Moscow
graeme.thomson
The next time you find yourself mumbling unkind words about the apathetic youth of today, or else deriding the muddle-headed protests of twonkish Charlie Gilmour types, stop and think about the Nashi. A right-wing Russian youth organisation bankrolled by Vladimir Putin’s shady regime and various big business interests, they practically make you want to raise a statue to any teenager who chooses to spend their daylight hours idling beneath a duvet or playing Robin Hood in the City.The astonishing opening scene of this latest instalment in the ever excellent Unreported World series showed Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Can one enjoy watching a film supposedly about dance in which competition and being Number One is all and the word “artistry” is not mentioned once? And in which performers are nameless numbers? And the documentary-maker shows not a scintilla of curiosity about why this might be? One might, if it were handled with a twisted sense of humour and cutting observation.Unfortunately, Jig doesn't have that. Sue Bourne's film enters a dance-movie genre that has lately become surprisingly well stacked, but it lacks any of the imaginative lyricism of Wim Wenders’ Pina, the dramatic exhilaration of Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Ninety-nine years ago, there were sights and stars seen upon the ballet stage as had never been dreamed of. A young genius of 32 was the driving engine of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes - the choreographer Mikhail Fokine, who created fantasies of radiant Blue Gods, of murderous and erotic goddesses, and tapestries that came to life and sucked dreamers into them. His stars were to become immortals: Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina, Ida Rubinstein… the most beautiful divinities of the stage, their names living on.For Nijinsky’s vehicle, Le dieu bleu, the ultimate stage colourist Leon Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Sergei Filin, one of the Bolshoi Ballet’s recent male stars, has been appointed as the new artistic director of the massive Russian company on a five-year contract. The appointment brings to a swift culmination a terrible week for the Bolshoi, where their second-in-command resigned after compromising sexual images were released onto the internet, just as the previous artistic director, Yuri Burlaka, had had his contract terminated. See theartsdesk report earlier this week.Filin was a much-praised star on several Bolshoi tours to London - notably popular in a crossdressing role in the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Bolshoi Ballet's company manager, Gennady Yanin, has resigned after pornographic pictures appeared on the internet that were linked to him, just as he was being considered to take on the job of artistic director, which became vacant that day. As a result the world's largest ballet company is now leaderless, with an inexperienced dancer appointed to hold the fort. SEE LATEST NEWS: Sergei Filin appointed artistic director for five yearsThe scandal has left Moscow’s vast company reeling, with a prestigious Paris tour looming in May, and the reopening in October after long and Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The Tretyakov Gallery is currently housing a landmark exhibition to mark the 150th anniversary of Isaac Levitan. His glorious “mood landscapes” catch the understated beauty of provincial Russia, with an often gloomy philosophical perspective behind them, as he considers man’s insignificant place in time and history. But the show reveals lesser-known sides to his work too, and reminds us again that his close friendship with Chekhov was a remarkable artistic-literary alliance.How little we know in the West of Russian art. The gaps are huge between the ancient icons and early-20th-century Read more ...
David Nice
Anyone who's imbibed the common wisdom that Russians play Chekhov for the comedy - one eye wet, the other dry and smiling - might have been alarmed to find the Moscow Sovremennik Theatre's second London offering so doomy and subdued. And the more subdued it got, the more the majority of the company went in for what's become its trademark mumbling. Not even the apocalyptic waltzes and marches of Mieczysław Weinberg's pre-recorded score nor an outstanding joint characterisation of the illicit central love affair could stop the rest of the voices, and ultimately what sympathy we had, from Read more ...
David Nice
Tradition has often bedded down very comfortably in the Russian performing arts, which ought to be an asset in the current vortex but brings mixed blessings. Detailed ensemble work, the Moscow Sovremennik Theatre's strongest asset, takes time to develop, yet actors with roles for life may be slow to yield to fresh blood. So does theatre legend Galina Volchek's 21-year-old production of a tough literary adaptation about women learning the "new language" of the terrible year 1937 on the way to Siberia merit a standing ovation? If you're a Russian with a long memory, yes; but taking the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
After all the encomia for Natalia Osipova it’s time for a paean to another Bolshoi ballerina, whose witty underplaying and conquest of style makes her the lady I’d choose to see shipwrecked in full tutu, diamonds and pink satin pointe shoes on any desert island I fetched up on. Maria Alexandrova starred in two 19th-century restorations of palatial opulence - the pirate party Le Corsaire and the princess party Paquita. Mistress of balletic patisserie, she decorates these glorious old wedding cakes of choreography with delectable sugar rosettes in her footwork, leaps of lightest meringue, Read more ...
Ismene Brown
We’re getting used to expecting the extraordinary from Natalia Osipova - and then getting some more. With her impish face and farouche capriciousness, with a spring like a high-jumper and shoulders like a swimmer, she is without doubt the most explosively delightful comedienne and virtuoso around at the Bolshoi, but could she be a Giselle? A weak-hearted innocent, a sorrowing ghost, an angel of pleading mercy? Doubt it not. Last night Osipova proved her versatility breathtakingly, weaving the supernatural magic of Giselle in a wholly individual way, defying her own image, and she was Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Coppélia is the name of the doll in the ballet-comedy - not that of the heroine, who is a bad pixie named Swanilda, a girl of youthful capriciousness but a heart of gold. What you hope for when you go to see this usually rather quaint 19th-century ballet is a ballerina of such intoxicating personality that she can serve you a ridiculous plot and make you lap it up. It’s what makes Natalia Osipova one of the most life-enhancing substances on earth today, and last night’s opening of the Bolshoi's Coppélia was a Champagne night.This cute little black-haired Muscovite is pure Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Give any masterpiece of classical music a central role in a film - and everything else straightaway faces the highest standards of comparison. In Radu Mihaileanu’s The Concert, it's the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, and from the opening frames the music delivers everything it should – though whether it’s enough to hide other noises (clunking in the script department being only one of them) is another matter.First-half depictions of contemporary Russia work more assuredly on the comedy front, even if this concert’s brand of humour quickly slips considerably south of Moscow to lodge somewhere in Read more ...