Choreographer Kylian Debuts at the Stanislavsky

No choreographer of the present day is more universally acclaimed than 63-year-old Czech-born Jiri Kylian, long-time artistic director of the Netherlands Dance Theater. But it took until last Sunday, at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater, for any of Kylian’s many ballets to reach the repertoire of a Russian dance company.

As was the case in American John Neumeier’s “The Seagull” three years ago and Spaniard Nacho Duato’s “Na Floresta” at the end of last season, the dancers of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko proved themselves astoundingly adept at assimilating the totally unfamiliar and technically challenging choreography of a modern master from abroad.

Kylian’s belated debut with a Russian company stems largely from a certain hostility toward this part of the world that traces back to the Soviet Union’s brutal suppression of his native country’s capital in the spring of 1968.

He nearly overcame his scruples a decade ago in response to an invitation from the Bolshoi Theater, but negotiations faltered on the theater’s insistence that he create something new and exclusively the property of the Bolshoi.

For the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, Kylian chose two short ballets, both to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, that have already achieved near-classic status: “Sechs Tanze” (Six Dances), choreographed in 1986, and “Le petit mort” (The Small Death), which made its debut at the Salzburg Festival in 1991 as part of the commemoration that year of the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death.

Like any abstract choreography by a master of the art, Kylian’s is extremely difficult to describe. No words can really come close to capturing the sensations a viewer is likely to experience in seeing it firsthand.

“Sechs Tanze,” set to Mozart’s delightful six German Dances, is one of those rare comic ballets that actually proves to be hilarious. It features four men, dressed in white breeches and powdered wigs, and four women, clad in simple white gowns of 18th-century style. Each of the musical numbers brings forward some combination of the dancers in a separate comic episode. The dance movements, typical of Kylian, begin with borrowings from the standard ballet vocabulary but then take wholly unexpected twists and turns. The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko dancers splendidly caught the spirit of the piece and its very un-Russian style of humor.

“La petit mort” (French slang for an orgasm) is danced to the familiar slow movements of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 21 and 23. The cast consists of six couples and six dueling foils, the foils playing an important, though enigmatic role in the proceedings. As its title suggests, the ballet is filled with eroticism, but eroticism of a very subtle kind, and seems meant to be a celebration of an orgasm, rather the experience itself. What can be briefly said about the choreography is that it clearly comes from a craftsman of the very first order. The men at the premiere seemed a bit wary of the dueling foils, but further performances will probably cure both that and the minor uncertainties that cropped up here and there on opening night.

Forming a quadruple bill with Kylian’s ballets were Leonid Lavrovsky’s “Walpurgis Night” and Duato’s “Na Floresta.” The former, created for a 1949 Bolshoi production of Charles Gounod’s opera “Faust,” seemed hopelessly dated in the company of modern choreographic masterpieces. Fortunately, this tame and tawdry depiction of what purports to be an orgy is due to be replaced at next season’s performances with work by the outstanding Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo.

Duato spent 10 years together with Kylian at the Netherlands Dance Theater and traces of Kylian can be found in Duato’s choreography. Nevertheless, “Na Floresta” remains a totally original work, a choreographic hymn in praise of the Amazon rain forest and quite possibly the most exquisite 20 minutes or so of dancing to be seen on any stage anywhere in the world. The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko company danced it with what seemed even more understanding and confidence than they exhibited at its premiere last July.

It should be noted, by the way, that Duato returns to Moscow over the next two weeks under the auspices of the International Chekhov Festival, leading his own National Dance Company of Spain first in a brand-new Chekhov-themed ballet called “The Infinite Orchard” (Monday through July 23 at the Mossoviet Theater) and then closing out the festival in a work from the company’s repertoire titled “Multiplicity. Forms of Silence and Emptiness” (July 26 to 30 at the New Stage of the Bolshoi). No one familiar with “Na Floresta” will likely want to miss either one.