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| 01.06.2007 In the spotlight |
The brunette Nelli, the redhead Larisa and the annoying one, Nastya, compete for a chance to join the jet set in Muz-TV’s new reality show “Passport to Rublyovka.” The show’s makers don’t just give the girls an elektrichka ticket to the elite suburb and leave them to climb over the fences. Instead, they lay on a kind of finishing school for gold-diggers in the rough.
The show, presented by blonde socialite Ulyana Tseitlina, puts up the three girls in the Sovietskaya hotel on Leningradsky Prospekt — not exactly the Metropole, but this is Muz-TV. They get taken out to meet celebrities, attend glamorous parties and learn golf. At the end of the show, one candidate will win the ultimate prize — not actually a mansion on Rublyovskoye Shosse, but the next best thing: a job as a Muz-TV presenter.
Last weekend, I caught an episode in which the girls, dressed in black and looking suitably glum, were herded into an exhibition of contemporary art, chaperoned by socialite novelist Oksana Robski. Faced with the homoerotic works of French artists Pierre et Gilles — shown with lots of blurry bits on Muz-TV — the girls were supposed to come up with some witty and original remarks.
“You have to amaze people and not be afraid to shock them,” Robski said. Stopping beside a picture of a sailor, she asked the girls to say their pieces. “Stop scratching yourself,” she warned Nelli, who fiddled with her shoulder as she spoke, looking far out of her depth.
Then Nastya launched into a school-marmish comment about “a work of art,” only to be told off for being banal. Finally, she hit the cultural zeitgeist, saying something that got bleeped out but gained a smile of approval from her stern mentor.
The next test saw badger-haired pop singer Vlad Topalov lecturing the girls at a go-kart track. He praised Larisa for talking about sex, but told Nelli off for being too shy and not seeming to know what she was doing on the show. Finally, Nastya — who had been thrusting her breasts in Topalov’s direction throughout — got the ultimate compliment: “You know how to attract attention to yourself.” The other two gave her dirty looks.
The most controversial participant in the show is Pyotr Listerman, an outrageous “model producer” who claims to provide beautiful wives for rich men. Izvestia has called him an “elite pimp.” He gives commentary on the girls’ progress, although he doesn’t meet them on screen. Smoking a cigar, he tipped his favorite.
Larisa, the redhead will go far, because she is a “bitch,” he said. “There are some men who ask me, ‘Give me a bitch, that’s all I want.’”
Luckily, the girls got a chance to meet more suitable men, restaurateurs Mikhail Zelman and Ilya Demichev, and pick up nuggets of wisdom over lunch. Nastya cut straight to the chase: How do you part a man from his money? she asked. By not trying, Demichev replied. But the girls didn’t look too convinced, and Tseitlina spurred them on by saying that “the supply far exceeds the demand.”
The blonde presenter clearly knows what she’s talking about — she had an eight-page spread in this week’s OK! magazine, showing off her house on Rublyovka. Described as “an ex-model and an interior designer,” she poses with her four dogs, which are also blonde. She has a baby son, too, but he didn’t get a picture. Oh, and there was a husband as well. He bought the house.
If any of the Muz-TV girls do manage to squeeze their way onto Rublyovka, they might want to drop by for a visit. Because Tseitlina told OK! that her next-door neighbor is Roman Abramovich.
News source: www.spbtimes.ru
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| 17.04.2007 Last Chance to See Utopia |
The Dom Kommuny, or Communal House, has changed a lot over the years. Built between 1928 and 1930, it has morphed from architect Ivan Nikolayev's vision of a communist utopia to a ruined building partially inhabited by artists. Now, for the next two weekends, the decaying structure on Ulitsa Ordzhonikidze will host the Pandus arts festival -- a last hurrah for the building before its interior is gutted for renovation.
Featuring photography, paintings, concerts and performances, the festival is the idea of Svyatoslav Ponomaryov, a musician and artist who rents a studio in Dom Kommuny. In an interview on Wednesday, Ponomaryov said he had been inspired by the building's communal atmosphere. He asked his artist friends to take part in a low-budget exhibition dedicated to the building -- and, specifically, to a unique structure within it, a triangular ramp that spirals upward seven stories. The festival takes its name from pandus, the Russian word for "ramp."
"The building is a symbol of an era we cannot part with," Ponomaryov said. "It's the architectural equivalent of [Vera Mukhina's 1937 sculpture] 'The Worker and the Collective Farm Girl.' It's a style of life that was never properly analyzed, and artists should get a chance to look at it before it's completely destroyed."
