On 28 February Anton Korsakov will be making his debut in the lead role in the ballet Pétrouchka, while Maria Sheviakova will be performing the role of the Bride in Les Noces for the first time.
Created in 1911, Pétrouchka was one of the productions with which Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets russes enthralled the world. And, for many, this work by the composer Igor Stravinsky, the designer and librettist Alexandre Benois and the choreographer Michel Fokine was to become an emblem of the Saisons russes. To Stravinsky’s complex and largely innovative but vividly imagistic music Fokine created the memorable plastique characteristics of puppets, the puppets helping people to understand themselves. The choreographer wrote that “Pétrouchka is an example of something that can, while jarring the ears, caress the soul... It makes me inexpressibly happy that the composer found the sounds and the combinations of sounds and timbres that drew before me the image of the loving, rejected and always miserable Pétrouchka. Now, when I am choosing words to say what Pétrouchka is, I sense how weak words are and how helpless I am, and I value the eloquence of the music and the gestures all the more.” The dancers helped produce the extreme eloquence of the gestures. In Fokine’s eyes, Vaslav Nijinsky – the first performer of the title role of Pétrouchka – remained unsurpassed; he embodied the idea precisely, making not the slightest change in the production. The choreographer was deeply distressed when subsequent performers of this role added their own “embellishments” to the choreographic text, thus making Pétrouchka indistinguishable from the Moor and like other ballet characters. This role, demanding in terms of acting, will see a debut by Anton Korsakov, whose repertoire already includes other ballets by Michel Fokine.
In 1923 Stravinsky’s Les Noces with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and designs by Natalia Goncharova was to prove a ground-breaking work for both Diaghilev’s company and the ballet world in general. Stravinsky’s proposed “idea of a ritualistic and impersonal plot” was brilliantly embodied in the choreography which revealed a kind of theatre in which only the movements spoke and lived, one that needed no pantomime, set props or realistic costumes. The whole plot is dedicated to the corps de ballet – in line with the choreographer’s concept, in Les Noces each performer becomes part of the whole through movement; here there are no lead roles, and the bride (debut by Maria Shevyakova) and groom are merely part of the general ensemble.
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