Premiere of Radu Poklitaru’s ballet “9 Dates”

So in fact, the dates numbered not nine, but ten! And there was nothing fresher than the emotions of the meeting between the ballet dancers and Radu Poklitaru himself — and the audience that packed every seat in the auditorium allowed, the permissible 50% under quarantine conditions. In the air resounded a long-awaited joy, worthy of the reunion of the surviving creatures on Noah’s Ark – all those who had finally found themselves at a performance, as if on an islet where life teems and an inexhaustible spring of love gushes forth!  

This happy evening consisted of two one-act ballets, created by Radu Poklitaru 23 years apart. The first part — «In pivo veritas» — is one of the early productions, which entered the repertoire of Kyiv Modern Ballet in 2011. A colourful and merry spectacle in a tavern, where a crowd of lads in traditional kilts and brightly dressed girls carouse, to charismatic Irish music and music of the Renaissance era. The unrestrained and carefree, many-hued, intoxicating atmosphere fosters the easy emergence of new relationships. The genre scenes, full of humour, mischievous dances and seductive eroticism, gave the audience a joyful inner relaxation and a string of amorous adventures, as if from Boccaccio’s irrepressible «Decameron». 

«9 Dates» 
The second part — set to music from the 24 Preludes of Frédéric Chopin, Opus 28 — demanded, by contrast, the full concentration of the audience’s attention. And the choice of the prelude genre as the music for a new ballet proved to be no accident at all. 

Often, when preparing for public appearances and concerts of his own works, Chopin would play not his own compositions but the preludes and fugues of J. S. Bach — the source of his inspiration. This attuned him better than any rehearsal. It is known that in creating the cycle of 24 preludes, Chopin brought about, in the fullest sense, a revolution in this genre. What is its essence, and how is it connected with the choreography of Radu Poklitaru’s 9 Dates? In the time of J. S. Bach this genre was entirely improvisational; it set the emotional mood and the free flow of thoughts for the fugue, which was constructive and intellectually refined in form. The prelude-fugue pair, like «yin and yang», were written in a single key, as a cycle, and fully revealed the composer’s idea. Chopin’s preludes reached another level of feeling for musical time and space. The ideas were compressed within the bounds of a single genre – the prelude itself. Its lively, sensuous, improvisational movement of emotional fluctuations is so vivid and almost physically palpable, so materialized, that it itself shapes a logical form, with a development of events and a completed finale. The listener becomes a witness to an emotional story, in which a torrent of feeling pours out into action and plot. A kind of life essay in music, with the author’s personal worldview, arguments and philosophy. A complete and self-sufficient work.

The preludes represent the quintessence of Chopin’s style and are closely bound up with the events of his personal life. If the 24-key cycle of Preludes and Fugues by J. S. Bach in two volumes is considered a cosmic model of the Universe, — Chopin’s genius lies in the fact that in his preludes he created a model of a person’s romantic Universe. It is hard to disagree with this view of the scholar and composer Ivan Sokolov (Lectures on Classical Music No. 50 of 11 November 2019). Indeed, Frédéric François Chopin (the composer’s full name), who inspired Radu Poklitaru, is a profound interpreter of the «romantic Universe», in which love is a verb – and at the same time a noun, the name of the abyss of feelings of the human soul. 

«9 Dates» 
The choreography of each of Radu Poklitaru’s 9 Dates, like Chopin’s preludes, has absorbed both an emotional state — and narrative events. Their sequence in the performance: from youth (as with Chopin, this is the beginning of the cycle, Prelude No. 1 in C major) to full, mature passion and harmony (Chopin’s final Prelude No. 24 in D minor). A captivating path, along which a person grows up, step by step, by one more love. 

Perhaps that is why, cutting away all that was superfluous, Radu Poklitaru created precisely this performance in the visual aesthetic of black-and-white minimalism. A documentary quality? The past? A sharp visual focus?.. As for the set — on the dark stage there are two white chairs, a table, a window and a door. A notional room. As for the costumes of the main characters — the boy’s white attire and the girl’s black-and-white dress. Asceticism in symbolism and objects. Asceticism in the cast.