Ponomaryov will play Tibetan music alongside a classical chamber orchestra as part of the festival on Sunday at 5 p.m. The festival also features the work of various visual artists, such as Daria Surovtseva's installation made of miniature flesh-colored figurines and Yevgeny Shcheglov's photographs of female nudes.
Some of the performances were specifically designed for the seven-story ramp itself. Yevgenia Yemets, one of the festival's curators, designed a laser show for the space that will be presented to visitors on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. On April 22, members of the Liquid Theater troupe will skateboard down the ramp holding open flames.
In 1930, when Dom Kommuny was opened as a dormitory for the Textile Institute, it reflected Constructivist theories about how form should influence function. The small sleeping cubicles were separated from the showering blocks and eating areas, and at 7 a.m. students went from bed to breakfast, their movements dictated by a system of loud bells. Heating would be switched off early in the morning to discourage students from sleeping in.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the experiment in communal living was a flop, and Dom Kommuny turned out to be one of the last projects of its kind. In any case, it is now difficult to imagine that the building ever had much influence on its inhabitants. Its interior is a mess of rusty trusses, exposed beams, crumbling floors and broken wires.
The renovation taking place this year is likely to destroy much of the building's original character. Its exterior balconies have already been removed, and Ponomaryov said the developer wanted to install an elevator in the middle of the ramp space, which would obliterate the vertical line of sight that makes it so unusual.
He stressed, however, that the point of the Pandus festival was not to protest the building's redevelopment.
"The decay is interesting because it's inevitable," Ponomaryov said. "What's fascinating is how conscious we are of what's going on. It's important for us that this is an arts festival, not some kind of architectural protest. We wanted to see the artists' reaction to the decay of buildings of the Constructivist era."
The Pandus festival runs Sat., Sun. and April 21 and 22 at Dom Kommuny, located at 8/9 Ulitsa Ordzhonikidze. Metro Leninsky Prospect. Visit www.pandus.info for a schedule of events.
News source: themoscowtimes.com
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| 12.04.2007 Ballet in bloom |
A neoclassical ballet set to rap, a soothing dose of classical hits and a reconstruction of an 18th century work originally presented by the Mariinsky Theater to Princess Ksenia Alexandrovna, the sister of Russia’s last tsar Nicholas II, on the occasion of her wedding, are in store for ballet fans at the Seventh International Mariinsky Ballet Festival, which opened Thursday and runs through April 22.
On the opening night, the company was due to premiere Sergei Vikharev’s reconstruction of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov’s one-act ballet “The Reawakening of Flora,” originally created for Mathilda Kshesinskaya and later adored by Anna Pavlova.
In addition to this newly-wrought classical piece, in which Flora, the goddess of flowers, falls in love with Zephyrus, the god of the West Wind, the festival will include two new ballets by the Mariinsky’s Alexei Miroshnichenko. The first is set to Leonid Desyatnikov’s piece for violin and piano “Like an Old Organ Grinder” and the second — working title “The Ring” — will be performed to rap music written specifically for the occasion by 2H Company, a St. Petersburg band that works on the boundary between experimental electronic music and hip-hop.
“The Reawakening of Flora” was first shown at the Mariinsky in 1894, when Princess Ksenia Alexandrovna married her cousin, the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, the youngest son of Nicholas I. Choreographer Sergei Vikharev, who is responsible for the reconstruction, compared the ballet’s exuberance to Faberge jewellery.
“This little piece is like an ornate Faberge egg,” he said. “The concentration of solo dancing for the role of Flora is enormous and there would be enough to stretch it into a two- or three-act work.”
Another premiere Thursday was “Like an Old Organ Grinder.”
“It is very difficult to discuss music and choreography because you really need to listen to one and see the other but I can tell you that the form of Desyatnikov’s piece naturally dictated the form of my ballet opus,” Miroshnichenko said. “There is a female solo and then a duet, followed by a nonstop 15-minute long male solo.”
“The two soloists go on stage simultaneously and dance to the same music, perform different moves, tell different stories and exude different emotions,” Desyatnikov said. “This piece was not intended for a ballet, and as a composer I was thrilled to see that the balletmaster was able to see various layers and levels in the score.”
Desyatnikov and Miroshnichenko have worked together before.
