International ballet competitions. Long Breath Winners of different years

About an important event in the world of culture: the names of the winners of the International Competition of Ballet Dancers and Choreographers are about to become known. This is one of the most prestigious shows, which over the years of its existence has lit up many stars, so the attention to it is enormous. The announcement of the winners takes place on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater.

Neither prizes, nor places, nor opponents matter seconds before going on stage. Only dance! And there is one answer to any questions before the performance.

Moscow these days is a center of attraction for young ballet dancers and choreographers from all over the world. The international competition for the title of the best is held every four years, like the Olympics.

And the preparation is appropriate - thousands of repetitions under the strict guidance of the teacher. And here the language of international communication is Russian.

“You can immediately feel where there is a “Russian trace”, where Russians taught, even if it is Brazil, or Argentina, or the USA. I joked about this a long time ago. At a press conference in the USA, I was asked why I think our ballet is the best. I just said: ballet has been taught in Russia longer than the United States has existed as a state. I was joking, but it’s true,” says jury member, People’s Artist of Russia Nikolai Tsiskaridze.

New names are opening on the new stage of the Bolshoi. It was here that rehearsals, classes and stages of the competition took place all these days. But each participant strives for the historical stage. The final of the ballet competition will take place here. What these “higher, lighter, more accurate” ones are worth can be seen behind the scenes. Someone can't stand on their feet, and someone cries after a seemingly perfect performance.

“I rehearsed this number for 12 hours every day for six months, so I prepared for the competition. I danced with injuries. And not everything worked out. But the fact that I still perform on the Bolshoi stage in the finals is a dream come true, to which I walked through pain, and I am happy regardless of the result,” admitted contestant Ao Dingfeng from China.

The result, in addition to the first three places, is the Grand Prix, almost the holy grail of the competition - in its half-century history it was awarded only four times. And this year the prize also gives an unprecedented prize for the ballet world - 100 thousand dollars for the best choreographer and the same amount for the ballet dancer. But this will happen only if the jury, led by the head of the show, Yuri Grigorovich, votes unanimously.

“Everything here must be perfect, from pointe shoes to ribbons to ribbons. The way she smiles is the same with the dancers, the way they carry themselves on stage. Yes, they fell, yes, they slipped, yes, they didn’t finish something, but when an artist is on stage, these small errors disappear,” says jury member, People’s Artist of Russia Svetlana Zakharova.

Three rounds of competition are behind us. The names of the winners will be announced very soon. However, regardless of the opinion of the judges, many dancers admit that they have already received their award.

“This applause that hugs you is magical! For this you have to live, for this you have to dance, work, cry, gnaw the concrete of ballet with your teeth, just to go out and enjoy these unique moments,” said contestant from Latvia Evelina Godunova.

Like any other, this competition is a mixture of explosive emotions. Even sports, with its obvious electronic scoreboards, gives rise to discrepancies, and the art of dance, with its ephemeral nature and rigid connection of technique and artistry, is even more a field for disagreement. But it’s too late to wave our fists: yesterday on the Historical Stage of the Bolshoi Theater, an international jury headed by the Russian ballet icon Yuri Grigorovich announced the list of winners. They say they are not on trial. And discussing the trends of the competition is necessary and even useful - the next one, in a favorable situation, will happen in four years, during which time a lot can be improved in the kingdom.

The festival, which has been running since 1969, is almost ten years younger than its fellow Moscow International Film Festival and the Tchaikovsky Competition, and although the motives for their creation were similar, the owners have always had many reasons to be proud of the ballet. The ballet competition was cutting-edge: in 1969 the jury recognized the luxurious couple from the Grand Opera Francesca Zumbo-Patrice Barthes as the best, and the great Plisetskaya publicly said that there is sex in ballet. In recent times, the competition has lost much of its prestige, and the organizers of the current one have restored it in a radical way, leading to two Grand Prix prizes of 200 thousand dollars. And the dates helped: the chairman of the jury, Yuri Grigorovich, reached the milestone of 90 years, and the competition itself became the beginning of the official “Year of Russian Ballet and the 200th anniversary of Marius Petipa.”

