Project “First position. Russian Ballet” claims to be an encyclopedic format, despite its name, where the emphasis is on the basic position of the body, arms and legs for choreography. The first position is the basis of ballet, from which immersion into the world of dance begins, and the project is also basic, it is a kind of introduction to the history, theory and practice of choreography. He converted the 4,500 sq. meters into a total interactive quest, which involves more than 1000 authentic exhibits from more than 40 museums. However, it turned out to be heterogeneous: sometimes causing confusion, sometimes admiration, somewhere crowded, somewhere free, at least dance. His motto was the phrase of Sergei Diaghilev, once thrown by him to Jean Cocteau: “Surprise me!”. The MK reviewer was really surprised.
The exhibition “First Position” is a landmark, not only because of the theme, but largely because of the format. In the St. Petersburg Manege, we were presented with an example of the principle by which in the coming years they will implement the standard developed by the Ministry of Culture for creating exhibitions for a wide audience. The new approach involves spatial solutions, the combination of multimedia technologies with authentic artifacts, turning the visit to the exhibition into an audiovisual journey. All this is in the St. Petersburg Manege, in some places even with a bust.
The hardest part is given to the first, introductory section, plunging into the beginning of the history of Russian ballet – the 17th-19th centuries. Three centuries are laid in a small red corridor, where each stage is separated from the other by the profiles of kings protruding from the wall. The headphones play music from the ballets of their century, and sometimes – dialogues characteristic of the era in which the audience finds themselves. Short explanatory texts are “scattered” on the walls – eyes run wide. The visual range – both from genuine artifacts and from multimedia installations – is somewhat oversaturated, so that from time to time you find yourself at a loss.
For example, one of the main features of the Imperial Ballet section is the kinetic installation Corsair, which, according to the description, “recreates the atmosphere of the theatrical machinery of the 19th century.” As soon as the button is pressed, the blue-lit scene comes to life: rows of wooden waves begin to move, a ship with figures of dancers emerges, which then splits in two and sinks. There is something to marvel at, but it remains unclear whether the installation is reproducing a specific ballet or, after all, the “atmosphere of machinery”. Opposite the moving installation built into the wall, you can find several sketches with technical solutions for ballets in the 18th and 19th centuries, including Le Corsaire. Apparently, we are still talking about a milestone technological breakthrough in the art of dance, but it is not so easy to understand and combine the logic of the narrative together – especially in a cramped space in a dense spectator stream.
Another feature of this section is the reconstruction of the 2nd scene of the 1st act of Swan Lake on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater (1895, choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov), where Siegfried and Odette first meet. Initially, this scene was massive – the main character went hunting with friends, and the bewitched princess appeared, accompanied by swan girlfriends. In 1933, this scene was revised – since then, Odette and Siegfried have been meeting alone. However, it is not mentioned that during the editing of Agrippina Vaganova, the party of the enchanted swan princess was first divided into two heroines: Princess Odette and her rival Odile. Many other important details are also omitted. It is impossible to embrace the immensity – especially in the format of a multiple historical digression. It seems that the creators of the project had to suffer, choosing content and shortening it. But there are curious accents that offer a decoding of the subtext of the ballets. For example, another popular ballet, The Little Humpbacked Horse, entered the trend in the second half of the 19th century, largely because it became an allegory for the abolition of serfdom: the Tsar Maiden personified the desired freedom, Khan – the forces of reaction, Ivanushka – the Russian people, and the horse humpbacked dog – some kind of bright genius of Russia, the description says.
In a word, the beginning requires maximum attention and concentration, otherwise you will not understand and get distracted by elegant outfits and worn silk pointe shoes that adorn the dense historical corridor. Then you can exhale. The next section takes up 10 times more space. We are entering the history of the heyday of Russian ballet, which happened primarily thanks to Sergei Diaghilev. The screen at the end of the first section shows a video with historical footage – dance and documentary, where we can see the great impresario in the backstage life. The video ends with Diaghilev’s famous phrase: “Surprise me.”