Miroshnichenko’s “Du cote chez Swan” set to Desyatnikov’s score, premiered during the 2006 festival. With literary as well as choreographic references, in the piece the balletmaster alludes to Marcel Proust’s “Swann’s Way” and Michel Fokine and Camille Saint-Saens’ “The Dying Swan.” Miroshnichenko said he was inspired by Desyatnikov’s unorthodox score.
“His music deliciously bridged these two worlds, and the challenge facing me as a choreographer was to visually connect the dying Swan experience with Proust’s twisted reality where time doesn’t exist, through Desyatnikov’s talented, sharp, witty music,” the balletmaster said. “So in my piece, just like in Proust’s prose, dreams blend with reality, real events mix with the imagined, and beginnings are confused with endings.”
“The Ring,” which premieres on Friday, features two powers challenging each other, and a referee. But there will be no kick-boxing, mud-wrestling or martial arts involved.
“The contradiction will be in the air, with the dancers’ neoclassical moves being in opposition with the rhythms of electronic rap soundtracks,” Miroshnichenko said. “‘The Ring’ is a rather conventional title and the word should not be taken literally.”
“The only limiting factor was the theater’s request not to use obscene language,” said Mikhail Fenichev, a 2H member responsible for music including rap vocals. “The rest is pretty much like what I have done before.”
The Mariinsky’s top-flight dancers will spend the next ten days performing alongside their foreign counterparts in what has become St. Petersburg’s premier annual classical ballet event.
Since it was established by maestro Valery Gergiev in 1999, the festival, now in its seventh year, has developed a formula: Petipa, Balanchine and cutting-edge modern choreography.
A brainchild of Gergiev, the festival aspires first and foremost “to agitate souls,” as Gergiev put it. It is designed as an outlet for Russian audiences to see Western stars, but also to show the best of the theater’s own talent.
The Mariinsky already has an annual festival — “The Stars of the White Nights,” which Gergiev established in 1993 — but the dance element has been gradually disappearing from its program, with operatic and symphonic programs dominating the summer fiesta.
Paris Opera dancers Agnes Letestu and Jose Martinez — both regulars at the festival since its early days — will not be able to attend the event this time because Letestu was recently injured.
But Maria Kowroski, Philip Neal and Damian Woetzel of the New York City Ballet will dance in a Balanchine evening that comprises “Serenade”, “Diamonds” (from “Jewels”) and “The Prodigal Son” on April 21.
Audience favorites Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg of London’s Royal Ballet (Covent Garden), who made their debut at the Mariinsky during 2003’s ballet festival in “Giselle,” are making a fourth visit to the St. Petersburg festival.
Cojocaru and Kobborg dance in Leonid Lavrovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” with the Mariinsky company on Saturday. The pair are renowned for their performance of Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet,” making their appearance in the Russian ballet that first saw the stage at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater in 1940 a special event.
Danish-born Kobborg, who started out in Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Ballet, joined London’s Royal Ballet in 1999 to become one of the company’s most outstanding soloists. Diversity of talent combined with depth of interpretation and technical virtuosity — the dancer embodies the style of Danish ballet icon August Bournonville — have earned Kobborg much critical recognition and wide international fame.
The variety of repertoire at Covent Garden is inspiring for the dancer, who especially appreciates the opportunity to perform MacMillan. It is not only the high degree of dramatic intensity that the dancer feels close to but also the chance to build a strong male character — often a tricky thing in the world of classical ballet. In life, women may fight for equality but typically they reign in classical ballet.
“In Russian ballets, and in many other ballets, it is normally the ballerina who takes the leading role, while male dancers tend to have a supporting character, being completely outshone by females,” Kobborg noted in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times in 2005. “But in many of MacMillan’s ballets, as well as in some of Bournonville’s men, they are much more equal as partners. In some works, the male character is even the main hero, and this is a huge challenge to dance these roles.”
Cojocaru, a 25-year-old principal dancer with a Thumbelina-like appearance, who often says she feels her life has much in common with the story of Cinderella, is one of the festival’s most eye-catching names.
Born in Bucharest, Romania to a family of market-stall holders, Cojocaru expressed an early interest in gymnastics, but quickly switched to dance. At the age of nine, she was invited to the Kiev Ballet School, where she studied for seven years. In 1997, Cojocaru’s career took its first quick turn, when the dancer, then 16, won the prestigious Prix de Lausanne, and subsequently took a six-month scholarship at Covent Garden. When the course finished, she had a drastic choice to make: stay with the Royal Ballet — in the corps de ballet — or return to the Kiev Opera and Ballet Theater as a principal dancer. The relative standards of living in Britain and Ukraine notwithstanding, Cojocaru returned to Kiev, where she danced an array of top roles — including Cinderella — in a single season.
