Alexander ekman swan lake. Choreographer Alexander Ekman about modern ballet and social networks. - So, the theater is still more important for you than ballet

The All-Russian competition of young performers "Russian Ballet" finished at the Bolshoi Theater. The review takes place every two years. The current one is the third in a row. Students of graduation and pre-graduation courses of ballet schools and universities take part in the creative competition. This time, 29 applicants presented their talents on the new stage of the main theater of the country. Reporting by Irina Razumovskaya.

More recently, the Bolshoi Theater hosted the premiere of Valery Todorovsky's film Bolshoy about the attitude and path of young ballet dancers and teachers. The Russian Ballet Prize is a true story on this topic. Today, the best of the best are approaching very close to their dream - to dance in the Bolshoi.

They are 17, 18 years old, students of choreographic schools came to the competition from all over Russia: Kazan, Novosibirsk, Perm, Bashkiria, Buryatia ... Most of them are preparing for final exams and performances. And they dream, of course, about one thing.

“My dream is to dance in the best theater, and dance very well, with soul, carry it to the hall, open up to the whole hall!” - shares the contestant Anastasia Shelomentseva.

“My dream is to become a good dancer. To have charisma inside is the most important thing,” Andrey Kirichenko, a participant in the competition, is convinced.

“To become a promising ballet dancer - so that I can bring something more to art,” admits Igor Kochurov, a participant in the competition.

The main award is an internship at the Bolshoi Theater and golden pointe shoes on a pedestal. But not everyone can deal with anxiety. The competition has a strict and very honorable jury - it is met with a long standing ovation. Yuri Grigorovich, Boris Eifman, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, directors of the country's leading ballet companies and theaters.

“Of course, there are rules and a rating scale that the jury will have to set for each performer. We've been using it for three years now. Scoring takes place online. After the performance of every five participants, sheets are collected from the jury members and counting is carried out, ”says acting. head of the ballet troupe of the State Academic Mariinsky Theatre, competition jury member Yuri Fateev.

The teachers are almost more worried than the contestants. Yes, many of the young performers still miss, stumble, landing in a jump or in a whirl. But then they are students. By the way, for the preparation of laureates of all degrees and the Grand Prix, teachers are awarded cash certificates.

“This competition is very stimulating for them - they must come to Moscow and show their abilities, training and defend the honor of the school. They come to Moscow to the main stage of the country, and it is very honorable and responsible,” said the rector of the Moscow State Academy of Choreography, member of the jury of the competition Marina Leonova.

After counting the points, most of the winners are still from the choreographic schools of the two capitals. The Grand Prix was awarded to Denis Zakharov from the Moscow Academy. The students of Vaganovka Egor Gerashchenko and Eleonora Sevenard got the first places. And the second and third places were shared by young ballet dancers from Moscow, Perm and Novosibirsk.

You have a rare gift for staging plotless comic ballets: in Tulle, for example, it is not the characters and their relationships that are funny, but the very combinations of classical movements and the peculiarities of their performance. Do you think classical ballet is outdated?

I love classical ballet, it's great. And yet it's just a dance, it should be fun, there should be a game. I do not distort the classic movements, I just show them from a slightly different angle - it turns out to be such an easy absurdity. And misunderstandings can arise, especially on the part of artists: working like in a drama is not very familiar to them. I always tell them, “Don't comedy. It's not you who should be funny, but situations.

So, theater is still more important for you than ballet?

The theater is a space where two thousand people can connect with each other, experience the same feelings, and then discuss them: “Did you see this? Cool, huh? Such human unity is the most beautiful thing in the theater.

"Tulle", Musical Theater named after Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, 2017

You introduce speech into your ballets - lines, monologues, dialogues. Do you think the audience will not understand your idea without words?

I just think it's more fun that way. I like to present surprises, surprises, surprise the audience. Consider speech as my trademark.

In my review, I called your "Tulle" an ironic class-concert of the 21st century. In it, firstly, the hierarchy of the ballet troupe is presented, and secondly, all sections of the classical simulator, except for the barre.

I don’t know, somehow I wasn’t going to be ironic about ballet art. I just staged a production of The Game at the Paris Opera, and while I was there, my respect for ballet grew into admiration. When you are inside this troupe, you see how the artists carry themselves, how the etiquette enters the hall - with a royal posture, with a sort of regal self-awareness - absolutely amazing associations arise. The class system, the royal court, Louis the Sun - that's what it is. At the Paris Opera, you can immediately determine who is an etiquette, who is a soloist, who is a coryphaeus - by the way they carry themselves, how they move, how they interact with other people. All this reflects their position in society, their status. And I realized that this is primary - this is how nature itself works. For example, you enter the chicken coop and immediately see the main rooster - he is absolutely beautiful. Perhaps only in France and Russia can one see this shadow of absolutism in theaters. In these countries, ballet is valued, it is a national pride, and therefore, it seems to me, there is a deep connection between French and Russian cultures.

