on may 2, 2015 in Munich, before reaching six months before his 90th birthday, died a great dancer of the twentieth century, Maya Plisetskaya. Gone, as lived, is unusual: she became ill after returning from a football match. Maya Plisetskaya was also an avid cheerleader. From a huge list of roles, a brilliant dancer ballet observer “MK” selected only five parties that have changed the history of ballet and theater in General. Although such roles in the works of Plisetskaya was much more.
“Swan lake” Tchaikovsky and the death of Stalin
1947. Maya was just 22 years old when she first danced Swan lake. Unspeakable mysterious was her Odette-Odile – probably, the main party Plisetskaya at the Bolshoi theatre, she danced at least more than 800 times! In recognition of the ballerina this ballet by Tchaikovsky played in her life a decisive role. “I danced to it for thirty years: 1947 – 1977. It’s like the years of birth and death at stony obelisk.” And the year before 21-year-old ballerina writes in her diary: “I would Very much like to dance “Swan lake”, but Lavrovsky said that wily temptress Odile I can’t…”
How wrong Lavrovsky! Her first performance was the day. “I didn’t believe myself that dance that fulfilled a dream. All involved in the play clapped for me after each act on stage… the Final act – the care of Odette I just improvised. Left thumbs”. Elizaveta Pavlovna Gerdt, where Maya rehearsed this party, then she said, “and leave. You really like float away”. And left… Now she’s a mysterious, fantastic hands is a part of the world-famous style Plisetskaya. To it in the classics they were not free, and Plisetskaya dance hands sang, bewitching in its movement, as if conveying a swell of water or the flight of the Swan wings. It changed their outline, line. And she began to imitate. Now these hands you can see everyone who plays this game.
I Must say that another of her iconic Swan party – “the Dying Swan” – (she danced since 1943), the magic of her dance was accumulated in these fantastic hands. And Fokine’s lyrical miniature, filled with a completely different meaning. “Plisetsky style went around the world”, call herself the iconic movement of their hands when on stage or on the TV screen to see my refracted reflection – these drooping brush, Swan elbows, his head thrown back housing, the optimality of fixed poses. Without knowing more excited about this or sad.
But back to “Swan lake”. In 1950 the play with her participation called for “great helmsman” Mao Zedong. In honor of him had to give, actually, not “Swan” and the ballet “the Red poppy”. But “Mac” the father of Chinesepeople who did not watch, because in China, the poppy is the symbol of drug and Vice, which did not take into account Soviet officials. So on 13 February 1950, the year the ballet had to be replaced by “Swan”. “Security in this day was redoubled. I think that Stalin will attend the ballet with his close friend. A special pass, which had been printed by zealous guardians of the night, checked every door. It had to keep in the bodice of the tutu on the chest…” and Plisetskaya danced all of Swan lake with a special pass in the bodice. Was afraid of only one thing: “suddenly the Shen or jump a pass slip and Voroshilov arrows in the boxes will take him for the latest an explosive device and opened fire on me”. But all went well. Mao enjoyed the performance. At the scene of “the pilot” sent Plisetskaya giant basket of white carnations.
For whom only Maya Plisetskaya danced this performance… “In Moscow increasingly began to visit foreign heads of state — such as thaw. All of them drove to a Large. To the ballet. With the guests in the Lodge was always a Khrushchev. Well, seen the films “the Swan” that “to the end of his Kingdom” he complained in the hearts of Plisetskaya in the ballet: “to think that tonight again, “Swan” look, as much as nausea drove to her throat. Ballet is wonderful, but, as you can. Night then white packs mixed in with the tanks removed…”.