What is usual about the competition: young and not so young artists dance either dashingly or precisely. There are, to put it mildly, problems with musicality (I don’t know which of the contestants will cope with Stravinsky in the near future) and with long breathing, which allows the number to be carried out smoothly from beginning to end. About the cantilena dance, when the participant dances and does not glue the gap between profitable steps, everything is also sad. But there is good news: at the end of this year, the younger group turned out to be much more interesting than the older group, which means that with the “Generation of Young People,” ballet theater will be interesting, and the digital revolution is not an obstacle to this.

The main trend is not new, it has only been gaining momentum for thirty years now - most of the applicants are dancers from Asia - China, Japan, South Korea and Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which have joined them. Despite the lamentation about the lack of men in ballet, there are many soloists at the current competition; the podium in the men's solo dance was taken by Marat Sydykov (Kyrgyzstan, 3rd place), Ma Miaoyuan (China, 2nd place), Baktiyar Adamzhan (Kazakhstan, 1st place). The ladies have the same solo hierarchy Liliya Zainigabdinova (Russia, 3rd place) and Evelina Godunova (1st place, Latvia), they decided not to award the second prize. The duet for men, generally not very gallant, was a success for Wang Janfeng (China, 3rd place), Okawa Koya (Japan, 1st place) and Mariinsky Theater artist Ernest Latypov (2nd place), his partner from the same Mariinsky, neat Ekaterina Chebykina, received only a diploma - like the American Joy Womack from the Kremlin Ballet, famous for her revelations of behind-the-scenes life. For women in duets, the third prize was shared by a Japanese and a Chinese woman, the first was not awarded, and the second will be taken to Kazan by the explosive Brazilian Amanda Morales Gomez, dancing in the theater there. At the choreography competition, the landscape is monotonous: second place was shared by the Russians Nina Madan and the tireless Andrey Merkuriev, the third and one of the first authors from China, another first place went to the only memorable choreographer, the Chilean with the endless name Zuniga Jimenez Eduardo Andres.

At the end of this year, the younger group turned out to be more interesting than the older group

The younger age group, the reverent ballet people from 14 to 18 years old, was more pleasing. A common favorite was Ivan Sorokin, a native of the city of Syktyvkar and a student at the inconspicuous gymnasium there, for whom, according to rumors, a battle is already going on behind the scenes at prestigious ballet schools - everyone wants to finish his training and bring him to the theater under their own brand. Another favorite, on the contrary, maintains the honor of the Moscow school - this is the handsome young Denis Zakharov, trained with all care (first prize in a duet). Russian Liza Kokoreva and Korean Park Sunmi shared first place; the jury did not award a second prize. Ekaterina Klyavlina took third place. . Their peers in the solo - the American Elizabeth Beyer, who won first place, the Chinese Syi Li and the embodiment of precision and tenderness Subin Lee from South Korea, make one think that with all the competitive imbalances in the podiums, there is both logic and justice.

Winners of different years

The Moscow competition glorified such stars as Francesca Zumbo and Patrice Barthes, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Eva Evdokimova, Lyudmila Semenyaka and Alexander Godunov, Loipa Araujo and Vladimir Derevyanko, Nina Ananiashvili, Vladimir Malakhov, Maria Alexandrova, Alina Cojocaru, Natalia Osipova, Ivan Vasiliev and others . The change of generations in ballet is fast, and several winners of the competition managed to become members of the jury: Vadim Pisarev, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, Julio Bocca.

Origins

The origins of the Moscow ballet competition were the legends of Russian ballet Galina Ulanova, Igor Moiseev, Olga Lepeshinskaya. In 1973, the competition was headed by Yuri Grigorovich, who to this day, at 90 years old, remains the chairman of the jury. The jury over the years included Marina Semenova, Galina Ulanova, Maya Plisetskaya, Vladimir Vasiliev. As well as representatives of the world's ballet elite - legends of the French school Yvette Chauvire, Claude Bessy, Charles Jude, Alicia Alonso (Cuba), Birgit Kullberg (Sweden), authoritative critics Arnold Haskell (Great Britain) and Allan Friederichia (Denmark).

