On Tuesday 29 December at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre there will be a ballet premiere – The Bull on the Roof to music by Darius Milhaud and choreographed by Vladimir Varnava. The Stage Designer of this new work is Varnava's constant collaborator Galya Solodovnikova.
The evening under the general title of Violent Dances begins with the ballet Clay, staged by Varnava in 2015 as part of the Creative Workshop of Young Choreographers. The programme will also feature Jacques Ibert's Four Songs of Don Quichotte performed by Mikhail Petrenko.
Darius Milhaud's The Bull on the Roof is a rare visitor to classical theatre. The music that forms the basis of the ballet was written by the composer under his impressions of travelling in Brazil. The idea for the production came to Vladimir Varnava in Mexico, where he was amazed at local people's attitudes to death – bright and even happy. The choreographer conceived the idea of a carnival in Hell: fiends, people and Death itself all dance there.
"I wish to find an interesting correlation between music and dance," Varnava says. "In Milhaud's work there is a surprising combination of the complex and the comprehensible, classical and folk music. I discovered it five years ago, when I was working on the ballet Clay to Milhaud's music La Création du monde. There it was about the birth of life. In The Bull on the Roof it is the reverse – I show what happens after life. They are two independent ballets, but for me they are to be seen integrally."
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