But that Khrushchev Stalin… Even with the “Swan”, as they say, to the light of this strong woman could easily send. In his memoirs Plisetskaya puts this issue bluntly: “Maybe the devil’s spell my Odile ruined “the best friend the workers of humanity?” And she came to that conclusion almost by accident, after the publication of the book “the Unknown Stalin”. Then people increasingly began to ask her the same question: “is it True that on the eve of his fatal stroke Stalin saw you in the Swan?” Answer this question she didn’t remember. And what was the surprise of a ballerina, when, on returning to Munich, where she lived the last years and kept their diaries, rummaged in them, found a record dated February 28, 1953, on the eve of what really danced “Swan”. Record exactly coincided with archival documents of the KGB, declassified after 50 years, and published in the book “the Unknown Stalin”, and testified that his last, on the eve of the fatal night stroke, the release of the leader of the people really did commit to the Bolshoi theater. And “Swan lake” with Maya Plisetskaya in the title role was the last performance that the dictator had ever seen in his life.
And if the synopsis was right when he asked: “But if real power of art is so great that to kill a tyrant?” — these words recall, when the Duma��nil that in August ‘ 91, at the beginning of the coup, on television all day spinning it “Swan lake”. And on the day of the death of Leonid Brezhnev, who became the “reference point” of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, cancel the broadcast of a hockey match Spartak–Dynamo(Riga), replacing it with this ballet.
“don Quixote” by Minkus: “Opinion leader”
1950-th year. Business card No. 2 Plisetskaya – the party of Kitri in the ballet “don Quixote”. She is 25 , behind debut in “Swan lake”.
– the success of which was Maya in “don Quixote”, one ballet I have never seen tells me Igor Palicki, Riga with experience, a fan and friend of Maya Plisetskaya. I saw her in “don Quixote”, after a long break due to an injury. It was, if my memory serves me, probably 63rd year. You have no idea what was going on at the box office in the lobby before! And at the play! With the right scenes on the stage was a tall ladder, which she had to descend. And when she and the fan just stood there, in the hall there was applause, like at the stadium! And on 45 minutes, that is, the entire first act, the applause did not abate! And conductor of the fire later said that the entire first act he had not heard what’s playing: “it was a moan, the crowd screamed!!!”
Her Kitri in “don Quixote” is associated with this story. In 1950 year, the birthday of Stalin celebrated in the St. George hall of the Kremlin. The event was invited to speak and the young ballerina Plisetskaya. However, the variation of the Street dancer from “don Quixote” which she had to dance at a concert, someone from the Commission, claiming the repertoire, did not like it and decided to redo it. No sooner said than done: the pianist played the hopping variation from “Laurencia” and Plisetskaya “twice proprygal of “don Quixote”. Here is a description in the Kremlin, the Stalin and Mao: “In the first row back to the scene at a long Banquet table half-turned to me blurred by my fear and the bright light mustachioed face of the Emperor. I get up in preparation, and piano. Well, Lord, take away!”. Then the applause… “Bow, strained smile and as ordered, without stopping, dive into the white and gold door. I catch myself thinking that lowered when you nod, eyes to the floor. I admit through the years – to make eye contact with Stalin I was just scared. Intuitively.”.
Stalin said something to Mao, and in the morning papers a brief communiqué by TASS about the concert mentioning the name of Plisetskaya. These lines and “the rumor about the waxed stage of the St. George hall of the Kremlin”, which “has come to the ears of the ballet troupe” and played a role in that Plisetskaya was finally able to Kitri.
Even geniuses, as we know, make mistakes. They were on the debut and Maya in “don Quixote”. After many decades in the memories she honestly and carefully because��merged all its failures: in the first act, ending in variations of tours on the diagonal, lost his balance and the final point was perfect to the music on the floor. In the scene “Dream” in eight bars of late with the release, in the final pas de Deux twenty-eight fouettés ran perfect and “in the last four shimmied. The final pose was not on center.” With one of modern ballet stars it happens all the time, but they even “do not bother” on it. Plisetskaya also remember this all my life. And after the performance her dressing room to her looked lively and excited Ulanova and gave Maya a book of Maria Taglioni, writing on the title “Maya Plisetskaya wish you a great life in art”.
