14 студзеня 2024 - 50 гадоў з дня заснавання ансамбля "Харошкі"
14 студзеня 2024 - 50 гадоў з дня заснавання ансамбля "Харошкі"
For the first time a dance performance "Belarusians" was fully shown by "Khoroshki" on the Belarusian State Philharmonic Society stage. The great ethnic performance is the result of long-time work of the artistic director and can definitely become the source of the whole trend of national dance development.
Vivid pictures of people’s life at different times and seasons (winter, spring, summer, autumn) form a storyline of most project performances. The project reflects tragic pages of our past history and merry traditional celebrations and rites performed artistically very well by highly professional talented dancers. However, not the events themselves, even very important, but the destiny of an ordinary person capable to survive in the most difficult circumstances, of a person shown with all contradictions of his character, behavior, religion, occupies a central place in the performance. Being an ordinary rural worker, a soldier, a lover, in opinion of the directors, firstly he is a Person. In that it is his strength, his destination, his beauty.
The performance wins over everybody with the fact that it contains a range of endearing feelings, expresses tenderness and love for the native land. Those feelings become particularly expressive in the second part of the performance (summer - autumn) when they are demonstrated by contrast of heartwarming joy of life and destructive cruelty of war.
The first part of the performance "Belarusians" (winter - spring) has already been examined in the journal "Art" (see №6, 2007). The second part begins with a vocal-choreographic composition "Myadunachka" serving as a peculiar prologue to strong emotional burst which will take place during the performance. In such a way people usually perceive its most unusual and probably most perfectly performed part - two energetically impressive and at the same time exceptionally touching dances "Zhytnevy ramans" and "Zhuravy". Here it is difficult not to agree with the Minister of Culture Vladimir Matveychuk who said after the first night: "There were so many performances on the famous philharmonic stage but there has never been such a strong impression while watching a choreographic composition!"
Both parts marked as choreographic miniature and ballade create a historical epic of the times of the Great Patriotic War. A tender feeling of love fills scenes of "Ramans" staged as lyric adagio and performed by three couples of soloists (Irene Grusheva and Alexei Chernyshevich, Ekaterina Koturgina and Ruslan Abdul, Olga Voytekhovskaya and Alexander Sivakov). They attract us by ingenuousness of youth, sincerity and beauty. Striking characters of heroes and unusual ideas of plastic expressiveness remain in our memory. Successfully performed lifts taken from classical dance combine with distinctive movements and gestures. The leitmotif of the duet, when a boy dandles a beloved girl in his hands covering her white bare feet with a hood, attracts by particular ingenuousness.
What is taking place during the ballade "Zhuravy" can be definitely called exquisite skills of performing optimistic tragedy on the stage. The audience is so impressed that its nerve fails them: a lump comes to the throat and tears - to the eyes. Besides, it is the result of perception of "Zhuravy" in the context of the whole performance. Being a separate concert performance, the ballade may lose some part of its scope. All the creators have indisputable success: the composer, costume designers, dancers, musicians. They put their whole soul into the idea which was brilliantly realized by the choreographer Valentina Gaevaya.
Such idea could occur only owing to her own life experience where there is a painful echo of the sufferings which she had to know in her war-burnt childhood. That is why the ballade characters look so natural. There is no lie and no artificial ways of dance expressiveness. The ballade sounds like a dramatic song, like weeping, like a cry about severe destiny of a woman, about the ordeals caused by the war: work all day long up to sweat, up to tears, up to bloody callosities; cruel lines of "killed in battle" notices, hunger and poverty. But with a new-born person there was a new hope. We have the impression that we perceive the world through eyes of the woman, of the leading lady.
It is not by chance because it is conceptual for all creative work of the choreographer, for all the programs of "Khoroshki". The image of a woman - girl, mother - always occupies a central place. It is most accurately and vividly written, it has great importance concerning a theme and a plot. It reflects the best qualities and features of human character and beauty of nature and life as well. Let’s remember "Vesnyanka" from the first part of the program when the heroine, like Aphrodite from spindrift, appeared from a pink blossoming garden. Even dance names like "Lubachka" and "Myadunachka" glorify femininity. Male images in the performances are simpler, with no personification. They obtain general, typical features - soldiers, mowers, guests, volochebniks. Some characters have definite comic and negative features (poor men, idlers, drunkards). The exception is the images performed by a legendary "Khoroshki" dancer Fyodor Balabayko. Using consummate improvisatory dance style he is capable to turn negative qualities of a hero into a smile or a joke. He always holds the stage, he is always in the forefront - in "Christmas", "Snowstorms", "Svyatki", "Volochebniks", "Matchmakers", "Marriage". From the beginning until final chords whose vigorous character means that at the end of the performance - in "Kaleidoscope of Belarusian dances" dancers demonstrate their exceptional technical abilities, academic style and musicality.
In "Belarusians" the music not only sets rhythm for dancers, gives the flavor and bright colors to dances. It fills ideas with sense and, what is more important, creates musical images together with plastic ones.
The deepest and the most sensible approach to musical material is much connected with a new "Khoroshki" musical director - composer Marina Morozova. Being a pupil and follower of famous Evgeny Glebov whose contribution to the development of Belarusian ballet music can not be overestimated, Morozova successfully applies accumulated experience of studies with the master and her own talent in new for her sphere of dramatized folk dance. She succeeded to raise not very big orchestra up to the level of symphonic sounding. Past experience of music making for dramatic performances and her own ballet scores helped the composer in it. The problem is not just to copy folk or famous songs but to have the written folk songs marked by her own thematic works and her own tunefulness.
In the last performance there were interesting striking musical features of some mise-en-scènes and characters. For instance, very expressive "Gossips" is made as a combination of swift violins and a xylophone with bass sounds of a group of button accordions. In "Zhuravy" we feel the influence of women’s folk singing when instant deep breath dictates the tempo and manner of performance. Extensive orchestra sounding gives emotionality to such compositions as "Anthem to sun" which is a meaningful leitmotif of the program. Except for such strong compositions with deep dramatic understanding, in the project there are light ones which remind of insert divertissement.
The dramatized program "Belarusians", which with music and dancing managed to reflect people’s life, belongs to one of the best achievements of our choreography.
Igor Kuznetsov