By the end of the 1998-1999 season, she felt it was time for a change, and moved to London to join Covent Garden’s corps de ballet. The speed of Cojocaru’s rise to the top in London — she made a dazzling transition from corps-de-ballet member to first soloist in just one season — shocked even her.
She is now famous for her lead roles in MacMillan’s “Manon” and Marius Petipa classics such as “Giselle.”
The Seventh International Mariinsky Ballet Festival runs through April 22. www.mariinsky.ru
News source: spbtimes.ru
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| 07.04.2007 A Buffet for Art Collectors |
The Tretyakov Gallery unveils a new, restaurant-like exhibition hall with an exhibition of works by the avant-garde painter Olga Rozanova.
Last week, the Tretyakov Gallery opened a new space behind its main campus with "To See the World Transformed," an exhibition of works by Olga Rozanova, a key figure of the early 20th-century avant-garde. Most of the works on display were lent by collector Konstantin Grigorishin, who in 2003 purchased Rozanova's archive and returned it to Russia from Germany. Speaking at the opening, Tretyakov director Valentin Rodionov said, "[Kasimir] Malevich and [Alexander] Rodchenko had a very high opinion of Rozanova's work, and so it is fitting that an exhibition of this artist's works opens the activity of our new V Tolmachakh exhibition hall."
Everyone knows that during the Soviet era the Tretyakov was held back from developing expertise in exhibiting Rozanova, not to mention the other artists whom Rodionov invoked to lend weight to his pronouncement. But even now, apparently, the museum has little interest in making up for lost time. For "To See the World Transformed," the museum abdicated its responsibility to the art and the artist, giving the private foundation Stariye Gody free rein in setting up the exhibition.
Stariye Gody financed the reconstruction of V Tolmachakh, which was a ruined 19th-century shed when the museum received it as a gift from the city government two years ago, so the Tretyakov has reason to cooperate with the foundation on the shows to be presented inside. But the results of their first collaboration in the new space -- art strung up on mobile metal racks as though taken straight out of storage, wall texts visibly stapled to cardboard, a confusing intermingling of drawings and oil paintings -- suggest that the Tretyakov should seek out other partners.
In an interview at his office on Tuesday, Stariye Gody director Viktor Shpengler said he had a longstanding relationship with the museum. "I have been a sponsor of the Tretyakov for many years," he said. "I have a gold card that gives me entrance to all exhibitions, events and banquets related to the Tretyakov."
Stariye Gody does not control the exhibition program for V Tolmachakh, Shpengler said, adding that the foundation would cooperate with the Tretyakov one show at a time. "Anyone can propose an exhibition to the Tretyakov," Shpengler said. "But the museum is more likely to trust us than some other person."
As visitors can see in "To See the World Transformed," exhibitions at V Tolmachakh are a challenge to design because of the imposing gray brick walls that chop up the interior. "When we started reconstructing the building, the shed was listed as an architectural landmark, and we couldn't knock it down," Shpengler said. "Last year it was somehow taken off the list, but by that time the walls were already inside."
One wall separates the building into two galleries. In the second room, another wall with arches encloses a space that Shpengler referred to as the "buffet zone," an area to be used for receptions. It is decorated with contemporary black-and-white photographs and wisps of gold taffeta wrapped around the light fixtures, which can be distracting for viewers as they peruse the delicate sketches from Rozanova's archive. The prominence of the "buffet zone" seems to indicate that V Tolmachakh has been earmarked as a venue for vanity shows, a place to celebrate collectors and their property rather than a convenient space for viewing art during the museum's working hours.
This makes V Tolmachakh a more brazen counterpart of the Museum of Private Collections, run by the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the Tretyakov's cross-town rival. Last year, the Museum of Private Collections moved to a new building -- like V Tolmachakh, a combination of glass atriums and glossy neo-classicism in the worst traditions of Moscow postmodernist architecture. Now the Tretyakov is better positioned to compete with the Pushkin for the money of private collectors, who support museums and their employees when they finance catalogs and exhibitions of the works they own.
For instance, last year Grigorishin displayed his collection of drawings by Vasily Chekrygin (like Rozanova, a promising avant-garde artist who died tragically young) at the Pushkin Museum. Now, Grigorishin -- who Shpengler said is a client of his antique store and art consultancy business, also named Stariye Gody -- chose V Tolmachakh to show his Rozanovas.