What follows is the actual surprise. The pace of the ballet journey, slow at first, accelerates, gaining lightness and saturating with intriguing notes. Leaving the red corridor, viewers find themselves in the secluded studio of the artist Alfred Eberling, who painted nudes for Anna Pavlova, Matilda Kshesinskaya, Tamara Karsavina and many other brilliant ballerinas of the early twentieth century. Before capturing them on canvas, Eberling photographed the dancers. Before us just these juicy shots. And at the exit from behind the curtains marked “18+” there is also a picturesque embodiment of these photo studies – the painting “The Temple of Terpsichore” (1905), where the girls in the dressing room change clothes and prepare to go on stage.
From behind the scenes we enter the stage – into the world of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. But first we pass through the corridor, designed in the form of a rehearsal room – with mirrored walls and a machine tool. You can warm up and take a selfie for memory. The next huge hall is completely devoted to Diaghilev’s ballets – here you need to admire and you can almost not read. Before us are stunning outfits from various performances, sketches for costumes, paintings created under the impression of Russian ballets, there is even a cast from the leg of Vaslav Nijinsky. The background for the exhibited works is a huge canvas backdrop. Here the curatorial thought of the theater artist Pavel Kaplevich gave free rein. You can “draw” a lot of loops, walking among the stands with luxurious costumes. Diaghilev, whose 150th birthday was widely celebrated last year, is given the main role in this ballet story. Specialists have something to discuss here: Diaghilev is undeniably great (thanks to him, Russian ballet became a brand and gained worldwide fame), but there were many other important figures that are mentioned in passing. At the end of this hall, we will learn a lot about how the fate of his students and protégés developed. But it’s time to move on: the Soviet period is already visible on the horizon. It opens with a ticket office, on the window of which hangs a piece of paper with the inscription “no tickets.”
The Soviet history of ballet is also driven into a narrow corridor, but is no longer as saturated with information as the first, most dense section. An amazing phenomenon is emphasized: despite the impoverishment of the population in the early years of Soviet power and the exodus of a noble public from the country, exquisite dance art has become more popular than ever, the broad masses have become infected with ballet. But in 1920, Lenin thought about closing the Bolshoi Theater and many others, because “it’s embarrassing to maintain such a luxurious theater for big money when we don’t have enough money to maintain simple schools in the countryside.” In his letter, he called the ballet “a piece of purely landowner culture.” People’s Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky convinced him. But the performances were revised in a proletarian manner, but the revolutionary fuse was decisive for only a few decades. Later, chic and brilliance will return to the ballet, but conciseness and experiments of the new time will be added. At the end of the historical excursion, we pass through a gallery of large illuminated photos of contemporary dancers like Diana Vishneva, Svetlana Zakharova or Ulyana Lopatkina.
The second floor of the Manege is dedicated to theory and practice. Here we again find ourselves in the rehearsal room: a dozen screens are lined up in a row, where young dancers perform the exercises given by the mentor. Behind the “real installations” there are two walls, where the main poses, jumps and movements are laid out on the shelves. For example, a video comic is dedicated to Assamble: it talks about a jump, during which the artist seems to “flutter”, either bringing his legs together or spreading him in flight. The movement is not easy – the maximum number of such swings was 10, and few people are able to repeat this record. Assemble – depending on the number of movements – has many options for names. Here you can also see how the Russian ballet school differs from the Italian or French – this is clearly shown in the position of the hand in the fifth position. And at the end of the journey, another spacious hall awaits us with modern ballet costumes and a cinema hall with excerpts from historical performances.
The scenario of the large-scale exhibition turned out to be quite theatrical. In the plot – tension, then – the climax, and emotional discharge – at the end. The new multimedia format set by the Ministry of Culture is not simple, it is easy to overload it and turn it into a cacophony of audio, video and text. In the St. Petersburg Manege, it also went to the brink in some places, but the dramaturgy of the movement through the exhibition pulled it to the right level of emotional and conceptual perception.