“Kyiv Modern Ballet” Academic Theatre ends the 2022–23 season
On the sixth of July the Academic Theatre «Kyiv Modern Ballet» closes its 2022-23 theatrical season with a showing of one-act ballets: «Up the River» to the music of O. Rodin and «Tomorrow» to the music of F. Chopin. The ballets will be shown on the stage of the Kyiv Opera on Podil. The choreographer of both ballets is the principal ballet master of the Academic Theatre «Kyiv Modern Ballet», Honoured Art Worker of Ukraine Radu Poklitaru.
First part. A ballet in one act «UP THE RIVER» to the music of Oleksandr Rodin. The performance has been in the theatre’s repertoire since 2017. The production is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story «The Curious Case of Benjamin Button». This performance is a very unusual unfolding of the ancient vanitas genre, which allegorically represents the futility of vain claims to power over fate.
Second part. The premiere of this season — a ballet in one act «TOMORROW» to the music of Frédéric Chopin. At the core of the production’s idea is a story about us, about those who live here and now, who feel the fleeting nature of our time, who fight and work for the sake of Victory, who dream of a happy «Tomorrow»… By what we do, where we go and what we do at this very moment – we shape our future tomorrow, in a day, a week, a year. What our tomorrow will be, we decide already today, and for its sake we live to the fullest.
In terms of its chosen means of expression, the ballet «Tomorrow» is one of Radu Poklitaru’s most laconic works. With a social insight worthy of the sharpness of a surgical scalpel. No scenery at all. A classic black stage, light in the half-darkness that only accentuates the action. The performers’ unisex costumes in the colour of flickering tongues of fire – as a sign of the divine energy in every living being regardless of gender. And total concentration on plastic movements, lines, symbols and narratives about the existing social problems of people, through personal and collective stories.
The flow of emotion in the action reaches the graphic expressiveness of a poster at its climactic freeze-frames, fixing them in memory as scenes that sum up social relations. This is the point of contact with every spectator. The moment of their feedback regarding their own stories that each has encountered in life. For example, the collective that grinds down and levels the individual, and as a consequence – the infantilism of mass marching «in step». Dominance in LGBT couples, abuse and violence in a man-woman couple. The chemical reaction of a collective disintegrating into separate individuals – and the fright of loneliness that precipitates out. The unrestrained running of time, when new and new characters surface from a man-made shell – and drift away in a stream into a life with an undetermined fate. An undetermined tomorrow.
This performance could be called a contemporary parable about the dreadful rules and laws of society that people, here on Earth, create for themselves, because their consciousness is filled to the brim with information in which there is no love! Their deeds, struggle, suffering and floundering at the dark bottom of life, with rare moments of rays of light that burst into their darkness from the heavens like a prophetic lightning bolt, would in themselves be a harsh, but truthful and artistically real picture of the present day… were it not for one «but».
Over the twilit social movement of human souls and bodies, from the first to the last minute of «Tomorrow», flows Chopin’s music of unearthly harmony and luminous beauty. With which the rhythms of society – do not coincide. And this is not merely a feeling of discomfort, irritation or misunderstanding. The emotional peaks of human deeds enter into that rhythmic-dramatic conflict which in waves reaches the scale of a true antagonism towards the laws of the eternal flow of the harmonious Universe. And how tremulously, in quiet solitary islets, like a luminous echo of the heavens upon the earth, the sensual love of people is sometimes reflected – in unison with the Music.
Once again, as is characteristic of the Master, the conflict is carried beyond the bounds of the ballet’s plot, and in essence flares up between two characters – humankind and the Universe. The laws of love – and the laws invented out of knowledge that is devoid of love. Between the most luminous music of Frédéric Chopin – and the eloquent movements of human actions.
So, it seems, what have people realised? The divine law, as the Universe conceived it, flows in harmony, and it will be so forever. Even if all the clever ones perish, pass into eternity, down to the very last. The laws of love were born before us, humans. The decision – is ours.
And you know, this performance-parable is, as of today, the most ironic and philosophical statement by the Master of the ballet language, Radu Poklitaru. Nothing superfluous: a surgically virtuosic aesthetic of artistic truth. And within it – a tension of cosmic scale, compressed into the dimension of the chamber. Into the compass of the heart. But the finale that the Master offers – will be a shock to you. Come. Tomorrow.
Text: Anna ARKHYPOVA
