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At 31, Russian ballerina Diana Vishneva has already lived several artistic lives. After graduating from St. Petersburg's Vaganova Ballet Academy in 1995, she joined the Kirov Ballet and was almost immediately acclaimed as a new star. Since then she has triumphed all over the world, as a dancer with the Kirov Ballet, and as a guest with many companies, including Milan's La Scala Ballet, Berlin's Staatsballett, the Paris Opera Ballet, and Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet. She first danced with American Ballet Theatre in 2003, and since 2005 she has been appearing annually with the company during its spring seasons at the Metropolitan Opera. She enjoys a freedom granted to no more than a handful of ballet or opera performers on the Kirov roster.

Next week, Ms. Vishneva begins an entirely new venture when she stars at City Center in "Beauty in Motion," a program of three commissioned ballets.

Ms. Vishneva is a driven and demanding perfectionist, and, like all dancers, she is acutely aware of the race against time. "Beauty in Motion" comes in the middle of an extraordinarily crowded season for the artist. Last fall, she spent more time dancing with the Kirov at the Mariinsky Theatre, its grand old home in St. Petersburg, than she had in some time. In November, she starred in a new production of "Giselle," by Nikita Dolgushin, at the newly refurbished Mikhailovsky (formerly Maly) Theater, across town from the Mariinsky. Three weeks ago, she opened the Kirov's week-long season in Washington, D.C., dancing Nikiya in "La Bayadère." As far as New York is concerned, "Beauty in Motion" finds her almost competing with herself; she returns to City Center with the Kirov for its three-week season in April, before dancing three performances with ABT at the Met.

If "Beauty in Motion" marks Ms. Vishneva's first outing as virtual artistic director, it also descends from the Kirov tradition of the "Creative Evening," which during the Soviet era allowed major Kirov dancers rare opportunities to dance new choreography, works chosen or specially commissioned for the evening.

Over the past decade, I've followed Ms. Vishneva's career closely, and I was in St. Petersburg last fall when she starred in what was perhaps her own answer to the Creative Evenings: an elaborate gala performance entitled "Silenzio. Diana Vishneva." According to Igor Stupnikov, writing in Britain's Dancing Times magazine, the gala was Ms. Vishneva's "brainchild" and "was shaped by her initiative," and it was she who selected Russian theater director Andre Moguchy to direct the evening.

"Silenzio" began with Ms. Vishneva entering the stage dressed in a gingham shmatta. The stage was piled high with boxes; she might have been Pippi Longstocking working in the stockroom at Macy's. Then, over the course of the next 80 minutes, she performed snippets from virtually her entire repertory, unspooling in a postmodern scrimmage.

"Silenzio" was hyped throughout the Kirov community as if it were an epochal act of creativity. The stage floor moved, fiber-optic projections were superimposed, and a flashlight-wielding horde of homeboys stomped on to disrupt classical propriety. Coming from the West, I found "Silencio" naïvely cluttered with putative technological and conceptual wonders that were only too familiar. Ms. Vishneva danced as well as ever; her performance was a remarkable display of stamina and versatility. But the decision — whether it was Ms. Vishneva's or the Mariinsky's — to schedule "Silencio" on Vladimir Putin's 55th birthday seemed overly propitiatory. I left the Mariinsky that night wondering whether the disconnect in aesthetic and taste could ever be bridged.

But in "Beauty in Motion," she seems to be trying to close that gap. She's commissioned one Russian choreographer, Alexei Ratmansky, and two Americans, Moses Pendleton and Dwight Rhoden. Currently the Bolshoi's artistic director, Mr. Ratmansky has also choreographed one ballet for New York City Ballet and this spring will make another; he is also in talks to become the company's resident choreographer. At the Kirov, Ms. Vishneva has danced his "Cinderella." For "Beauty in Motion," he has made a quartet to Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire," that Ms. Vishneva will perform with three Kirov colleagues.

Mr. Pendleton was one of the founders of Pilobolus and is the current director of Momix, which performed in St. Petersburg last year. His piece is a solo for Ms. Vishneva entitled "F.L.O.W. (For the Love of Women)." Mr. Rhoden's piece is a sextet, "Three Point Turn," that also features Desmond Richardson, with whom he directs Complexions Contemporary Ballet. Both men are alumni of the Alvin Ailey troupe, which has been a great favorite in Russia since its first tour there almost 40 years ago.

"Beauty in Motion" will be performed to live music, something of a luxury in these days of cost- and corner-cutting in dance. However these works turn out, "Beauty in Motion" is a courageous exercise in self-actualization by a ballerina who is always hungry to do more.

Цитата:

NEW YORK -- DIANA VISHNEVA would seem to have it all. A principal with the venerable Kirov Ballet since 1996, the Russian dancer blessed with an uncommonly supple body, superb technique and a vivid dramatic presence appears routinely on the world's prestige stages. She's won praise not only in such classics as "Giselle" and "Swan Lake" but also in George Balanchine's neoclassical masterpiece "Jewels."

But at the relatively young age of 31, this St. Petersburg-born ballerina wants more. Now she is venturing into the uncharted waters of choreography custom-made for her.

