Remember, on December 30th I came terribly irritated? I also promised to write about that performance. I'm correcting myself. The article came out almost a week ago.

The Mariinsky Theater presented the audience with the premiere of the ballet “Symphony in Three Movements” to the music of Stravinsky, staged by Radu Poklitaru with Valery Gergiev conducting.

The Mariinsky Theater is confidently strengthening its various ties with Anna Matison, a beautiful model in appearance: she has already been an opera director (the opera The Golden Cockerel), a costume designer, a production designer (in her own productions) and a libretto author (the ballets Bambi and In the jungle"). Then, having quickly filmed a series for Channel One, she set out to make (and is making) a documentary about the Mariinsky Theater. To decorate the film, Ms. Mathison needed a ballet. But not just any kind, but new, and preferably modern. The idea was supported by Valery Gergiev, who is art center attraction of this film. The music for the new ballet was also not just any music, but Stravinsky. The maestro wanted to conduct the “Symphony in Three Movements”. There was only one thing left to do: compose a ballet. Mrs. Matison is not encroaching on her choreographer's laurels (yet), so she generously decided to give Radu Poklitar a chance. The conditions were laid out for Mr. Poklitar: that the ballet be set to music by Stravinsky, that it be as busy as possible more people so that people are sure to march, and don’t forget about dancing. Mr. Poklitaru also turned out to be no mistake and, having agreed to the march and the people, demanded as mandatory condition inclusion of a not yet created ballet in the theater repertoire. With such rich cultural overtones, the ballet “Symphony in Three Movements” was born.

Choreographer Poklitaru was forced to maneuver between his own plan, the wishes of illustrious customers and the ambitious desire to make the performance a repertoire. The original author's style of the choreographer, very recognizable in its programmatic inelegance, was ultimately sacrificed for the beauty necessary for Ms. Matison's film project. It’s even surprising that the choreographic provocateur Mr. Poklitaru appeared on the Mariinsky stage so respectable, trivial, and in places even banal. But, apparently, this is the price of a “repertoire performance”.

Three parks (one symbolizes youth, the other - maturity, the third - old age) spin and pull the threads of fate. When they break this thread, a person, according to mythology, dies, but in the play Poklitaru, he is born for further trials prepared by the three ladies. The ladies jointly run a kind of maternity hospital, through which a shapeless mass of embryos moves. Throwing a red rope into this mass, the parks catch the first victim there, fishing out Yuri Smekalov into the light of day. And soon, so that he doesn’t get bored, they catch Svetlana Ivanova with a red rope and begin to lead them through life’s trials. However, it’s quite difficult to call a 20-minute stage existence a test: the characters are completely devoid of will and perform simple plastic tasks projected by the parks.

At the same time, the couple is naive, like preschoolers at a Christmas tree kindergarten. The inexperience of the main characters leads the ladies to bewilderment. The most experienced one gives Mr. Smekalov lessons in love. They, of course, lack Eifman’s anguish and physiology, but the Kama Sutra turned out to be quite good. The matured hero returns to Mrs. Ivanova, but she, like the heroine of a fairy tale by Evgeniy Schwartz (“Oh, princess, you are so innocent that you can say terrible things!”), maintains unshakable spiritual chastity.

Photo: Natasha Razina from the Kommersant website.

The parks have no choice but to send a corps de ballet of former embryos to attack the heroes. They were dressed in uniforms and breeches and, fulfilling the holy will of the director and conductor, were forced to march.

The march of the ghouls turned out to be rather indistinct from a dance point of view - they predictably moved either in rows, then in columns, or twisted in a spiral. However, with a highly professional editing director, it will be possible to create a completely decent manifestation from this material. Besides, half the work has already been done by video projections by Alexander Kravchenko: the witty transformation of a dove of peace (or a chicken from a peasant's soup) into an ominous militarized eagle with a bunch of arrows alone is worth a lot! The “Symphony” ended with cannibalism: the former embryos devoured Mr. Smekalov, Mrs. Ivanova was crucified by the umbilical cord, and the three ladies, it seems, were not very happy with the experiment. However, they still have a lot of embryos, and Ms. Mathieson’s film is likely to be long.

