Terpsichore in Tauris-2010
Материал из HEPTACHOR.
Third Festival of Musical Movement and Plastic Dance, ‘Terpsichora in Tauris’, at Khersones in the Crimea, 1-5 September 2010
LIGHT FEET AND OPEN SKY
Roger Smith
A reconstructed Greek amphitheatre, its curve broken by the stone ruins of Christian walls. A stony floor swept and covered by grey carpet, hard on tender feet. A blue sky touched by high clouds, darkening, and with stars appearing through the evening. A silhouette of cypress trees in the warm air. A mixed crowd of local people and people on holiday slowly settling with attention. Young women, barefoot, light of foot, bring grace and joy, both delicate and strong, with song and movement. The beauty that we idealise as Ancient Greece re-emerges from the ruins, coming to life in the response of breath, body and voice to music.
The performances, repeated on successive nights in the early September Festival of musical movement at Khersones, this year has a dramatic structure. It is designed especially for this once Greek city, which in one place unites Ancient, Christian and modern centuries. The performance, with its main part dedicated to Khersones, is preceded by a long introduction, an invitation to free dance, and an introduction to each of the groups taking part. It begins with ‘Enchanted voices of the Baroque’, an sequence of elegantly formal arias and dances from the age of Handel and his predecessors. Then the modern pleasure of life breaks out with march and dance to the music of Strauss, Grieg and Katchachurian. The audience now ready, the designer of the drama, Aida Ailamazyan, introduces the theme and structure of the main part of the programme. The opening is order, beauty, culture, slow movement to the Andante of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, renamed ‘A boat, floating in the bay at Khersones’. Then, as the evening light in the sky darkens, the age which still lies beneath civilisation returns, and the dance is to the second half of Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. The amphitheatre returns to its pagan roots. It is an exciting performance, culminating with lighted torches, and some of those who watch, children and those who can feel like children, are rightly uncomfortable with the sharp rhythms in the dark night. To follow this is hard, but the performance turns to modern drama with the first part of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto and the mood gradually lightens. Fittingly, the closing dancing throws a framework of harmony around the whole evening with the music of Bach, a choral prelude.
The programme is unusual and ambitious. There are very different styles of music and movement, and there certainly are large contrasts, though the parts are tied to the others like beads on a thread, the thread of the centuries. The programme boldly addresses two requirements: it responds to the special qualities and conditions of Khersones – the amphitheatre is not a stage, the architecture is of stone, sky and sea, not modern walls, and history is inescapably present; and it makes it possible for each of the three groups taking part to express their different aesthetics. Each group is a Moscow studio and each travels at its own initiative to the Crimea for the pleasure of creating a festival in the warm South. Taking part, there is the Studio of Musical Movement, ‘Isadora’, of the Russian Friendship University, under the artistic direction of Valentina Ryazanova; the Studio of Musical Movement and Improvisation, ‘Heptachor’, under the artistic direction of Aida Ailamazyan, together with the Voice Studio of Maria Ganeshina; and the Studio of Artistic Movement of the House of Scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences, under the artistic direction of Inessa Kulagina. It is the Third Festival, once again made possible by local generosity and enthusiasm from the Museum of the National Reserve, ‘Khersones in Tauris’, theatrical support from the cultural administration of the city of Sevastopol’, rehearsal and festival opening space from the gallery of contemporary art, ‘Green Pyramid’, and the irreplaceably vivacious co-ordination of Ol’ga Ushakova. There are local TV crews. And, last, there is the always to be remembered opening of the festival: in a grass courtyard, with dusk approaching, the Festival begins with Stravinsky’s haunting and playful songs, danced, and, as our heroine sings from her heart, the heavens open and fierce rain dampens bodies – but not spirits. The opening is repeated the next day, and at the same song rain returns, but this time the rain is lighter and, after a break, dance continues. As it always continues.