And how did you work with the Parisian roosters? Did you come to the hall with ready-made combinations or did you improvise? Or forced to improvise artists?

In any way. I always have a clear idea of ​​what I want to create, however particularities are born along the way. But if you have 40 people in the hall, you can’t make them wait until you compose a specific combination. Otherwise, they will look at you like that - they say, is this all that you are capable of? - that the remnants of fantasy will disappear immediately. At the Paris Opera, I had a group of five or six dancers, we worked out the material with them - and I transferred the finished drawing to the corps de ballet. In fact, when you stage a ballet, you never know what will happen in the end - you are haunted by the horror of not knowing. The process is exciting, but very exhausting. After Paris, I decided to take a time out.

The Game, Paris National Opera, 2017

For half a year. Or for a year. All my life I have staged very intensively: in 12 years - 45 ballets. It was a constant race, in the end it seemed to me that I was doing one endless production. I was driven by success - we are all career-oriented. I took barrier after barrier, the Paris Opera was my goal, the top of the path. And here she is taken. The first act of my life ballet is done. Now it's intermission.

You have given yourself a break from ballet before: your installations were presented at the Stockholm Museum of Modern Art.

Well, critic criticism is different. Some are even pleasant.

The ones who love you. For example, Moscow: we always praise your performances, adore "Cacti" and remember how nicely you danced at the Bolshoi at the Benois de la danse concert under your own monologue "What I think about at the Bolshoi Theater." Then you were nominated for Swan Lake, but they didn’t give you a prize and didn’t show the performance: they didn’t want to pour 6,000 liters of water onto the stage of the Bolshoi. What prompted you to stage the main Russian ballet in Oslo and how does it compare with the prototype?

No way. At first there was an idea to pour a lot of water on the stage. Then we thought: which of the ballets is connected with water? Of course, Swan Lake. And now I don’t know if it was smart to call my performance that way, since it has no connection with the Swan Lake ballet.

Swan Lake, Norwegian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, 2014

You did Swan Lake with the famous Swedish designer Hendrik Wibskov. By the way, he also wanted to dance as a child - and even won a prize for performing hip-hop.

Yes? Did not know. Hendrik is great, I miss him so much. He and I completely coincide creatively - both seem to be twisted in one direction, set to create something so crazy. He also likes to have fun, knows how to play, his fashion shows are like performances. In Paris, we made a defile in the form of Swan Lake: we poured a pool of water, laid a podium on it, the models walked like water, and dancers in costumes from our performance moved between them.

And do you post all your games on Instagram? You are very active on social media.

Social networks are a very convenient thing for a creative person. I can present my finished work, I can show what I'm working on now - it's like a portfolio. Instagram needs a special language, and I think that my productions, which have a lot of visual effects, are good for Instagram. But I don't like it when people upload photos like "look, I'm sitting here with so-and-so." Reality needs to be lived, not shown. Networks have formed a new form of communication, and it has given rise to a new addiction - people have forgotten how to talk to each other, but they look at the phone every minute: how many likes do I have there?

You have a lot: more than thirty thousand followers on Instagram - twice as many as, for example, Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon, the main choreographers of the famous NDT.

I want even more. But on the work page. I'm going to delete the private one because I'm doing the same thing on it as everyone else: hey, look how nice I'm having a good time.

Let's get back to reality: have you been offered a production here in Moscow? Or at least the transfer of some already finished thing?

I would like to do something here. But I have intermission. Although, to be honest, it pulls into the rehearsal room.

Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman began his career in ballet at the age of ten as a student at the Royal Swedish Ballet School. After completing his studies, he becomes a dancer at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, then for three years he performs as part of the Nederlands Dans Theater troupe. As a dancer, he worked with choreographers such as Nacho Duato,. The year 2005 becomes a turning point in his creative destiny: being a dancer with the Cullberg Ballet, he first proves himself as a choreographer, presenting the first part of his ballet trilogy "Sisters" in Hannover at the International Choreographic Competition - the production of "Sisters Spinning Flax". At this competition, he took second place, and also won the prize of criticism. Since that time, Ekman, having completed his career as a dancer, devotes himself entirely to choreography.

