Designers of the Dance

ANNOUNCER: Designers of the Dance is made possible in part through the generous support of Eskenazi Health, advancing the role of art in health and NARRATOR: Choreography is more than ideas and steps, and choreographers more than mere It is their visions, their ideals, their spirits that present to us a reflection of ourselves, of our lives and cultures. And it is through the vibrance of this art form charged with energy and emotion that resonates through time, and transports or enlightens us on With music as their muse, it is their calling to bring shape and movement towards many facets of And while each approaches the artistic process differently, and each emerges with their own individual results, it is the interactions that transpire, hidden away in a dance studio, when the relationships that will define a work are forged, that the physical and emotional core While steps and movement are among a choreographer's tools, it is the essence within the heart and soul of Man that creates the expression, mood, and spirit of what we call It touches our humanity, and GENNADI: We all came from the same school, Bolshoi Ballet School. generations, so we are 10 years apart each of us. Yes of course.

GENNADI: You're the youngest generation. MARIA: Also, the school changed as the time changed. I was at school through the '90s, which wasn't the best time in Russian history, and they have different memories from the same place. GENNADI: But the same teachers, we went through the same teachers.

MARIA: Through same teachers, that's true. GENNADI: They connect the generations. MARIA: It wasn't my happiest time, that's for sure. I remember being scared all the time.

I mean, there were of course happy moments, but somehow the fear of...I don't know, being scared. YURI: We usually understand each other when I will start to talk about something, especially about dance, about art, so there is something common between all of us that brings us together. GENNADI: All part of one YURI: Why lilacs? Why it's a memory of the school?

Because bushes of lilacs had been surrounded all over our school. GENNADI: In the yard of the school, because it has a- YURI: Even outside. MARIA: And it always blooms around May, June, when we have exams. The smell of it, the excitement.

YURI: You're taking class in this school. GENNADI: You take class. Windows are open. YURI: It smells everywhere.

It's our favorite, actually, smell. GENNADI: Same here, same here. YURI: It's musical, but it's Tchaikovsky so it's very Russian music, very sensitive music. Very powerful, everything.

For me, music is language. There's a kind of new way of choreography now that people using music as background. It's kind of music of help them to keep reason as choreography. Unfortunately, I can't do it.

As choreographer, for me it's important to express each bar that had been written by a I have to first fall in love with music, after I have to understand or maybe to find my own expression of this music. So I would prefer in music phrases, because phrases give me chance to talk with audience. There's no other way for me. GENNADI: Yuri was...

He helped me to develop as an artist. I learned how to move like he does. It's like when I was dancing I was trying to mimic his body position in order to produce the same quality of movement in his MARIA: I don't know, I approach movement very similar to Yuri, so for me it feels very organic. It's still challenging and hard.

It's classical, but it has this, you obviously need to be a classical dancer to do any of Yuri's ballets, but it has this freedom that for me classical ballet is missing. I feel like his choreography for me now is what classical ballet would be for people a century ago. Everything is much bigger, the movement technique of it, it's all taken in a completely different level. It's challenging, it's beautiful, it has everything in LAR: I intended from the I did go to the Julliard School and work with some wonderful choreography instructors.

My main teacher there was Antony The thing that I picked up from Tudor was that it was a form of poetry, it was a form of movement poetry that we were speaking of things. We weren't just doing body articulations or technical exercises. I think the ultimate objective was not to dance to the music but to be the music. I often instruct dancers, even now, in their approach to dancing to become the music, to be the music.

To be an additional line of music that's not written on the score. The visual line of music. That they're not dancing next to or on top of music, but basically within the music. JULIE: It's always a great working with Lar, because I think, after all the years we've been dancing together, he trusts what we do together.

LAR: One does not create a dance in a vacuum. It's a co-creation of a choreographer and dancers with JULIE: It sort of builds and grows and morphs and I think sometimes opens his own eyes to oh, what that could be. LAR: Julie and Marcelo are very inspiring to watch, and because of what they're capable of physically and poetically they've had a good hand in helping me solve some of the problems that were left over in From the idea of creating Othello was put forward to the time it actually happened was very fast, it was really one JULIE: It was a very intense experience, I have to say. It was very stressful.

The bulk of the stress was due to the fact that Elliot Goldenthal, the composer, was literally writing the music and handing it to Lar at five o'clock in the morning, and Lar would come in and have to choreograph like that, like just LAR: The energy created by that sort of stimulus, the tension required that one think fast, move fast, work fast. Tension is a good thing. We think it's a bad thing, but tension is balanced by release. In relationship to the dancers playing specific characters, I never speak to the dancers about their acting or how to interpret the character.