If Plisetskaya is not mistaken in calculations of the age, was on this play and another spectator, thirteen-year-old Rudolf Nureyev… However, in the biographies of the dancer on his arrival in Moscow was not reported. Though there are unable to look for meticulous researchers. When the St. Petersburg friends Plisetskaya later told her about it, the dancer was asked about his reaction. “Nureyev after the first act crying, – was the answer”. “At the meeting I asked Rudy if it’s true or just a friendly exaggeration. “It is not true. I cried and cried. Crying from happiness. You set the fire on stage!..”
“Carmen” by Bizet-Shchedrin: “Maya, cover your bare thighs!”
1967. the ballet could pass of Maya Plisetskaya easily slip, not if she, with great reluctance on tour of Cuban ballet that took place in the Luzhniki stadium. As he writes in his memoirs, she says “it was winter. Snow, darkness, ice. Laziness. But I’m out. Was the ballet created by Alberto Alonso. From the first movement of the actors I like get bitten by a snake. Before the break I was serving like on a hot chair. It is the language Carmen. This it plastic. Her world. At intermission, I rushed backstage.
Alberto, you want to put “Carmen”? For me?
– This is my dream”…
it is one thing to say another to get permission for a performance at the Bolshoi theatre foreign choreographer, though, and with the friendly Islands of Freedom. And for Moscow at that time invite a foreign choreographer was something unthinkable. Maya did everything possible to get the permit. And made him, in spite of enormous difficulties. “Still, Alonso was a Cuban, a citizen of the brotherly country, which we rendered every assistance. The charm of Cuba has worked” – writes in his recently published memoirs, Maya’s brother, Azary Plisetsky.
Then began the search for artist and composer. At first proposed to make the statement Tyshlera, then Leventhal. In the end the choice fell on a relative – by Boris Messerer, who wrote the perfect conditional scenography. The scene is an arena dLa corriea, enclosed wooden fence. Over her huge cloth with the image of a bull.
With composers, too, would not be easy. The candidates fell away one after the other. Shostakovich, Khachaturian… Shostakovich refused, only saying, “I’m Afraid of Bizet’s” and suggested: “Maybe Rodion Konstantinovich something special, so to speak, will come up with?… – Dmitry Dmitrievich prefer us to call on my name,” wrote Plisetskaya. Then the case and took the husband of Maya Plisetskaya, Rodion Shchedrin, inventing very interesting orchestration for strings and percussion, but keeping the basic familiar tunes.
“Alberto was working with great enthusiasm. Every day after rehearsals he came to our house on Tverskaya. While mom was preparing dinner, he told me how goes the work on the production. In total, Alberto has been in Moscow for four months – from January till April” – talks about working on the show azariy Plisetsky.
the Premiere took place on 20 April 1967. But the next day after the premiere, the Minister of culture Ekaterina Furtseva, the ballet was banned: “It’s unfortunate comrades. Performance raw. Solid erotica. The music of the Opera disfigured. It is necessary to reconsider the concept. I have serious doubts whether this ballet to work on. It is alien to our way…” – he said Furtseva dancer while on the run, “Lenin’s concert”, preparing for the birthday of Lenin in the Kremlin Palace of congresses. There Plisetskaya breath came immediately after he learned about the prohibition.
– we, Catherine, tomorrow is the Banquet in the House of composers paid. All participants invited the entire orchestra. Surely now the “Voice of America” for the whole world the Soviet government to embarrass. I’ll cut love Adagio retorted Plisetskaya, and it worked.
the Banquet is really good. But support will be removed? Promise me? Vartanian will come to you in the morning. Then I will report. The costume change. Skirt wear. Cover, Mayan, bare thighs. This stage of the Bolshoi theatre, comrade!…
Yes, this is a ballet made its way to the public… of Course, the play with great success at the Bolshoi theatre to this day. Now this is a classic.