Anyone who has seen the screenings of the first round, to the best of their own discernment, can decipher the heading in the title as both “satisfactory” and “depressing.” Any assessment of the overall level of the ongoing ballet show will be fair. A fairly significant number of contestants without a strong personality and with elementary school gaps do not allow us to give a solid four.

The coveted GRAN PRIX is again unlikely to find an owner. Unless, of course, a miracle happens and someone, having overcome the debut excitement, is able to conquer the jury with brilliant dance technique, artistry and... attractive appearance (there are also problems with this). So far, no one has even come close to the four winners of the main prize - Irek Mukhamedov, Andrei Batalov, Denis Matvienko and the first Grand Dame. Already at their first appearance on stage, the audience took their breath away. It was not clear how, for example, this fragile birdie girl Nadya from Perm acquired real ballerina chic? Where did the culture of her huge step in ““, which amazed everyone, come from, which other ballerinas later transformed from an academic ecarte into a dashing leg-tearing?

If at the second competition the success of a pupil of a provincial ballet school seemed like an accidental exception, then today the entire geography of the country is on the map of the show: Voronezh, Izhevsk, Yoshkar-Ola, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Perm, Syktyvkar, Ufa, Yakutsk and Moscow with St. St. Petersburg. Not all participants will make it to the finals, but the very arrival of envoys from distant regions is visible evidence of the unprecedented popularity of the art of ballet in Russia.

This happens all over the world, as confirmed by participants from more than twenty countries, including those where ballet was not a priority of national culture. Therefore, quite interesting representatives from Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan can be called a revelation of the competition. Strong and numerous landings of participants arrived from Brazil and China, Japan and South Korea.

True, the emergence of numerous new ballet schools has given rise to problems with quality training. Firstly, not everywhere teachers have the proper level of training. Secondly, most studio schools exist entirely or partially on private funds, and then the conditions are set by the students. If the children wanted to dance Esmeralda, Kitri or Basil with Actaeon, the teacher agreed, and the mother paid. One is taken aback by observing at the competition the obvious discrepancy between the selected variations and the physical characteristics of the performer and the degree of his mastery of the technique.

However, no one really stands on ceremony with technology; the freedom of replacement is amazing. And when you see three variations in a row of Swanilda from “Coppelia” staged by A. Gorsky, but completely different in choreography, you understand the great wisdom of Medici.tv to start live broadcasts of the competition only from the second round. Otherwise, you can completely confuse both spectators and professionals, and, most importantly, you yourself will unwittingly become a promoter of bad examples of classical ballet and bad taste.

There were quite a few fairly weak, C-grade, participants in the first round both in the morning, when the younger ones competed (from 14 to 19 years old), and in the evening, where the older ones (from 19 to 27) competed. Although the division took place according to passport data, everything was mixed up on stage. Failures should not be attributed to natural excitement, an unusually sloping stage or floor covering: everyone was on equal terms. And the one who performed better was the one who had not so much stronger nerves, but a better school. And many people have problems with it.

It is assumed that the main task of young artists of the junior group is to show a correct, “school” performance: purity of movements, correct form, musicality, coupled with which a sense of style and artistry can be manifested. Often something else prevailed - untrained feet, raised shoulders, “dirt” in small ground techniques, not to mention disrupted pirouettes and jumps without flight.

The older group has a different problem. Many artists tried to overcome the shortcomings of the school base with spectacular tricks, including unimaginable revolts in the countless “Flames of Paris”, obvious reliance on external impressions, excessive exaltation of each movement. The Asians especially stood out, as they uncompromisingly, in the spirit of martial arts, entered the element of classical ballet. As a result, I wanted to see beauty and spirituality on stage, but instead there was a whole line of clumsy, short dummies that looked alike - vertuns and jumpers. It’s as if they are not ballet dancers, but circus performers in the arena. True, in the circus they do everything cleaner, they jump higher and spin faster.

The result is logical: out of 127 participants, less than half made it to the second round, and only that. 62 artists will continue to compete for medals.