I speak to them in terms of the movements, the dynamics, the relationship to the music. The spacing. I always feel that the dancer who is a poet will find meaning in that. MARCELO: Othello made me question my acting abilities completely.

He is such a powerful being on stage just by standing there. How much power can you have with both feet on the ground? That was a really big learning LAR: I felt very strongly that I wanted to do a story dance. Othello struck me as a story that could be told in pictures since its themes are so well known to everyone, the theme of JULIE: It really speaks to Desdemona's love of Othello that is so deep that even though she doesn't understand why, she's willing to sacrifice herself LAR: Even as he must take away her life, he does it as a gesture of love in a very What Othello is actually doing here is reenacting a prayer of sanctification that he preformed at the very beginning of the dance before his marriage to Desdemona.

In this final moment, in keeping with his beliefs, he must sanctify Desdemona's body before ending her life. In his mind, he is purifying her of sin before releasing her soul. He sees this sacrifice as an act of love. He believes that she has been stainless her entire life, and her purity has been part of what has been his...

The depth of his love, and this level of purity had a connection, and he believes he has been made impure and is no longer the same person. He believes, and she believes in fact, that she's going to a better place by being relieved of the stress of this life and the dilemma that's been created. In the very final moments of the duet, she reaches up to him as he puts the scarf around her ALASTAIR: I did a piece with Ned Warren, the composer, and I read his diaries. because nobody was writing the kind of music he needed.

I understood what he meant by that. The people weren't choreographing ballets that I wanted to be in, or that I wanted to watch, so I thought well, maybe I could have a good. Then, of course, people liked it, so then before I knew where I was, I was launched as a choreographer. Whereas actually it was just an experiment to see if I could do Well, I think Melissa has an incredible body for a start.

It lends itself to romantic ballets, whether they're abstract or narrative because it's so physical but very, very beautiful. It's kind of an aesthetic that all dancers want to have. It's one of those enviable bodies. But she's an interpretive dancer, so she works very well in narrative pieces.

So this piece, even though it has abstract ideas, I think she looks better when she tells it Eric is a very physical interpretive dancer. We're used to seeing Eric as a very strong presence on stage, and he plays a lot of very individual roles where he is almost bordering on contemporary dance in modern ballets. He's a very a strong partner. But he's also very handsome, so he does a lot of modeling.

When you use him, it's almost like a sculpture. That lends itself instantly to these pieces. They physically match, even though one is black and one is white. It has a kind of tension.

There's a sexiness to it, because she's very fair and he's very dark, that I think is ERIC: We've built quite a partnership. I've danced lots of stuff with Melissa. You know when you just meet someone and it just works? I think we have like minds in the studio for sure.

We get in there, and it's work, and it's to try and get the best outcome possible. I think choreographers can see that as well, the dynamic, and they get the most out of us. MELISSA: And to have ballets that will one day be the Romeo and Juliets and the

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of our time. I think it's an incredibly special opportunity for us to have, and always something new ALASTAIR: He sings that there's a burning tear. It's very, very romantic, and it talks about a burning tear on the cheek, and "Where are you?" And I think it's much more sensitive when you think of it as being a close up, like in a film. Do you know what I mean?

The more we just see eyes, and kind of... so when you crumble, you should always crumble, I think, with your fingertips first. MELISSA: And then the head stays- ALASTAIR: Because it's much sadder than crumbling with arms. ALASTAIR: Yeah, yeah.

The final song is poetically right that it should be the saddest, because it's almost like a reflection, something that looks back in time. It seemed poetically right that it should follow that natural course, so at the end of your life you look back and realize that the most important thing ALEXEI: My previous work was I spent five years as artistic director. At the end of this contract time, I felt that administrative work is a very heavy burden, and it really limits my freedom as a choreography. Of course, Bolshoi was an amazing experience for me, but at the same time I really wanted to explore the world outside and Since my school years, I always visualized, in my head, movements when I heard the music, which led me to thoughts that I should be a Well, I always loved ballet history and collected books and images, so this is part of me.

On the other hand, there was a need for a lens for the story. The theaters are always asking GILLIAN: Alexei's always very soft spoken, but always very demanding. He's very specific about how he wants us to be dynamic in our musicality and our physicality, to change the levels. Not just to be one level, but really using a deep pli and shifting from low lunges to be lifts very quickly, and things JAMES: It's kind of funny, though.

