Morphine. Blind Affair. Love is All Around
triple bill by Ivan Vasiliev
Cast
Since the very dawn of art, love and madness have ever walked hand in hand. It is hardly unusual for creators and artists to come to the idea that any person, even one whose mental faculties have become impaired, is capable of love. As psychoanalysis became ever more à la mode, so movements in science and art often turned to the idea of insanity, particularly examining the idea of public breakdowns.
Ivan Vasiliev’s ballet glides through challenging and eternal motifs with the ease and elegance of Broadway. Love to him seems the most vital measure of happiness, able to lift a person from the deepest of lows. Yet if these all-too-human feelings are laid completely bare, this flagrant disregard for convention may be seen as an act of madness by wider society. Vasiliev’s ballet depicts an asylum as a house of undying love, whose doors no-one wishes to leave, even if this is taken for insanity by the outside world.
Premiere of the production at the Mikhailovsky Theatre: 14 February 2017
Music by Igor StravinskyChoreography and Stage Design: Ivan Vasiliev
Costumes: Alexandra Leonidova
Lighting: Alexander Kibitkin
