Khoma Brut, or Flights in dreams and reality

Perhaps all artists who seek to recreate a national theme or domestic subjects on stage or screen are convinced that here one cannot do without unclean forces. Mermaids, devils, ghouls — there have always been many of them in our folklore environment and, accordingly, in works of art. But it does not always happen that at the centre of this devilry lies the fate of a person and their interaction with the Universe, rather than a kind of “Walpurgis Night” with a Ukrainian flavour. Gogol’s work is also imbued with these motifs, but did the great writer really recreate the exotica of “unclean forces” in “May Night” or “Viy”? Of course not. That is why, in my view, today the most sought-after in spectacular interpretation has become Gogol’s “Viy” — as an example of reflections on true faith in times of a furious onslaught of devilry on our spiritual values, on the misfortunes of past years that the historical memory of Ukrainians preserves and for which contemporaries have to atone.

Of course, stage and screen versions of “Viy” did not start being born today. Everyone remembers the 1964 film adaptation of Gogol’s novella, which, in my opinion, compares favourably with the “export” version of 2014, aimed at viewers who had never once encountered Gogol the writer and his characters. Today on the Ukrainian repertoire poster one can see several stage “Viys” — from the musical by Y. Lapeiko staged by Heorhii Kovtun to the docudrama by Natalka Vorozhbit, created after Gogol and staged by director Andrii Bakirov.

And now the ballet “Viy” by Oleksandr Rodin has been shown for the first time by Radu Poklitaru with his “Kyiv Modern Ballet”. Evidently, the origins of this performance lie in that opera-ballet tradition begun by the outstanding composer Vitaliy Hubarenko and the authors of the first Odesa production of “Viy” in 1971. Rodin’s symphonic score (whose music Poklitaru has already used with success), in the talented interpretation of National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine conductor Volodymyr Sirenko, played with all the colours of modern orchestration and impressed with sincere melodic revelations. At the same time, it allowed the choreographer to take his favourite path of contemporary interpretation — where the motivation of classical characters’ actions (as was already the case in Tchaikovsky’s ballets and Adam’s “Giselle”) becomes close to our reality. To the point that Khoma Brut (though a seminarian, not a reclusive monk) becomes a contemporary of young men and women who “let loose” at a modern youth party. So it is quite possible that Khoma Brut has his own girl (Kateryna Hloba). Poklitaru invented her outside Nikolai Gogol’s plot and named her — Vasylyna…

However, in the dream-flights where Brut (Vladyslav Detiuchenko) and the Lady (Olena Saltykova) “soar” in the multidimensional space of the stage against a backdrop of 3D compositions, poor Khoma has to submit to the devilish nature and erotic pressure of the Lady — the witch whom Olena Saltykova brings to the foreground. And the Lady’s soaring itself is achieved with the help of “Kyiv Modern Ballet” artists, with the elaborate lifts performed by combined efforts, as if the flights are accompanied and closed by a train of tense, contorted bodies in the masks of unclean forces (costume designer — Dmytro Kuriata, video content by Olha Nikitina).

The Lady’s goal is not the sinful body of the lad Khoma but, of course, his Soul, and so Radu Poklitaru divides these hypostases between two characters (Vladyslav Detiuchenko and Illia Miroshnichenko). Doubling becomes a defining device. Two guards seem to reinforce the inviolability of the decisions of the Sotnyk, whom in this performance Artem Shoshyn plays more than dances. Khoma’s friends, performed by Andrii Chaplik and Dmytro Kondratiuk, aptly complement each other’s seminarian antics. As for Khoma himself, the two figures (one in black, the other in white) are perceived as a single whole until the Lady sinks a greedy, predatory kiss into Khoma Brut’s soul. But this is not yet the end of the story. A few stage moments later, Khoma’s Soul begins its final movement not into hell but upward, along small suspended steps… Radu Poklitaru does not show this favourite device for the first time, but it fits well into the overall concept of staging Nikolai Gogol’s work, although it somewhat argues with it. “Khoma was a fine fellow,” his friends say after his death. “And he perished for nothing.” And in this they are wrong, for Khoma Brut, perhaps, atoned for others’ sins rather than simply spitting in the witch’s eyes. So now he looks at us from the heavens…

The next performance of the ballet “Viy” will be presented on July 9 in Odesa, and in October the “Kyiv Modern Ballet” touring run with this production by R. Poklitaru will continue in Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi, Kharkiv, Dnipro…

Oleksandr Chepalov, Honoured Art Worker of Ukraine. Photo by Ruslan Kaniuka, “Den”