Alexei Ratmansky

[FionaM]

Rather surprised to read in this article that Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake are described as “Western ballets” 

 

Article from The Gothamist in links 13.7.22

https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/at-american-ballet-theatre-a-star-choreographer-with-ties-to-russia-and-ukraine-processes-the-war-with-his-art

 

[Jeannette]

5 hours ago, FionaE said:

Rather surprised to read in this article that Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake are described as “Western ballets” 

 

Article from The Gothamist in links 13.7.22

https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/at-american-ballet-theatre-a-star-choreographer-with-ties-to-russia-and-ukraine-processes-the-war-with-his-art

 

I think that the author meant:

Great works of the ballet companies in the West = The Royal Ballet’s tradition, via N. Sergeev’s notations from Tsarist-Petipa time.

 

As opposed to the East (USSR-heritage)…K. Sergeev’s lean & trim versions of the classics.

[FionaM]

@Jeannette thank you 🙏 

[Nastya]

@Jeannette

I hope so. They're far from Western, though original choreography by a French man, in Russia danced by Russians with Russian music.

[Jeannette]

Sergei Vikharev used to talk about studying films of “the Western tradition” for performing Sleeping Beauty, as he prepared his 1999 recon for the Mariinsky.

[Sebastian]

As regards the first production of The Sleeping Beauty in 1890, the mix of nationalities involved is rather more complex than is sometimes assumed. This is outlined in my short article for the 2019 RB programme, since republished online by the music critic Mark Ronan.  At the risk of self-promotion, here’s the link:

 

http://www.markronan.com/2020/06/sleeping-beauty/

 

[FLOSS]

I think that the reference to the "great western ballets" in the article about Ratmansky is not a reference to the Tchaikovsky ballets and their performance tradition in the west but should be read as a reference to the nineteenth century ballets created in the west which were danced in Russia in productions revised by Petipa and others which were given important revivals at the Bolshoi between 2007 and 2009. The "great western ballets" are, I think,  Le Corsaire first seen in Paris in 1855 which was staged at the Bolshoi in 2007 in a production in which Ratmandky was heavily involved and contained some reconstructed Petipa; La Esmeralda first seen in London in 1844 which was staged by Burlaka and Medvedev in 2009 and Coppelia first seen in Paris in 1870 which was staged by Vikharev in 2009. In case the Bolshoi stagers made real efforts to find out what the ballet looked like before they were " improved" in Soviet times although that did not necessarily mean that everything seen on stage was pure Petipa. 

 

Unlike St Petersburg where the Vikharev reconstruction of Sleeping Beauty staged at the end of the century proved controversial the Bolshoi under Ratmansky who was artistic director between 2004-2008 was far more sympathetic to the idea of reconstructing old ballets to see what they might have looked like on stage in terms of both design and choreography.While the Bolshoi under Ratmansky may have been more enlightened and far more sympathetic to such acts of choreographic archaeology than the Mariinsky had been, the real explanation for the lack of controversy  I think lies with the fact that none of these production displaced treasured "authentic" versions and thus no one's professional standing as custodians of the sacred text was threatened by these stagings. 

 

As far as Beauty is concerned it is a little ironic that the Tsar who imposed strict Russification within his territories was forced to look to the west for military support and in order to make the alliance with France more palatable to the Slavophile element in court circles and the intellectual  elite found himself paying for a work which praised western culture even if it was in the form of the court culture of Louis XIV.