After the premiere of Hamlet in Bolshoi Theater On March 11, 2015, the first ballet premiere of the 2015-2016 season. at the Mariinsky Theater was "Symphony in Three Movements" to the music of Igor Stravinsky, directed by Radu Poklitaru.
In the words of the choreographer himself: “The story was not entirely theatrical. Anya Matison decided to make a ballet film. And what I have now staged at the Mariinsky Theater is part of this film project. I was offered to be a choreographer who would stage the ballet featured in the film script, to which I replied that I was only interested if it was a repertory performance Mariinsky Theater. So from the very beginning we began to work closely with Anna Matison, who is the designer of the play - the author of both scenery and costumes. If we talk about choreography, then I acted independently, if only because Anya was filming her film at the same time and was physically unable to attend the rehearsals.”
And on December 30, 2015, the premiere of the ballet to the music of Igor Stravinsky and choreography by Radu Poklitaru took place on the second stage of the Mariinsky Theater. And it should be recalled that the first and most famous choreographic embodiment of the score of Stravinsky’s “Symphony in Three Movements” was created in 1972 by the master of plotless symphonic dance George Balanchine. Radu Poklitaru offered a different interpretation of Stravinsky's music.
“This performance is my reflection on the price that a person has to pay for the right to be an individual,” says the choreographer and emphasizes that the images of his work are largely determined by the composer’s statements. “Symphony in Three Movements” was written by Stravinsky in 1945. Although the composer said that it was not programmatic, he is known to say that each episode is associated with a specific impression of the war. And although at first I didn’t want to deal with the military theme, in the end there are military allusions in the play.”
“Three parks (one symbolizes youth, the other - maturity, the third - old age) spin and pull the threads of fate. When they break this thread, a person, according to mythology, dies, but in the play Poklitaru, he is born for further trials prepared by the three ladies. The ladies jointly run a kind of maternity hospital, through which a shapeless mass of embryos moves. Throwing a red rope into this mass, the parks catch the first victim there, fishing out Yuri Smekalov into the light of day. And soon, so that he doesn’t get bored, they catch Svetlana Ivanova with a red rope and begin to lead them through life’s trials. However, the heroes are completely devoid of will and perform simple plastic tasks projected by the parks. The inexperience of the main characters leads the ladies to bewilderment. The most experienced one gives Mr. Smekalov lessons in love. The matured hero returns to Mrs. Ivanova, but she maintains unshakable spiritual chastity. The parks have no choice but to send a corps de ballet of former embryos to attack the heroes. They were dressed in uniforms and breeches and, fulfilling the holy will of the director and conductor, were forced to march. “The Symphony” ended with cannibalism: the former embryos devoured Mr. Smekalov, Mrs. Ivanova was crucified by the umbilical cord, and the three ladies, it seems, were not very happy with the experiment” (from an online review by bloha-v-svitere.livejournal.com).
The concept and style of the scenography of “Symphony in Three Movements” are reminiscent of the ballet “Crossroads” in the image of three ladies spinning the thread of fate, although their eyes are covered with a blindfold. According to Poklitaru, main idea"Crossroads" also
defines the goddess from ancient Greek mythology, who spins the thread of life. There are blind characters in both “Crossroads” and the ballet “Underground”. Military uniform gradually penetrates into all of Poklitaru’s latest ballets. Gray Guard snipers shoot a white-winged flock in Swan Lake, military characters are present in Hamlet. And the corps de ballet of embryos resembles the green spirals of human-mechanisms in “The Rite of Spring” by Poklitaru, by the way, also dressed in a paramilitary uniform!

Symphony in three movements

R.K. Sometimes you refer to your Symphony in three movements as a “military symphony”. How did her music reflect impressions of world events?

I.S. I can add little to the fact that it was written under the sign of these events. She both “expresses” and “does not express my feelings” caused by them, but I prefer to say only that, against my will, they aroused my musical imagination. The events that thus activated the mend were not general or ideological, but specific: each episode of the Symphony is associated in my imagination with a specific impression of the war, very often emanating from cinema.

The third part actually conveys the emergence of military intrigue, although I only realized this after finishing the essay. Its beginning, in particular, in a completely inexplicable way for me, was a musical response to chronicle and documentaries, in which I saw soldiers marching in a goose-step. The square marching rhythm, the brass band-style instrumentation, the grotesque crescendo of the tuba - everything is associated with these repulsive pictures.

Although my visual impressions of world events were largely derived from films, they were also rooted in personal experience. One day in 1932 in Munich I saw a group of Brown Shirts appear on the street below the balcony of my room in the Bayerische Hof Hotel and attack a group of civilians. The civilians tried to take cover behind benches on the sidewalks, but were soon routed behind their clumsy barriers. The police finally showed up, but by then the attackers had already dispersed. That same evening I had dinner with Vera de Bosset and the photographer Eric Schall in a small restaurant on the Alley. Three men with swastikas on their armbands entered the room, and one of them began making insulting remarks about Jews, directing his remarks in our direction. We hurried to the exit, since the day's street fight was still before our eyes, but the screaming Nazis and their supporters followed us, simultaneously vilifying and threatening us. Shull protested, and then they began kicking and beating him. Miss de Bosset ran around the corner, found a policeman and told him that a man was being killed, but this statement did not move him to any action. We were then saved by the timely appearance of a taxi, and although Schall was beaten and bloodied, we went straight to the police court, but the judge was as little moved by our story as the policeman. “Now in Germany such things happen every minute,” was all he said.

But let's return to the plot of the third movement of the Symphony. Despite contrasting episodes, such as the canon of the bassoons, march music dominates until the fugue, which is a stop (stasis) and a turning point. The stillness at the beginning of the fugue is, in my opinion, comical, as is the subverted arrogance of the Germans when their machine gave up. The exposition of the fugue and the end of the Symphony are associated in my plot with the successes of the Allies, and the finale, although its D-flat major sixth chord, instead of the expected C major, sounds perhaps too standard, speaks of my indescribable joy at the triumph of the Allies. The figure was developed from the rumba in the timpani part in the introduction of the first movement. It was somehow associated in my imagination with the movement of military vehicles.

The first part was also inspired by a war film - this time a documentary - about the scorched earth tactics in China. The middle section of this movement is music of clarinet, piano and strings, increasing in intensity and power of sound until the explosion of three chords in c. 69 - was conceived as a series of instrumental dialogues to accompany a cinematic scene showing the Chinese diligently digging in their fields.

The essence of the form in the Symphony - perhaps a more accurate title would be "Three Symphonic Movements" - is the elaboration of the idea of ​​the rivalry of contrasting elements of several types. One of these contrasts, the most obvious, is the contrast between the harp and the piano, the main protagonist instruments. Each is assigned an important obligate role and entire sections, and only in the fugue, which is the turning point, queue de poisson 1 of the Nazi machine, are both instruments heard together and separately.

But enough about that. Contrary to what I said, this Symphony is not programmatic. Composers combine notes. And it's all. How and in what form the things of this world were imprinted in their music is not for them to say. (IV)

UPR. Perceiving the Three Selves Become aware of your Basic Self by focusing on your body; Think about the last time you had a feeling, hunch, or intuitive understanding of something. Notice how your body responds to your thoughts and feelings, how it