Vishneva -- dubbed "Beauty in Motion" by Vogue -- will return to the Orange County Performing Artscenter from Wednesday through Sunday in a program with that same label featuring new works by three choreographers she cherry-picked. The engagement, to be followed by others in New York and Moscow, is being co-produced by OCPAC and impresario Sergei Danilian, whose "Kings of the Dance," a show built around four top-flight male ballet stars, originated at OCPAC two years ago.

Vishneva's choreographers, an exciting mix, are tops in their field as well. Alexei Ratmansky, who announced only last week that he was retiring as artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, created a Kirov "Cinderella" for her in 2002. But the other two -- Moses Pendleton, founder of the quirky modern dance troupe Momix, and Dwight Rhoden, co-director of Complexions Contemporary Ballet -- were virtual strangers to her, which is precisely what Vishneva relishes.

"Of course, it's a challenge," she said through an interpreter during a recent rehearsal break in Manhattan, where along with guest artist Desmond Richardson she was learning the intricate footwork of Rhoden's "Three Point Turn."

Biting delicately into a chocolate bar, she said, "Dance is always a challenge, but I never think about it that way. Naturally, I love the classical repertory, but I am always looking for something else too. I have a gift with these choreographers, and once we know where we're going, we do what we do and hopefully the audience will come to it and enjoy."

That straightforwardness has long characterized Vishneva. After being refused admission at age 9 to the renowned Vaganova Academy in her hometown, she doggedly studied elsewhere before winning a place there two years later. Then, at 15, she snagged the gold medal at the Prix de Lausanne, the international ballet competition held in Switzerland, and her career has been in orbit since.

In "Beauty in Motion," though, she won't always be wearing pointe shoes, and she'll be cavorting on and with such whimsical accessories as a 16-by-14-foot raked mirror and a heavily beaded skirt and Vegas-worthy headdress, the latter in Pendleton's three-part "F.L.O.W."

The work, says the choreographer, was created only after Vishneva had spent two weeks at his Connecticut studio. Plunging into the gymnastic Momix vocabulary, she took classes with the company and allowed herself to try on different personas.

"The main thing is Diana doesn't really need to do this," says Pendleton. "But she is a different breed that sees challenges and will move in other directions just to experiment. What I love about Diana is she understands the metamorphic mind -- the transformation and connection -- the fantasy that her body is a bridge to."

As it turned out, building that bridge took a bit of doing. "Moses' world is something completely different than what we have in Russia, it's not the same as the classical dance," Vishneva said. "For me, he is not making a ballet but a fantasy -- a dream -- something that was like childhood. There is even a section with black light."

Although her collaboration with Ratmansky includes neither props nor special effects, in his case it was the choice of music, Arnold Schoenberg's atonal "Pierrot Lunaire," that at first proved alien to her.

Indeed, she confessed to being initially afraid of the score, which felt so different from the Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev she was used to dancing to. "As a choreographer, Alexei's mentality is more Western than Russian," she said. "But he has such a good musicality, it was inspiring."

Ratmansky, for his part, says he always envisioned Vishneva as Schoenberg's "moonstruck" Pierrot, who in his choreography appears with three male dancers from the Kirov.

"It's a nice change for her, rhythmically and in the sense of mood," says Ratmansky, who first saw Vishneva perform when she was a teenager. "It's complicated, but because she's a fantastic dancer, she is capable of getting many different styles right."

He also believes she has matured as an actress. "Diana's not only Pierrot," says the choreographer. "She's also Columbine. It's a bit more abstract, and she gets to show a range of moods and nuances."

As for "Three Point Turn," set to a newly commissioned score by David Rozenblatt, it features a sextet in which two pairs of Kirov dancers are led by Vishneva and Richardson.

Although the two had crossed paths on the gala circuit, they had never danced together, and theirs is easily the most striking partnership in "Beauty in Motion." (Former Alvin Ailey star Richardson is also co-founder with Rhoden of Complexions, which will come to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in April.)

'Something that stretches'

AT the rehearsal, his and Vishneva's unmistakable chemistry belied the fact this was their first joint outing. Under Rhoden's meticulous direction, she fell backward repeatedly into Richardson's arms, until the move looked almost Chaplinesque. Then, after falling forward, she slid down his leg before the two unwound like corkscrews, until at last her head rested in the palm of his hand.

"You have to explode apart," Rhoden asserted. "Let your bodies squirm -- just feel each other."

And so it went, with sensual entanglements suggesting the interaction of longtime lovers. Although this pas de deux is the centerpiece of "Three Point Turn," the percussive score helps propel what Rhoden calls "a dialogue between man and woman."

"I wanted to create something to honor their gifts," he explained, "and at the same time deliver something that stretches them. As for Diana, she's bringing something from 'Giselle' to me."

Richardson, who will be familiar to some local dance-goers from his 2006 turn as a non-singing Beowulf in Los Angeles Opera's "Grendel," said he and Vishneva were having a ball.

"Diana fits right in," he said. "We don't have to say many words -- there's a commonality and a kinship."