At last week's news conference, Tretyakov deputy director Lidia Iovleva said collaboration with private foundations was a matter of survival for the museum, since it only received federal funding for three temporary exhibitions in 2007.
In theory, there's nothing wrong with partnerships between public museums and private foundations. The last time Rozanova's work was featured at the Tretyakov, in the 2001 exhibition "Amazons of the Avant-Garde," the organizer -- the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation -- did an excellent job. But if Stariye Gody equates restaurant design with exhibition design and buffets with art, perhaps the Tretyakov should start wooing more discerning organizations.
"Olga Rozanova: To See the World Transformed" (Olga Rozanova: Uvidet Mir Preobrazhyonnym) runs to May 21 at the Tretyakov Gallery V Tolmachakh, located at 6 Maly Tolmachyovsky Pereulok. Metro Tretyakovskaya. Tel. 230-7788, 951-1362, 238-1378.
News source: themoscowtimes.com
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| 29.03.2007 Rostropovich at 80 |
President Vladimir Putin threw a star-studded Kremlin reception on Tuesday evening to celebrate cellist Mstislav Rostropovich’s 80th birthday.
Among the guests were Monaco’s Prince Albert II and princesses from Spain, Greece, Jordan and Denmark, Interfax reported. Also in attendance were Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and a number of Russian ministers and governors.
Rostropovich was born in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, which was then a Soviet republic. He and his wife started a foundation that conducts charitable activities in Azerbaijan including vaccinating children.
Speculation has risen that Rostropovich is seriously ill since his unexplained stay in hospital. On Monday, he also skipped a concert in central Moscow that he was supposed to lead.
After posing for the cameras, he stood up and delivered a speech in a tired and at times slightly slurred voice.
“Colleagues and friends I’m the happiest man,” he said. “My family, friends and colleagues are here with me on this day.”
Rostropovich, exiled for over a decade by the communist Soviet government, then thanked Putin for arranging the dinner, wished guests a pleasant evening and sat down looking relieved. The speech had lasted barely 20 seconds.
“Dear Slava,” Putin said. “From the very bottom of our heart we wish you a happy birthday. We do not only love, know and remember your anniversary but we will also do everything to be worthy of it.” He then walked round to Rostropovich and slung a red sash over his shoulder — an order of services to the motherland.
Earlier Tuesday, Putin praised both Rostropovich’s musical accomplishments and his human rights activism.
“In all your life and creative work you have many times shown the truth that art and morality together supplement each other and constitute a single goal. In all of the world you are known not only as a brilliant cellist and gifted conductor but as a confirmed defender of human rights and freedom of spirit and an uncompromising fighter for the ideals of democracy,” Putin said in a statement.
One of the giants of classical music, Rostropovich went into exile from the Soviet Union with his family in 1974 after housing dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn for four years. He and his wife Galina Vishnyevskaya eventually lost their Soviet citizenship.
The government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Tuesday published an article by Solzhenitsyn’s wife Natalya that included what she said was the first publication of a letter her husband wrote in May 1973 when they moved out of Rostropovich’s house.
“Once more I repeat to you and Galya my delight at your steadfastness, with which you endured all the oppression connected with me and did not allow me to feel. Once again I am grateful for the years of shelter with you, where I survived a time that was very stormy for me, but thanks to the exceptional circumstances I all the same wrote without interruption,” the letter says in part.
Three years after his exile, Rostropovich became music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington.
He held that position until 1994 and retains the title conductor laureate.
Rostropovich developed close relationships with three of the 20th century’s leading composers — Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten and Dmitry Shostakovich, his teacher. He commissioned dozens of works for cello from them and others.
His students included such greats as Jacqueline du Pre, Mischa Maisky, Natalia Gutman, David Geringas, Han-Na Chang and David Finckel.
“He’s the most inspiring musician that I have ever known,” said Finckel, the Emerson String Quartet’s cellist and co-artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. “Inspiring for audiences who were nonmusicians to sense that something wonderful was happening in music and to get them to return to it; inspiring for composers who heard such a compelling voice in his sound and his approach that they dreamed of having their music played by him; and inspiring for instrumentalists, especially cellists. … He was never the kind of mentor to me or others that made you feel hopeless.”
(AP, Reuters)
News source: spbtimes.ru
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