Along with Cullberg Ballet, he collaborates with the Gothenburg Ballet, the Royal Flanders Ballet, the Norwegian National Ballet, the Rhine Ballet, the Bern Ballet and many other companies. Although he started his career as a classical dancer, as a choreographer he gave preference to modern dance with its freedom, not constrained by any rules and established traditions. It was in this style that the choreographer felt the opportunity to achieve the main goal that he always sets for himself when creating this or that production - “to say something” to the viewer, “to change something in people, even the way of feelings”. The main question that a choreographer asks himself before starting work on any production is “Why is it needed?” It is this approach, according to Ekman, that is appropriate in art, and not the pursuit of fame. “I would rather work with a less talented but work-hungry dancer than with a jaded star,” says Ekman.

“Mastering the ballet” (this is how Alexander Ekman calls his work), the choreographer, in an effort to “change the way of feeling” of the audience, always creates something unexpected - even the music for some productions was written by him. Ekman's productions are always unusual, and therefore attract the attention of the whole world - for example, the ballet "Cacti" was presented on eighteen stages. The use of music seems to be a particularly unexpected solution - and on this basis a witty production is built, embodying a slightly ironic look at modern dance. No less famous was his first multi-act ballet - Ekman's Triptych - Teaching Entertainment.

But, although Ekman chose modern dance, this does not mean that he does not look at all towards classical traditions. So, having received an offer in 2010 to create a production for the Royal Swedish Ballet, in 2012 he presented the ballet "Tulle", which is a kind of "reflection" on the themes of classical ballet.

But even if Alexander Ekman refers to the popular masterpieces of the past, he gives them a fundamentally new interpretation - such is the "Lake of Swans", an innovative interpretation of "Swan Lake", presented by the choreographer in 2014. The dancers of the Norwegian Ballet had a hard time, because they danced ... on the water, the choreographer created a real “lake” on the stage, flooding it with water, for this it took more than one thousand liters of water (according to the choreographer, this idea came to him during his stay in the bathroom). But not only this was the originality of the production: the choreographer refuses to present the plot, the main characters are not Prince Siegfried and Odette, but the Observer and two Swans - White and Black, the collision of which becomes the culmination of the performance. Along with purely dance movements, the performance also contains such motifs that would be appropriate in figure skating or even in a circus performance.

In 2015, "Lake of the Swans" was nominated for the Benois de la Dance award, and Alexander Ekman would not be himself if he had not surprised the audience at the concert of the nominees. Despite the fact that he had not performed as a dancer for quite a long time, the choreographer himself went on stage and performed a humorous number, specially invented by him for this concert, “What I Think About at the Bolshoi Theater”. The laconic number captured the audience not with virtuosity, but with a variety of emotions - joy, uncertainty, fear, happiness - and, of course, there was a hint of the choreographer's creation: Ekman poured a glass of water onto the stage. In 2016, another creation of the choreographer, A Midsummer Night's Dream, was nominated for this award.

The work of Alexander Ekman is many-sided. Not limited to ballet in its traditional incarnation, the choreographer creates installations with the participation of ballet dancers for the Swedish Museum of Modern Art. Since 2011, the choreographer has been teaching at the Juilliard School in New York.

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Alexander Ekman. Photo - Yuri Martyanov / Kommersant

Choreographer Alexander Ekman on modern ballet and social networks.

The repertoire of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater includes Tulle, the first ballet in Russia by Alexander Ekman, a 34-year-old Swede, the most prolific, sought-after and talented choreographer of his generation, who has already directed 45 ballets around the world, the last of them in Paris Opera.

– You have a rare gift for staging plotless comic ballets: in Tulle, for example, it’s not the characters and their relationships that are funny, but the very combinations of classical movements and the peculiarities of their performance. Do you think classical ballet is outdated?

I love classical ballet, it's great. And yet it's just a dance, it should be fun, there should be a game. I don't distort the classic movements, I just show them from a slightly different angle - it turns out to be such an easy absurdity. And misunderstandings can arise, especially on the part of artists: working like in a drama is not very usual for them. I always tell them, “Don't comedy. It's not you who should be funny, but situations.

- So, the theater is still more important for you than ballet?

“A theater is a space where two thousand people can feel connected to each other, experience the same feelings, and then discuss them: “Did you see this? Cool, huh? Such human unity is the most beautiful thing in the theater.

- You introduce speech into your ballets - replicas, monologues, dialogues. Do you think the audience will not understand your idea without words?

“I just think it's more fun that way. I like to present surprises, surprises, surprise the audience. Consider speech as my trademark.