Pas de deux: The Mariinsky Ballet's Swan Lake

Chris Wiegand. Thursday 6 August 2009 13.18 BST



What's it like to perform in the world's favourite ballet? Evgeny Ivanchenko and Viktoria Tereshkina explain the strange beauty and difficult duets of Swan Lake.

Evgeny Ivanchenko: The first Swan Lake I saw was a Mariinsky production. I was a child, studying at the Vaganova school. I saw all these crowds of people outside the theatre and knew I wanted to be a part of this beautiful ballet.

Viktoria Tereshkina: I first saw Swan Lake in Siberia, as a child, with my mother. I was only about seven. What I remember most is the brilliant villain, Von Rothbart. I'm biased, of course, but the Mariinsky's production really stands out from other Swan Lakes. We have more swans, for a start! There are 32 rather than the usual number of 24 or 18.

Evgeny Ivanchenko: Swan Lake has really become a legend of ballet history. The plot is so strange. It's interesting to stage because there are so many ways to do it – unlike Giselle or Sleeping Beauty, which are more straightforward stories.

Viktoria Tereshkina: Swan Lake gave me my first principal role, in 2002, after I joined the corps de ballet. I almost died when I heard I would be playing Odette and Odile. It's a double role, which is quite challenging. Odette is particularly difficult; Odile has a lot of quick turns and jumps, which I enjoy. It's only now that I've started to get into the role of Odette.

Evgeny Ivanchenko: My role, Siegfried, is simpler. The character doesn't really change throughout the course of the ballet. He's a fairly standard prince, I suppose.

Viktoria Tereshkina: The first time Evgeny and I were meant to dance together, I had an injury that very day so it didn't happen. I can't quite remember when we finally danced together for the first time, but I really like performing with him. Emotionally, we fit together, and we're also the right height for each other!

Evgeny Ivanchenko: It looks dreadful when a dancer is on pointes and looks down at her partner. Viktoria supports herself on stage. I don't need to do a lot for her when we're dancing together. She's very independent. There are two major duets in the ballet. In the White Swan pas de deux, I'm just supporting the dancer; the Black Swan sequence allows me to bring out all the tricks.

Viktoria Tereshkina: Dancing the White Swan is difficult – I have to sort of break myself down to get that fluttering movement. With the Black Swan, the music carries you along more easily and the sequence is a real crowd-pleaser.

Evgeny Ivanchenko: Tchaikovsky put everything into Swan Lake; emotionally, everything is in the piece. The music for the white acts – the second and fourth acts – is particularly beautiful. Our touring programme has two lots of Tchaikovsky, actually, with Balanchine's Serenade as well as Swan Lake.

Viktoria Tereshkina: I'm delighted to be doing Romeo and Juliet on the tour as well. I never really wanted to dance Juliet, but when I started rehearsing it, I enjoyed the role more and more. Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet are completely different. Take the costumes: for Juliet I'm in a long dress, whereas in Swan Lake I'm in a tutu and everything's exposed, everything has to be perfect. It's nice to be appearing in both productions on the same tour. If we had to put on Swan Lake 20 times in a row, it would be much harder emotionally.

This DVD has been recently released in Japan:

Juliet's far too mannered for boyish Romeo

By David Gillard
Last updated at 8:56 PM on 06th August 2009

Romeo And Juliet (Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Opera House)



The cradle of Russian ballet - with an aristocratic bloodline that includes Pavlova, Nijinsky, Nureyev, Makarova and Baryshnikov - the Mariinsky (formerly the Kirov) of St Petersburg was responsible for premiering many of the great romantic classics.

And it brings three of them - Lavrovsky's original 1940 staging of Romeo And Juliet, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, plus a triple-bill Homage To Balanchine - for its two-week season.

The company may boast a glorious imperial past, but only a new generation of rising stars will ensure a dazzling future.

And it was two of them - Alina Somova and Vladimir Shklyarov - who opened the season as Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers.

Sadly, they look as though they come from different schools. Somova - tall, blonde and supermodel-slim - is a wild windmill of arms and legs, her long limbs flailing and soaring, her extensions amazing, her split leaps impossibly high.

By contrast, Shklyarov is elegance personified, his technique refined and bold, his boyish Romeo recalling the young Baryshnikov.

He dominates the stage, but Somova brings too little acting skill to her Juliet. Great dancing actresses such as Margot Fonteyn and Lynn Seymour made this child-woman a truly tragic balletic heroine; Somova's mannered assessment merely scrapes the emotional surface.

But those brought up on Kenneth MacMillan's poetic dance-drama for the Royal Ballet are likely to find the Mariinsky's museum piece a disappointment, too.

