02.08.2012
The Ballets of Nacho Duato: What the audience is saying
While Nacho Duato is occupied with staging The Sleeping Beauty, his one-act ballets, especially Nunc Dimittis and Prelude, continue to be the centre of attention. Duato’s ballets have already been performed 16 times since they first appeared in March, and the theatre is always sold out.
Ballet critics have analyzed Duato’s ballets in detail, but ordinary theatregoers have also made themselves heard — not only discussing their impressions during the interval, but also blogging their opinions online.
“I walked past the posters so many times that I thought I just had to see them sometime. Then that ‘sometime’ finally came. I’m over the moon. It is exactly what I always expect from ballet — sensuality and refined plastique from the dancers, a fresh look at the movements and the staging, beautiful music... The dancers’ movements are so at one with the music that their steps reflect every note in the score. Although it seems obvious, such a virtually perfect fusion is a great rarity” — kaktys.livejournal.com
Prelude is “sparkling fantasies on the theme of Russian ballet: a modern ballet on the themes of classical Russian choreography. The three couples in the middle set to Beethoven’s music are particularly good. The ballet is performed as though in a single breath, without any repetitions in the choreography — to this is added Duato’s characteristic lyricism. The girls from the corps de ballet are also good, freezing in sculptural compositions — there is a wide range of associations here, from Marius Petipa to Leonid Jacobson” — evg-ponomarev.livejournal.com
The ballet Prelude — “simply cannot be described in words. It is contemporary dance without a plot; the choreography is perfectly calibrated, but at the same time not mechanical. It is a kind of absolute, the quintessence of the grace and beauty of the human body, the poetry of motion, free of sentimentality. The maestro shows his preference for beige, black, and grey. The staging is laconic in the extreme. It uses only multimedia projections on the black stage and minimalistic scenery. There is nothing to distract you from the dance itself. All three ballets are extraordinarily captivating, you cannot tear yourself away, wanting the performance never to end” — polina-arens.livejournal.com
“Duato’s ballet is ideal for me; when I can immerse myself in it entirely, everything becomes so very light in my head. When the background videos do not illustrate the music but become visual music in their own right, and you sense every sigh of the music and of the artists, every pause and every swoon, with your eyes, your ears and your inner being. It may sound bombastic, but my description is as close as possible to my actual experience” — anemona-n.livejournal.com
“Three one-act ballets. Duende. Nunc Dimittis. Prelude. Each ballet is a little universe in which you dissolve, immerse yourself, drown and are unable to breathe, because you simply forget to. And then the music dies down, and you wake up. It seems that it was all an illusion, but it is as if something in you has been reborn... The final dance of Prelude reminded me of a couple I know. Throughout the dance they were on the edge of an emotional precipice, they danced a heartbeat away from rupture, on the wreck of the whole world, on a pile of its fragments. And then, a few moments before the end, when it seemed that this time it definitely was all over, the male dancer simply walked across the whole stage to his partner, simply took her by the hand and they just walked off into the darkness. Together. As though there had not been this five-minute dance on the verge of pain-induced madness” — rysyatko.livejournal.com
“I liked the third ballet, Nunc Dimittis, most of all... Firstly, Pärt’s music, powerful in its own right... Secondly, Pärt, who is Estonian and Orthodox, wrote a completely Teutonic liturgy, and Duato has transformed it into a sarabande in the spirit of The House of Bernarda Alba. In short, it was right up his alley. Blackness, a ray of light, red stripes, claret velvet on a black background, severity and passion, everything just as it is supposed to be...” — il-canone.livejournal.com
“It just so happened that I ended up at Nacho Duato’s Ballets at the Mikhailovsky. I cannot imagine how talented and brilliant one would have to be to invent and stage all of this. I never thought that it could be so gripping, interesting, emotional, and beautiful... Simply delightful. I recommend it” — art-nov.livejournal.com
“Incredible beauty, incredible! Ballet. You must go! Drop everything and run there at the first opportunity. Beauty, style, harmony, and emotion are all there for you — for your soul, your mind and your body. The answer to every question is Bravo!” — yana-pavlidis.livejournal.com
The next evening of Nacho Duato ballets is 14 October, opening the ‘Season Premiere’ subscription series.
