The programme includes: PART I
Errand into the Maze
one-act ballet
Music: Gian Carlo Menotti
Choreography: Martha Graham
Staging at the Mariinsky Theatre: Miki Orihara
Sets: Isamu Noguchi
Costumes: Edythe Gilfond
Lighting: Jean Rosenthal
Production sponsor – Toshihiko Takahashi
Performed by Diana Vishneva and Ben Schultz PART II
Melody (performed to a recording)
Music: Antonín Dvořák
Choreography: Asaf Messerer
Performed by Olga Smirnova and Sergei Strelkov Russkaya
Music: Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Choreography: Kasian Goleizovsky
Performed by Svetlana Lunkina Lament (performed to a recording)
Music: Caroline Worthington
Choreography: Dwight Rhoden
Performed by Desmond Richardson The Dying Swan
Music: Camille Saint-Saëns
Choreography by Mauro de Candia
Performed by Vladimir Malakhov Pas de deux from the ballet Diamonds
Music: Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Choreography: George Balanchine
Costumes: Karinska (1967)
Original lighting: Ronald Bates
Lighting: Perry Silvey
Performed by Alina Somova and Andrian Fadeyev The ballets of George Balanchine are presented by arrangement with The George Balanchine Trust and have been produced in accordance with the Balanchine Style ® and Balanchine Technique ® established and provided by the Trust.
The Mariinsky Theatre would like to express its gratitude to Mrs Bettina von Siemens for her support in bringing the Ballets of George Balanchine project to life. Pas de deux from the ballet Lady of the Camellias
Music: Frédéric Chopin
Choreography: John Neumeier
Costume design: Jürgen Rose
Lighting: John Neumeier (Reconstructed by Ralf Merkel)
Piano – Lyudmila Sveshnikova
Performed by Diana Vishneva and Roberto Bolle PART III
Pas de deux from the ballet Cinderella
Music: Sergei Prokofiev
Choreography: Alexei Ratmansky
Costume design: Elena Markovskaya
Lighting: Gleb Filshtinsky
Performed by Yevgenia Obraztsova and Alexander Sergeyev Pas de deux from the ballet Three Point Turn
Music: David Rosenblatt
Choreography: Dwight Rhoden
Costume design: Isabel Rubio
Lighting design: Antonio Marques
Performed by Diana Vishneva and Desmond Richardson Pas de deux from the ballet Giselle
Music: Adolphe Adam
Choreography: Marius Petipa
Performed by Yekaterina Osmolkina and Semyon Chudin Pas de deux from the ballet Without
Music: Frédéric Chopin
Choreography: Benjamin Millepied
Costume design: Benjamin Millepied
Lighting design: Vladimir Lukasevich
Piano: Lyudmila Sveshnikova
Performed by Anastasia Matvienko and Konstantin Zverev Adagio from the ballet Spartacus
Music: Aram Khachaturian
Choreography: Leonid Yakobson
Costumes: Valentina Khodasevich
Performed by Sofia Gumerova and Ilya Kuznetsov Pas de deux from the ballet Le Parc
Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Choreography: Angelin Preljocaj
Costume design: Hervé Pierre
Lighting: Jaques Chatelet
Performed by Diana Vishneva and Vladimir Malakhov | | The ballet Errand into the Maze was created by the great American choreographer Martha Graham in 1947. Like several other of her productions, this ballet was based on an ancient Greek myth. She created a total of thirteen such ballets (which are often referred to as the “Greek cycle”, although Graham herself preferred to call them “pieces”). The ballet Errand into the Maze is a free interpretation in the language of dance of the story of Ariadne and the Minotaur’s labyrinth.
The Minotaur is a beast with the body of a man and the head of a bull who was born to Pasiphaë, the wife of King Minos of Crete, and a bull sent to Crete by Poseidon. The King of Crete incarcerated the Minotaur in an underground labyrinth built by the legendary master architect Daedalus. The labyrinth was so complex that no-one was ever able to find his way out. Once every nine years Minos made a sacrifice of seven Athenian youths and girls to the beast. Theseus, son of King Aegeus of Athens, resolved to fight the Minotaur and thus free Athens from this terrible debt. Together with the other doomed young people he sets off for Crete, enters the labyrinth and defeats the beast. He was helped to get out of the labyrinth by Minos’ daughter and the Minotaur’s stepsister Ariadne. She gave Theseus a ball of string (“Ariadne’s thread”), which he unwinds in order to see the way back. Fleeing from her father’s rage, Ariadne secretly escapes from Crete with Theseus, but is abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos as he doesn’t want to take her to Athens. In another version, Dionysus, who falls in love with Ariadne, kidnaps her from Theseus.
But the protagonist in Martha Graham’s ballet is not Theseus, rather it is Ariadne. It is she who enters the labyrinth and kills the Minotaur. “Ariadne’s terrifying ‘passage’ through the mysterious labyrinth, the Minotaur’s dances, the Minotaur and Ariadne’s erotic duet and skirmish and Ariadne’s return from the labyrinth – all of this was staged by Martha Graham with a supreme degree of skill and talent.” (Nina Alovert. Martha Graham, Great and Immortal)
Such great stars of world ballet as Makarova, Baryshnikov and Nureyev have performed with Martha Graham’s company and in her ballets, but her works have never before been staged in Russia. |
