem to be characters from a tangled libretto. The most fantastic one is the great promoter Sergey Diaghilev. Charismatic Ivan Urban creates the image of a black magician, overbearing and baleful. Neumeier emphasizes the danseur’s dependence on his mentor. In the erotic duets gutta-percha Nijinsky is subdued by rock-like magnificent Diaghilev, the archon of Nijinsky’s body and soul.
This Diaghilev somewhat resembles the juggler from Punchinello, pardoning some and chastising others. He moves from one side-scene to another, dropping veneer shields with lordly gestures. Down go now the haywire theatricals, and now the screens vainly struggling to hide something.
Unlike the mystic Diaghilev, Nijinsky’s wife Romola does not quite fit into the libretto. Anna Polikarpova is so sincere in rendering the elated heartthrob and sacrificial long-suffering of this woman that you cannot but believe not only in her real existence, but also in her virtuous role in Nijinsky’s life (and nobody is willing to guess what happened in reality).
The choreographer plays by contrasts, alternating the norm with madness, tongue tie with eloquence. The second action is powerfully supported by Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony. Called The Year 1905, it narrates on the terrible historic cataclysms as the stage is occasionally penetrated by wild ranks of danseurs in gray overcoats but with bare legs, as a symbol of the revolution’s carouse and debauch.
The crowd now spits out the Demoniac girl from Seasons – the Colors of Time, now Punchinello doomed to perpetual protest, and now a vapid small body (Nijinsky’s older brother Stanislaw, recklessly acted by Alex Martinez epitomizes madness in Neumeier’s ballet). Nijinsky assumes all cataclysms of humanity – crimson and black widths devour the hero in the finale, like two rivers of the dreadful times.
Meanwhile it is far more exciting to watch the meditations of Faunus or the fragility of Punchinello as they melt into sophisticated plastic moves devised by John Neumeier, than to follow the varieties of fortune that befall the solitary genius or all of mankind. The choreographer, lavishly using the quotes and reminiscences from The Russian Seasons, sets up a direct link to his creative origins.
Elena Gubaidullina
Source: Izvestiya