Ballet critics have analyzed Duato’s ballets in detail, but ordinary theatregoers have also made themselves heard — not only discussing their impressions during the interval, but also blogging their opinions online.
“I walked past the posters so many times that I thought I just had to see them sometime. Then that ‘sometime’ finally came. I’m over the moon. It is exactly what I always expect from ballet — sensuality and refined plastique from the dancers, a fresh look at the movements and the staging, beautiful music... The dancers’ movements are so at one with the music that their steps reflect every note in the score. Although it seems obvious, such a virtually perfect fusion is a great rarity” — kaktys.livejournal.com
Prelude is “sparkling fantasies on the theme of Russian ballet: a modern ballet on the themes of classical Russian choreography. The three couples in the middle set to Beethoven’s music are particularly good. The ballet is performed as though in a single breath, without any repetitions in the choreography — to this is added Duato’s characteristic lyricism. The girls from the corps de ballet are also good, freezing in sculptural compositions — there is a wide range of associations here, from Marius Petipa to Leonid Jacobson” — evg-ponomarev.livejournal.com
The ballet Prelude — “simply cannot be described in words. It is contemporary dance without a plot; the choreography is perfectly calibrated, but at the same time not mechanical. It is a kind of absolute, the quintessence of the grace and beauty of the human body, the poetry of motion, free of sentimentality. The maestro shows his preference for beige, black, and grey. The staging is laconic in the extreme. It uses only multimedia projections on the black stage and minimalistic scenery. There is nothing to distract you from the dance itself. All three ballets are extraordinarily captivating, you cannot tear yourself away, wanting the performance never to end” — polina-arens.livejournal.com
“Duato’s ballet is ideal for me; when I can immerse myself in it entirely, everything becomes so very light in my head. When the background videos do not illustrate the music but become visual music in their own right, and you sense every sigh of the music and of the artists, every pause and every swoon, with your eyes, your ears and your inner being. It may sound bombastic, but my description is as close as possible to my actual experience” — anemona-n.livejournal.com
“Three one-act ballets. Duende. Nunc Dimittis. Prelude. Each ballet is a little universe in which you dissolve, immerse yourself, drown and are unable to breathe, because you simply forget to. And then the music dies down, and you wake up. It seems that it was all an illusion, but it is as if something in you has been reborn... The final dance of Prelude reminded me of a couple I know. Throughout the dance they were on the edge of an emotional precipice, they danced a heartbeat away from rupture, on the wreck of the whole world, on a pile of its fragments. And then, a few moments before the end, when it seemed that this time it definitely was all over, the male dancer simply walked across the whole stage to his partner, simply took her by the hand and they just walked off into the darkness. Together. As though there had not been this five-minute dance on the verge of pain-induced madness” — rysyatko.livejournal.com
“I liked the third ballet, Nunc Dimittis, most of all... Firstly, Pärt’s music, powerful in its own right... Secondly, Pärt, who is Estonian and Orthodox, wrote a completely Teutonic liturgy, and Duato has transformed it into a sarabande in the spirit of The House of Bernarda Alba. In short, it was right up his alley. Blackness, a ray of light, red stripes, claret velvet on a black background, severity and passion, everything just as it is supposed to be...” — il-canone.livejournal.com
“It just so happened that I ended up at Nacho Duato’s Ballets at the Mikhailovsky. I cannot imagine how talented and brilliant one would have to be to invent and stage all of this. I never thought that it could be so gripping, interesting, emotional, and beautiful... Simply delightful. I recommend it” — art-nov.livejournal.com
“Incredible beauty, incredible! Ballet. You must go! Drop everything and run there at the first opportunity. Beauty, style, harmony, and emotion are all there for you — for your soul, your mind and your body. The answer to every question is Bravo!” — yana-pavlidis.livejournal.com
The next evening of Nacho Duato ballets is 14 October, opening the ‘Season Premiere’ subscription series.