“the Death Rose”: erotic death in the arms of a beefy handsome
1973. Another room that you created for Maya Plisetskaya, too, has become a classic of the XX century. To put “Death rose” a poem by Blake Roland Petit brought the idea Louis Aragon, with whom the master of French choreography and his wife Zizi Janmar friends.
“Oh rose, thou art sick!/In the darkness of night rapid/Recon worm stash/Love your purple./
he got there,/the Invisible, insatiable, And your life ruined/My love secret”.
Especially good was the ballerina in the second part of the ballet, in he pas de Deux, close trail��yuschem the story of the poem. A handsome young man, in love with rose and identify with this worm, it drains your passion. Rose, dropping petals, wilting in his arms.
This is a pas de Deux to music by the famous “Adagietto” from the Fifth Symphony Mahler had entered a three-part ballet “the Garden of love” where love was shown, so to speak, in all its manifestations, including non-traditional. “In the first part are three beloved pairs: a boy and a girl, two voluptuous gitane, two sensual lad. The garden of love… the Third part. I’m surrounded by six men, and their strong hopping variations. Yves Saint Laurent has created an amusing costumes, drawing naked body – muscles, ribs, loins. I’m one among them in a black robe with flames on the head” – describes Plisetskaya.
“the Death of roses” was the second part of the ballet. Partner in this pas de Deux Petit has defined his famous dancer Rudy Brians and flew him to Moscow for “bride”. “Does it fit me, it’s not whether growth? From the first moment Rudy seemed short. Jacket skimpy on it, in the fashion of the time, which hides the growth. But dressed in a ballet, Brians transformed. Stretched, fit…” On the stage he appeared so that the old balletomane, whose stories I have heard, still can not recover from barging in on their feelings. Handsome with wierowski of tights muscles reminded them of Achilles from Greek sculptures. Contrast with brittle Plisetskaya dressed in “pink petal” (heaton, made by Yves Saint Laurent), was striking. He had “dried up” Maya on stage in his muscular arms.
At twelve-hour rehearsal Roland, according to Plisetskaya, ” dressed up in white from head to toe. Have salagou spirits. In Moscow, he was standing cool autumn dressed up in a long fur coat from a raccoon. This French Monsieur Muscovites he has never seen. From the war of 1812″. Naturally, the theater was immediately a rumor about rehearsals Plisetskaya with a charming handsome man and his friend-choreographer extravagant look.
“Petit came to rehearse with me, but it was so outlandish that the theatrical Gawker and then they poked their long noses into the doors of rehearsal rooms. When else…”
the Famous choreographer has put the Duo on a single breath, for a few days. “The choreography was done well, we changed only a few not coming up in my body supports. Roland rehearsing with me himself. Do not trust the tutor. It shows the movement thoroughly, in full force. Hanging on hand Brianza. Tears feet. I work with such a frenzy is not used. Roland angry:
– are You with me so lazy – or always?
– to Me the main thing – remember lyrics, then add.
Strange Russian school, concludes Roland.
– What’s so Strax? I want to dance a hundred years.
– And if not lazy?
– More than forty will not last…
But his laziness I Rolan infected. When we did later, the ballet Proust, he several times told me:
– Improvise your lines, just improvise.
But in at least some kind?
-tells you How Russian school”.
