16.11.2019

A premiere of Vladimir Varnava's ballet Daphnis et Chloé

On 16 and 21 November the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre will be hosting premiere performances of Vladimir Varnava's ballet set to Maurice Ravel's music Daphnis et Chloé. The lead roles will be performed by Viktoria Brilyova, Yekaterina Petrova, Albina Satynalieva, Veronika Selivanova, Anna Smirnova, Erwin Zagidullin, Maxim Zenin, Alexei Nedviga, Vasily Tkachenko and Vakhtang Kherkheulidze.

The choreograpger Vladimir Varnava is already well-known to St Petersurg audiences for his productions of the ballets Yaroslavna. The Eclipse, Clay, Keep Calm and Pétrouchka. In addition to working in ballet, he is also frequently engaged in drama, combining vivid theatricality with a search for new plastique language. In his new production, Vladimir Varnava abandons a classical libretto, preferring instead a production about emancipation, about freeing instincts, about collaboration between himself and the surrounding world. "There will be no tales about shepherds in the ballet," says the choreographer, "At this time the creative idea of serving a literary source does not engage me. Today I am nterested in in creating a language for the body. The plot of Daphnis et Chloé will be built from the dancers' bodies. In my previous two works for the Mariinsky (Yaroslavna and Pétrouchka) there was a deep theatricality, a profound sense of decoratveness: there the dance was supported through other expressive elements. Now I wish to concentrate on plastique language. I am interested personally in working with each of the ten participants in the production, in showing that the body is beautiful, that it needs no 'clothing' in the form of virtuoso choreography."

The choreographer's co-creator is the artist, set designer and stage director Pavel Semchenko, one of the founders of the AKHE theatre. Known to audiences for his experimental productions and performances at numerous theatres and having on several occasions collaborated with Vladimir Varnava, Semchenko is working at the Mariinsky Theatre for the first time. Of his latest work he says that "There is the idea of winding up a clockwork mechanism in reverse – from the world constructed as it is today in favour of wild nature, chaotic and a more free existence of the human body and spirit, from the cells of the industrial, of office life, back to the spirit of nature. Much in the decisions relating to the production is dictated by the music. And the music is sounds that it is impossible to touch or to see, they can only be felt as a wave and sensed as a vibration."

On 16 November Ravel's famous opus may be heard in an interpretation by Valery Gergiev, Music Director and Conductor of the premiere.

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