On April 18, a dance critic, observer of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper, expert and jury chairman of the Golden Mask Russian National Theatre Award, Leila Guchmazova invited everyone to join a unique
The art of dance, despite its corporeality, always tended to tell unrealistic stories: myths, fairytales and dreams. Classical tradition has given us many examples. Here a Count and a peasant girl reunite in a spirit world, and there a young Englishman falls asleep and sees in his dream a Pharaoh’s daughter. Or like this: once upon a time a darling Prince arrives at the lakeside to shoot for a while, and there are swans…
Dance so succeeded in establishing friendly relations with fantastic world that it almost forgot about its limits: now it is possible to set the first act in a real world and the second in a fictional (Giselle), to insert the scene of a dream into realistic narrative (Don Quixote) and even to erase boundaries between realism and fantasy without even realizing it (Nutcracker).
Academic ballet transmitted to modern dance productions this unique tradition to combine fantastic and real world. Dance Open keeps an ear to the ground and this year repertoire includes three ballets — the Nutcracker, Alice and Coppélia — following these trends. On these ballets with its old and new meanings, fine lines between real life and another world is based the core of the interactive lecture.
By Leila Guchmazova