True, there are plenty of sterling moments - the fight scenes are accomplished with full swash and buckle.

But there is far too much padding, as characters drift aimlessly across the front curtain while scene changes happen.

And the eye-rolling ham acting from so many of the cast is a worrying Soviet-era throwback. Ilya Kuznetsov's leering, scenery-chewing Tybalt is typical, a beautifully danced panto villain.

There was stirring playing of Prokofiev's mighty score, but this was a muted opening from a great company. The fairy-tale classics should suit it better.

Dance to a different tune

By Peter Aspden

Published: August 8 2009 01:56 | Last updated: August 8 2009 01:56

I was entranced, at the opening night of the Mariinsky Ballet’s short residency at the Royal Opera House this week, by the company’s new star, Alina Somova. She was dancing Juliet in Prokofiev’s version of Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy, and she was ravishing: long-limbed, elegant, expressive, perhaps lacking in the puppyish fervour that characterises first love, but no less effective for that.

When you can move like that, with such elemental grace and sweeping, fluent lines of the body, you can’t really do faltering adolescence. One may as well complain that she didn’t have spots and braces. It seemed best not to worry about the dramatic truth of the story (not least because almost everyone else was acting in some kind of seaside pantomime), and simply succumb to the beauty of it all.

I found it easy enough. But others did not. Her performance was criticised in many quarters, and by those who know far more than me about this particular tradition of dance. Our own Clement Crisp, whose personal memories of Russian ballet stretch back to the 1940s, found her style too contemporary for the role. Others decided she was showy and unconvincing. On the specialist ballet noticeboards, judgments were harsher still: she moved “like a rhythmic gymnast”; she resembled a “Barbie doll”.

Closer investigation of the Alina Somova story reveals her to be something of a controversial figure. She has indeed divided the balletomane community, who either regard her as a breath of fresh air (no casual metaphor: when she leaves the ground, she dances like one) – or as an overgroomed heretic who is threatening the most fundamental tenets of the distinguished Russian dance tradition.

Some of the debate is inevitably arcane. A clip of her dancing on YouTube brings ferocious recrimination: “Her front foot was sickled in? sous-sous at 1:48!!! Ahhh!” There is nothing wrong with this. Pedantry and fastidiousness are the concomitants of specialist knowledge. It is both a boon and a curse. I would hate my enjoyment of Monday’s performance to have been blemished by noticing a sickled front foot in sous-sous, but I am sure I miss many subtle marvels of the art form too.

But I sense broader issues at play here. Not only is Somova’s style of dancing controversial; her personality too displays 21st-century tendencies that are not normally associated with the famously severe Russian schooling. For one, according to the gossip columns, she was once romantically involved with a handsome figure skater, Alexei Yagudin, an Olympic and world champion, no less.

This naturally captured the imagination of the Russian public. One side-effect of the shock therapy required to move from a monolithic one-party state to a mixed economy is the sudden demand for tabloid gossip. Every post-communist society needs a Posh and Becks fable to convince itself that it is on the road to glamour and gorgeousness. Yagudin and Somova filled the role nicely.

. . .

Then there was her distinctly proletarian behaviour last year at the Lowry Centre, where she was dancing at the same time as the football team she supports, Zenit St Petersburg, was contesting the UEFA Cup Final up the road, at the City of Manchester stadium. “Yes! We were dancing but really we were all at the football match!” she told The Daily Telegraph. “We celebrated at the hotel afterwards with the players.” She even admitted to breaking into a broad smile while dancing Balanchine’s “Diamonds” because she heard Zenit had scored.

So while it is absurd to talk of Somova as a loose cannon – however controversial, her performances speak of tireless commitment and dedication to her art – there is something different about her: star quality or charisma. But I think it is a little more complicated than that: it is the sheen of modernity itself.

The Mariinsky/Kirov tradition was forged in idiosyncratic conditions: its famous choreographer Marius Petipa arrived in St Petersburg in 1847, a full 14 years before the emancipation of Russia’s serfs. The company’s commitment to excellence survived every twist and turn of Russian and Soviet history. But now it must take its place on the global cultural stage: a place that is promiscuous, fast-moving, wilfully superficial, and that offers stellar rewards for little more than a transfixing smile.

Those impeccable company standards will be harder than ever to maintain in such a climate. Modern styles – of dance, of personality – will challenge the steely status quo even more. Experts will become more and more demanding of purity of technique, while increasing numbers of casual punters will be attracted by an art intelligently adapting to contemporary ways. Something will be lost, and something gained.