…So picture how, quite unexpectedly, together with that minimalism, in a dark corner at the very edge of the stage there appeared a creature (the wit of Anastasiia Dobrovolska’s non-dancing role is mesmerizing!) — an utterly hunched old crone with a coiffure and in decorative garb, as if taken from the ancient Japanese ukiyo-e prints of Katsushika Hokusai of the Edo era. An anachronistic being from another dimension, trailing a dust-covered train strewn with old flowers, ignoring Chopin’s turbulent passages, slowly dragging her leaden feet along the line at the edge of the stage… Who is this she-it? An elderly woman recalling the numerous love stories of her life? A symbol of time that imperceptibly creeps on, while our events flash swiftly by? 

Whoever your imagination deems it to be, this antique character (bravo to the costume designer Hanna Ipatieva!) ceaselessly patrols its border network between the audience — and the actors on stage. It slowly «creeps» back and forth like a hunched snail, counting off the passage of time, sometimes stopping «With a gaze as long as the rain» (verses by Ono no Komachi, 9th c.). Wondering, it shakes its head, yawns in disappointment, or glances back emotionally at what is happening on stage. 

«9 Dates» 
And on stage — emotional turbulence. Dear audience, forget about the imagined «sweetness» of romance! Fasten your seat belts and concentrate your life experience, for there, on stage, you will see everything about love – from youthful cautions, the trials of parenthood, of being a lover (outrageous chic from Vladyslav Detiuchenko), the lore of domestic order, the connection of self-enamoured narcissists, the tragedy of parting – to the staggeringly happy ecstasy of two who have merged, like the biblical figures, two flesh into one flesh. 

Radu Poklitaru’s erotic choreography is filigree, brilliant, inimitable in its details and in the diversity of its expressions, and in each of the scenes it attains a new virtuosity. It seems that throughout his life, performance after performance, Radu Poklitaru is creating his own Choreographic Kama Sutra, which already resembles a cherished legend. For this is that aesthetic and cultural level of creation, and that — perhaps the only one, unique in our times — Master, with whom your soul will not once feel even a hint of vulgarity, pop mould, or harsh aggression – instead, each time you are filled with an incomparable sense of truth, living energy and the perfect beauty of candid relationships. 

The mastery of the two soloists on stage looks impeccable: She (Olena Saltykova — the virtuosic plasticity of a dancing flame!) and He (Honoured Artist of Ukraine Artem Shoshyn, a true magician of transformations!) remain non-stop in a breakneck tempo of imagistic transformations. 

«9 Dates» is a string of dramas, comedies, grotesques, parodies, tragedies, illusory fantasies, everyday fables and romantic legends — about love. And the lyrical and tragic climaxes of this cycle of dates look striking – No. 8 (Blind) and No. 9 (Separation). 

…The sounds of the E minor Prelude No. 4 melted away and two met: He, blind, who comes to know his love and holds it carefully, on the very tips of his fingers – and She, enchanted, for the trembling of love transforms a woman into a priceless jewel, warm and radiant with tenderness.

I gazed at the stage and suddenly recalled that throughout his life Chopin carried a curious childhood habit – to play the piano in complete darkness, invariably extinguishing all the candles… Do you remember how in «The Little Prince» – what is essential cannot be seen with the eyes, only the heart sees?..

And when the crystalline purity shattered to pieces under the tragic tread of the chords of the C minor Prelude No. 20, and the lovers, entangled in taut ropes, in inhuman strain tried to draw near to one another, before my eyes arose the story of the composer’s break-up with George Sand. The brilliant Chopin was so broken by her that in the last year of his life he could not even write music. He wrote letters: «I am no longer capable either of worrying or of rejoicing — I have completely ceased to feel anything — I merely vegetate and wait for it all to end sooner».

And like a summer downpour that sweeps away the dirt, washing and giving drink to every cell, the Final 24th Prelude in D minor burst in with the happy passion of true love. And the unexpected happened: for the first time in the whole performance, which had unfolded in a notional room, the happy couple flew away, slamming the door, into a new space. The world changed in an instant!..  The snail-woman character suddenly broke her age-old trajectory of a pendulum in a retro clock and walked into the depths of the stage, into the empty room. She sat down on the stool, still warm from the passions, defiantly tossed her tattered train of flowers — onto the table, and fell to pondering, drumming her fingers in anticipation… A living picture of Time, frozen at the very moment when true love entered life! The author’s ironic, kindly smile. An eloquent illustration of the famous words: «Stay, moment, you are so beautiful!»

It seems that each member of the audience, watching the theatre curtain close, was in complete agreement with that: Let time wait! 

Text: Anna Arkhypova 

Photo: Anastasiia Telikova

Kyiv Daily