Vyacheslav Samodurov’s “Tanz Tseni”, or “Dancing Scenes”, set to Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony in C, is a 30-minute modern ballet void of a storyline that offers unique step combinations in clever combinations against a backdrop of trendy, neon strip lighting and flashy costumes. The last ballet of an all-Stravinsky contemporary bill, the work premiered on April 8th and serves as an example of what Russian choreographers offer in the neoclassical and modern genres.
Mikhail Fokine’s “Petrushka”, the well-known ballet about the sensitive puppet whose soul lives on even after his doll-body is supposedly “killed”, opened the evening. With the famous Admiralty building at the center of Alexander Benois’ backdrop, the cruel, almost pagan atmosphere of “Petrushka” immediately places the viewer in times past. Men grabbing female gypsies, female clowns performing splits for a few extra pennies from the crowd, the line of Cossack dancers who weave in and out with the accordion player, and later, people wearing large goose and goat heads parading around the colorful square – all are part of the Maslenitsa festival, celebrating the hoped-for ending of the endless, arctic Petersburg winters. Within this setting we witness the tragedy of Petrushka.
Performed by Vladislav Shumakov, Petrushka is a soft floppy puppet helplessly in love with the indifferent Ballerina doll. Shumakov’s gestures and movements perfectly embodied the essence of the role. Near the end of the sequence when the puppet attempts to escape being “boxed in” to his room, Shumakov’s fearless dive at the wall (creating a hole in the black box) holds allusions of suicide if looked at from another perspective.
Daria Ustyuzhanina performed the Ballerina doll, her delicate features and highly arched feet offering the only glimpse of classicism in the work. Noteworthy was the section she performs in the Moor’s room alone: a series of soussous developpé à la seconde en pointe in which she holds her balance, her right leg past her ear, and then falls softly into a tombé in attitude. The sequence is short but hinted at her technical capabilities.
The ballet’s poignant ending, when gentle Petrushka is killed by the egotistical and savage Moor doll, leads to one conclusion. As we see Petrushka’s soul above the roof of the puppet show theatre, it’s cledar that souls do not need human bodies in order to exist.
The second ballet on the bill, Alexander Sergeev’s “Concert Dances”, set to Stravinsky’s music by the same name, holds a plethora of illusions to various Balanchine works. We see, at the very least, a ballerina en pointe in arabesque, rotated 360 degrees by a partner sitting at the base of her foot as in “Serenade”; the tap-step from “Concerto Barocco”, and “Apollo” pulling one of his muses in a low arabesque. Sergeev’s own choreographic themes nonetheless perforate the lexicon: a double retire passé appears repeatedly when Even Capitaine lifts Oksana Skorik (it was her debut on April 9th) overhead facing the audience, and again when she retains the pose but folds backwards over him. Skorik’s endlessly exquisite lines are enough to carry this ballet through until the end, but her playfulness in the duet with Capitaine gave it an extra level of depth and spice. Capitaine enters with darting jetés like Solor from “La Bayadere” during one of his variations, and after a few temps de cuisse, performs a pirouette with one leg held at 90 degrees devant.
But most people attended for the last ballet of the evening, the premiere of Samodurov’s work. Samodurov has set works for every leading theatre in Russia and “TansTseni” is his first set for the Mariinsky. He directed the Ural Opera Ballet in Ekaterinburg for 12 years but since then has focused solely on choreography.
“Tanz Tseni” opens to a black stage hung with long vertical slices of metal (seemingly a few inches wide) in a curtain that spans the width of the stage. Long bars of neon lights are hung horizontally, from wing to wing, and as the music starts, they begin to move vertically, crossing each other and ultimately raising up and off of the stage space. By the time the metal slices and horizontal lamps disappear, a series of visibly “loud” disks, giant lightbulbs, face the audience. This decoration is trendy and energetic but detracts from some of the more interesting events on stage, namely the dancing itself.
Three sets of dancers interact in this ballet: a set of men in pinkish/purple T shirts and a ballerina in a dark fuschia satin tutu – danced precisely and expertly by May Nagahisa; a woman in a short black corset alongside a man in a black unitard – we were blessed with the electric duet of Renata Shakirova and Kimin Kim; and a woman in a long white skirt accompanied by her constant partner (also in the pink/purple shirt), which Nadezhda Batoeva and Konstantin Zverev managed to infuse with a palpable sense of connection. If the Shakirova and Kim duo proved exotic and flashy, the Batoeva – Zverev pair implied sporty playfulness and even drama at some points. Zverev punches the air and swivels a foot along the ground as if it’s stuck and then joins Batoeva in a type of “jog walk”. First a group of men jump and turn like alternating pieces of popcorn, then place May Nagahisa, regarded as a leading classicist in this purely Petipa theatre, in various classical arabesques, bending her as if she’s a foldable doll. The men later enter from stage left, their arms clasped in a prayer-like “diving” motion, heads tilted down facing the floor, as they run and swivel like minnows with legs. These three sets of dancers interact amongst themselves and with each other, but none of it holds any specific libretto or storyline.
Samodurov manages to show both Stravinsky’s rhythm and melodies through his movements, but there is no specific choreographic lexicon to grasp in “Tanz Tseni”. Upon only one viewing, it’s difficult to categorize all that Samodurov has created, aside from saying it is abstracter than abstract as it illustrates Stravinsky’s score and underscores the perhaps chaotic mood the composer intended.
Photos from top of “Tanz Tseni”: by Mikhail Vilchuk, by Alexander Neff, and the last two images also by Mikhail Vilchuk, all (c) Mariinsky Theatre 2025.