Alina Somova – hand-picked to open the current season, remember – is obviously a star. If I were a choreographer from New York, or indeed a Hollywood producer, I would be keeping a close eye on her. You can too: she is in Swan Lake on Monday and has a Sleeping Beauty and some Balanchine to come. Just don’t let her know what the football scores are.

peter.aspden@ft.com
More columns at http://www.ft.com/aspden

This naturally captured the imagination of the Russian public. One side-effect of the shock therapy required to move from a monolithic one-party state to a mixed economy is the sudden demand for tabloid gossip. Every post-communist society needs a Posh and Becks fable to convince itself that it is on the road to glamour and gorgeousness. Yagudin and Somova filled the role nicely.

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Nabor tradizionnix glupostej ot FT .
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Toze ot WSJ .poslednjaa
bolee sionistkaja i krome togo s publikazijami po polstranizi
"professorow" na temu "... Pochemu homoseksualizm xoroscho"

1. Na swad'bu Olega Bloxina ( 1975 lutschij futbolist ewropi) i Irini Derjuginoj ( olimpijskaja chempionka w XG) prischli neskolko tis .chelowek
Nikto ne zapreschal

2. Zena Kontr-Admirala Kostina (ispitiwal perwie atomnie pod. lodki) -perwaja dwazdi chempionka SSSR po XG

3. Natalia Fateewa(aktrissa ) -ljubowniza zam.preda KGB

Wse dannie(i drugie ) sluchai w massax aktivno diskutirowalis '


Tochka zrenija awtora -Franzija w otnoschenii zenschin weduschaja .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY2BQk9s11Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyOQObPw0ss

P.S. Perwij dom modelej bil sozdan po prikazu I.Stalina ... wozmozno esche w godi wojni

Octavia mozete pereslat'w FT
,est' na anglijskom i video prilagaetsja

Громкий скандал разразился в консульстве Великобритании в Екатеринбурге: в Интернете появился порноролик, главный герой которого как две капли воды похож на высокопоставленного сотрудника ведомства Джеймса Хадсона.

После того как в сети появился компрометирующий ролик, заместитель консула покинул свой пост и улетел в Англию.
Англичанин работал в Екатеринбурге заместителем начальника отдела торговли и инвестиций. В его обязанности входило содействие развитию торгово-экономических связей между предприятиями Великобритании и Уральского региона.

Как видно на записи, человек, очень похожий на дипломата, налаживал с партнерами максимально тесные связи.
Кстати, в городе давно поговаривают, что мистер Хадсон - известный ловелас и не раз был замечен в компании красивых барышень. Но лишь сейчас появилось видео, на котором человека, как две капли воды похожего на дипломата, развлекают две прекрасные нимфы.

Коллеги

В екатеринбургском консульстве отказались давать комментарии по поводу скандальной записи.

- Мы не обсуждаем наших сотрудников! - заявили коллеги дипломата. - И не уполномочены говорить о том, где и чем сейчас занят мистер Хадсон.
В кадровом отделе Посольства Великобритании в Москве подтвердили, что в дипкорпусе в России значится такой сотрудник, как Джеймс Хадсон, однако затруднились уточнить, где он находится.

L!FE.ru выяснил, что английский дипломат в данный момент покинул Россию и уже находится у себя на родине.

Сотрудники Генерального консульства в Екатеринбурге сообщили, что Джеймс Хадсон уже уволился. Четыре дня назад он тайно улетел из Екатеринбурга.

- Вместо него уже прибыл новый человек, - сообщили в консульстве. - Это миссис Дженни Уокс.

I like this:

)))

Надеюсь,другие матчи не вызовут у нее таких сильных чувств

Mariinsky Ballet - Swan Lake - ROH - August 2009



John Ross Dance Photographs

Dlja sprawki ... dlja potenzialnnix rezensentow iz USA s nedostowernnimi faktami
iz realnosti SSSR

Сотрудник посольства США в Москве, отвечающий за контакты с церковными иерархами, забавляется с блудницами [скандальное видео]


http://www.kp.ru/daily/24339.4/530152/

...Это можно было бы считать его личным делом, однако есть в этом деле одно "но": по роду занятий в посольстве Хатчер отвечает за вопросы религии и поддерживает официальные контакты с иерархами религиозных конфессий в России. В том числе, на самом высоком уровне.

Ловко устроился этот посольский: общается со священнослужителями, прихожанами православных, мусульманских, иудейских общин, рассуждает о свободе совести - и одновременно ходит по "амурным" адресам в Москве и других российских городах. А там у него уже другой круг общения: Инна, Соня, Вероника...