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| | Arts Calendar / July 12 / Ballet |
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 Ballet to music by Dmitri Shostakovich, Evelyn Glennie, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Alexander Scriabin. 150 min (with one intermission). Libretto by John Neumeier. Choreography, Set, Costume and Lighting Designer: John Neumeier. Music Director and Conductor: Felix Korobov. "The Seagull" by Chekhov does not just tell us about love and theatre, it is love and theatre A creative person does not strive for imitation or illustration in his work. Picasso did not actually see a woman with three noses and therefore paint a portrait of her. He painted what he felt. I work the same way, I do not want simply to illustrate the text of "The Seagull" scene by scene in my ballet. Transferring a literary work to a wordless medium, I must invent situations parallel to those of the text. "The Seagull" by Chekhov is my source of inspiration, but I don’t work like a theatre director who interprets and organizes the text. Whoever watches this ballet will not hear a single word from Chekhov and it should not be necessary to remember those words. I created this ballet being inspired by the play. But in order to breathe life into it, each individual situation must work on its own purely visual terms, without reference to or necessarily evoking associations with Chekhov’s play. In ballet, I cannot convey the complicated interlacing of plot lines or intellectual ideas the way they can be explained in a novel or a play. Using pantomime to show Arkadina as a great actress, and then miming how Nina becomes a bad actress, the ballet could easily turn into kitsch. My decision is to translate "The Seagull" into the language of dance itself, of choreography – that is into my own language. My ballet is not just about dance: it is dance," John Neumeier says.
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theater  |
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