St Petersburg, Mariinsky Theatre

Pierrot Lunaire. Seven sonatas (premiere). Concerto DSCH

an evening of ballets by Alexei Ratmansky


Performance due to have taken place on 21 March
Performance of the XIX International ballet festival MARIINSKY

PIERROT LUNAIRE
Music by Arnold Shönberg
Choreographer: Alexei Ratmansky
Set design and costumes by Tatyana Chernova
Lighting designer: Tony Marquez
Assistant lighting designer: Alexander Naumov
Performers:
Viktoria Tereshkina, Kimin Kim, Alexander Sergeev, Konstantin Zverev
Yulia Matochkina (mezzo-soprano)
Piano: Lyudmila Sveshnikova


SEVEN SONATAS (premiere)
Music by Domenico Scarlatti
Choreographer: Alexei Ratmansky
Lighting Designer: Brad Fields
Costume Designer: Holly Hynes
Performers:
Ekaterina Kondaurova, Roman Belyakov
Maria Khoreva, Philipp Stepin
Alina Somova, Roman Malyshev
Piano: Alexandra Zhilina


CONCERTO DSCH
Music by Dmitry Shostakovich
Choreographer: Alexei Ratmansky
Lighting Designer: Mark Stanley
Costume Designer: Holly Hynes
Performers:
Xander Parish, Kimin Kim, Nadezhda Batoeva, Maria Shirinkina, Philipp Stepin
Piano: Philipp Kopachevsky


The Mariinsky Orchestra
Conductor: Arseny Shuplyakov


Seven Sonatas by Alexei Ratmansky is the Mariinsky Theatre's latest eagerly-anticipated premiere. This elegant lacework of dance for three couples, which sensitively responds to each note of Scarlatti's music, was created in 2009 for American Ballet Theatre. Last season, dancers in St Petersburg had rehearsed this production for the Mariinsky ballet festival in March – learning the choreographic text with Stella Abrera, one of the first performers of the ballet. Neither did the closing of borders put paid to their work – Alexei Ratmansky made his corrections using Skype. The premiere, however, was destined not to take place last spring.

Pierrot Lunaire and Concerto DSCH, which have been revived in the Mariinsky Theatre's repertoire, have met with better fortune: these ballets had already managed to be presented to the public before the enforced interruption to the theatre's stage activities. Now audiences may look forward to a programme of three productions by Alexei Ratmansky. Varied in terms of their musical materials – Schoenberg, Scarlatti and Shostakovich, and contrasting in terms of emotional colour and atmosphere – they portray the signature of an incredibly musical choreographer with whom movement and dance combinations of bewitching elegance are born from the music. The meaning lies in the interaction of its rhythm and melody together with the plastique. "It is far from everything that is happening that can be expressed in words," the choreographer says. "The movement is expressive, yet it is impossible to say what it is expressing, though that is something we can feel." This evening of one-act ballets by Ratmansky promises audiences an entire range of emotions, a search for internalised plots and intrigues within the rich choreographic text, within the poetry of dance, which cannot be expressed verbally but the meanings of which may be read.
Olga Makarova

Age category 6+

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