When he's in the studio, he has this sort of quiet demeanor. He'll lean forward and ask you to try something again and again and again, and really encouraging musicality and dynamics, and you find yourself completely ruined by the time the rehearsal's over and you're just in a puddle on the floor, and then you have five more GILLIAN: It's true. JAMES: It's really hard. He has such an eagle eye for detail.

It's almost disconcerting at first because the level of detail can be a little intimidating. JAMES: When he's in the room, I respect him and his work so much that I want to work, which unfortunately isn't always the case. That respect demands a certain level of compliance, which I'm willing to give, I don't know about you. Yeah?

GILLIAN: Sure. JAMES: Me too. ALEXEI: So, in our version, in ABT's version, Clara and Nutcracker are done by GILLIAN: It's about Clara and the prince's journey into adulthood, basically. They're instantly transformed from being the children into ALEXEI: I always felt that Carries so much meaning that it's very hard to find equally impressive steps on stage.

There are moments in the music that you clearly see Tchaikovsky I think it was a difficult time for Tchaikovsky. His sister just died, and he was depressed. He was going through a lot of emotional unsettlement. Somehow, despite the sweet story, he infused this music with his own sadness.

I hear that, and it reflects a little bit on the choreographer, that even the happiest moment, it goes by just like that. Musicality, imagination, and ability to let it go, to improvise, not to have everything set. Of course the rest has to be set, but then there is something extra that they need to bring on stage to communicate to the So, because they're still kids, even though they imagine themselves and the audience see the adults, they're not in love. They don't know what love is, but it's like an anticipation of love.

Of course Clara is as, in life the girls, and it'll foster, to develop faster than the boys, so she does feel it already and the prince is just being a very polite friend, supports her. They just look up at the sky and Then there is this beautiful celesta solo that hits upon the scenario he wrote. We need to hear the sound of VLADISLAV: I remember the situation 10 years ago. When Mikhail Lavrovsky picked me out of the final exams at the academy.

"Come to the Bolshoi. You'll work with me and we'll do very well." It was kind of a gift from fate that such a legend, such a person, such a MIKHAIL: My parents were artists. My mother was a dancer, and my father was a dancer for a very short time before becoming a choreography. He truly loved his profession, that of a choreography.

He never raised his voice. He was calm, and dancers could work together with him for up to six hours at a time. He commanded respect. Not fear, respect.

He somehow allowed us to realize our potential. He would say, "Misha, keep in mind that you can change everything if you do it with EVGENIA: The key thing is what Mikhail Lavrovsky said in today's rehearsal. "What is needed here is an You just need to completely forget about the kind of set poses that are typical in classical dance and be a real life person, and give the ballet MIKHAIL: No one could challenge my father directly. Afterwards, people could say things, criticize him, but when they were talking directly with him, Leonid was in charge.

My father was 100% a romantic. When he started his work in 1943 on Romeo and Juliet, this was how he saw things. The production was completed that the music of Sergei Prokofiev was not well received at first. Prokofiev's score has many musical themes which come into conflict with each other.

My father liked the music very much, it was a masterpiece, and in 1956 it was finally largely recognized as such. Prokofiev was a very warm person, and generally speaking It's a short ballet with only two themes. The theme of love, and the theme of fate. But it's a big production, three acts.

You need to develop every character, which I think Against the general background of Italian life, where the Renaissance was only just starting to make its influence felt, and the Middle Ages retreating, he showed the tragedy of people in love who found themselves at this He wanted to show everything in this vibrant, wonderful life, how people come into conflict with each other, and then a tragedy happens and society does One gains ground, another retreats, and then one theme starts to prevail. This is how Lavrovsky created his productions. He showed Verona as being full of life. Because there is no doubt ballet has within the physical dilemmas of people like Shakespeare or Dostoevsky, it cannot be understood without language.

Love, emotions, rage, outbursts, striving towards the light. These strong human feelings. Ballet needs to have even more Evgenia Obraztsova and Vladislav Lantratov showed that once again inspiration and great art have returned to the stage. The wonderful dancer Lantratov, he is brilliant.

He is continuing the traditions of Konstantin Sergeyev, who There was a time we began to move away from emotions, from what Galina Ulanova, the creator of Juliet embodied. But there is Evgenia Obraztsova from the brilliant Leningrad School who has big emotions and These are dancers who, in my opinion, are able to honorably continue the traditions of ANNOUNCER: Designers of the Dance is made possible in part through the generous support of Eskenazi Health, advancing the role of art in health and