the Premiere took place in Paris in January 1973. Since where and with whom only the synopsis of the ballet was not performed In Argentina, Australia, Japan, America. Everywhere crazy success! Struck by the synopsis of this erotic ballet even for a show in the Bolshoi theatre. The first and third part, however, in the Soviet Union to show not decided, but “the Ghost of the rose” after Brianna she danced with Godunov, Kovtun, by Berdysheva, Efimov…
“Bolero” by Ravel: ballet porn” is recommended to serve “personally” Leonid Brezhnev
1975 – the year. Masterpiece №5. This Soviet ballet spectators were able to see only after the personal approval of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev. It was like… a few months after the first Moscow tour buzharovskoe troupe “Ballet of XX century”, when Maya Plisetskaya to his creative evening wanted to show at the Bolshoi the ballet, danced; it is already in the West, the then Director of the Bolshoi theatre Ivanov stood that the “antisovetchitsa” Plisetskaya failed: “This unbridled pornographic modernist Bejart ballet from the Bolshoi theatre to show the public it is impossible. “Bolero” — for “Foley of Bergere” and “Moulin Rouge”, but not to Great. While I am a Director, will not defile our temple of art.” Permission to dance the “Bolero” Plisetskaya came personally from Brezhnev, and only the day before the concert, which was dedicated to the 35th anniversary of creative activity of the great ballerina.
the ballet Maya danced so that after its execution academician Kapitsa said Plisetskaya: “In the middle ages you would be burned at the stake as a witch for the dance”… And bojarowski favorite Jorge donn was asked to redo that women’s role is that it gave the impression of… Now the “Bolero” dance and men.
“Bejar adored Maya. He was ready to forgive her everything, even a free interpretation of their choreography, they composed movements, which is not allowed to anyone else. Those who are familiar buzarovska choreography and who have seen this ballet performed by other dancers who understand how your Maya interpreterpath master plan” – indicates azariy Plisetsky, brother of a ballerina, and still working with buzharovskoe troupe in Lausanne.
“Bolero” by Ravel, the greatest choreographer of the XX century Maurice Bejart created long before Plisetskaya, in 1961. The idea of dancing on a big red table, he borrowed from Bronislava nijinska, sister of the “God of dance”, who staged his choreography for Eids Rubinstein in 1928. This buzarovski ballet has revolutionized not only choreography in a fairly narrow world, but also in the art world of that time in General. And dance buzarovski masterpiece Plisetskaya dreamt of since the first time I saw him in the summer of 1974. “Wanted” – more easily said… She raved about them.
Back in Moscow, she wrote Bearu letter: “Dear Maurice. Excited, sick, want to dance, would you work with me”. The answer did not come. But apparently, in heaven, someone chose them: exactly one year Plisetskaya was asked to star in buzarovska “Bolero” in the French-Belgian production for television. First fright: “why, I never “Bolero” danced. Only dreamed of.” Later work by Bejart.
But the work was hard: she could not remember the order of the scenes in the ballet that, so she better remember, was named by the Association: “Crab”, “Sun”, “Fish”, “B. B”, “Hungarian”, “Cat”, “Belly”, “Sambo”… Names were given by artists buzharovskoe troupe “all sixteen provedeniem Melodies.” The name “Sun”, for example, gave open as the rays of hands with open fingers.
“he Studied hard. All the movements are new for my body. Béjart seriously studied Eastern dances – Indian, Thai, Persian, – and that some of the vocabulary included in his choreographic vocabulary. Plus the devil’s invention. Asymmetry. The lack of the square. The polyrhythm. The three Ravel, Bejart have four. Even trained on Begere dancers got lost. And I – after the “Swan” and “Dormant” – what is?”
Buzarovska artists gave forgetful Soviet ballerina’s crib, but last month the crib carried away by the wind… “No, you don’t. It is necessary to give. In a week a thousand movements in a series of puzzling not to remember”. But Bejar makes a Plisetskaya:
I’m gonna be in the aisle of the hall in the white sweater. I’ll light a pocket flashlight. I’ll tell you: “Cat”. Now – “Stomach”. Now, “B. B.”… so… Understand me?…
– With the breather I can dance today – happy ballet dancer.
“people sometimes ask Me what play in my life was the most unusual. This was. “Bolero” in Brussels with the hidden from the audience prompter in the long passage, lit by a beam of light from below. With the prompter, dressed in a white sweater. With the prompter, who was Bejart”.