That feeling, said Vishneva, was mutual: "Dancing with Desmond is like a partner for life. He's a gorgeous dancer."

Vishneva hasn't forsaken tutus and tiaras. Her packed schedule includes upcoming engagements with the Kirov, American Ballet Theatre and La Scala Ballet. But it's apparent that she's on another kind of journey as well, something Ratmansky understands. "As a performer, Diana is constantly changing, she's moving forward," he says. "She's searching for perfection. And she's honest as an artist, because life is changing every day."

Given how little time she has to herself, it should be no surprise that Vishneva said she currently has no significant other and instead chooses to swim and enjoy the outdoors whenever possible. This, though, is clearly her moment, one she is eager to seize.

"When you work with living choreographers, it's difficult," she repeated after the rehearsal, having changed into boots, a flared wool skirt and a pearl-buttoned cardigan. "But I'm always bringing something from myself, whatever I dance. Without the risk, there can be no rewards."

Цитата:

(Photo: Armen Danilian)

Great dancers are attuned to a strange fact: Dance doesn’t distinguish artist from art object, the dancer from the dance. Working to pry the two apart, dancers often end up proffering metaphors of escape—from circumstance, station, self-delusion.

The young Rudolf Nureyev, to use an extreme example, seemed to be trying to overtake his own steps. You couldn’t tell whether he was a demon or shaking one off, but the possession was impressive. Diana Vishneva, 31, is also a mesmerizing beauty from the illustrious Kirov Ballet, a master of channeling feeling through a classical vessel’s restraint, and so peripatetic a performer that her repertory has become her only real home. She plays both character and creator at once. She digs into her role and lifts herself out of the story to reveal, godlike, its scope.

If our culture ever developed a hunger for honest transcendence, Vishneva would become a real celebrity, with hordes of sensitive young women throwing practice tutus over their street clothes. In the meantime, next week brings “Diana Vishneva: Beauty in Motion” to City Center—a program of works made for her (including a major piece by the much-admired Bolshoi director Alexei Ratmansky, who, as of last week at least, looked poised to replace Christopher Wheeldon as City Ballet’s resident choreographer). In April, the Kirov moves in. And beginning in May, Vishneva dances as usual with American Ballet Theatre.

Her take on Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet at ABT the past two years gives some idea of how she weds pathos to insight. In the scene where Juliet downs the sleeping potion that will lend her the “likeness of shrunk death,” Vishneva doesn’t just depict Juliet’s fear of death, she previews her dying. Gulping the ghoulish drink, she sinks to her knees and staggers up, again and again: a glimpse of Juliet’s terrible future that intensifies our suffering when it finally arrives. Vishneva does that Shakespearean thing of taking a modest theme (in Macbeth, ambition; in Hamlet, indecision) and letting it roll. On her knees, she echoes an earlier moment, when Juliet prays at the bedroom altar. The second, unstrung prayer confirms what the first merely hints at: Juliet is desperate, and she’s doomed. As the potion overwhelms her, she crawls splay-kneed like a baby onto the bed. She’s burrowing back to before she was a Capulet, when she and Romeo had a chance.

Vishneva believes in story ballets. “They last because they are so rich,” she says. She even believes in the stories: Betrayed heroines predominate because “in real life, women are always betrayed.” But she doesn’t need a story to illuminate a dance.

Last month, she learned an intricate duet with Desmond Richardson for Dwight Rhoden’s plotless ballet in “Beauty in Motion.” The piece is about two people who never quite connect, I was told. But this section, at least, was such a micromanaged, push-pull affair that it wasn’t clear how regret or loss would enter in. Then Vishneva started playing with timing. She stretched out the transitions between the exquisite tangles with Richardson until she was falling from one position to the next. And there it was—longing.

Цитата:

There is much to love about Kirov prima ballerina Diana Vishneva, the 21st-century dancer par excellence.

She is that rare jewel. Lean, beautiful, athletic, lyrical, theatrical and spontaneous – a nearly unmatched package achieved through god-given physical talent, artistic insight, and plain determination.

Unlike some stars (Frenchwoman Sylvie Guillem springs to mind), who turn on the auto-pilot mid-performance, Vishneva is utterly generous onstage. She is simultaneously vulnerable and triumphant each time out; each performance is unique.

Given all of that, it was disappointing how little there was to love about Wednesday's premiere of "Diana Vishneva: Beauty in Motion," the vanity project packaged by producer Sergei Danilian and co-produced with the Orange County Performing Artscenter in association with the Mariinsky Theatre.

Our lovely star was before us for almost the entire three-act show, and yet we barely got to know her. Specially commissioned dances by the Bolshoi Ballet's Alexei Ratmansky, Momix founder Moses Pendleton and Dwight Rhoden of Complexions cast her as an ensemble player or literally covered her up in fabric and props.

Only modern dance choreographer Pendleton – who initially seemed an odd choice to collaborate with this quintessential classicist – at least partially gave us an enhanced Vishneva, the ballerina we know, but made larger-than-life.

Ratmansky had cast Vishneva as the leading lady in his 2002 "Cinderella" for the Kirov, but this prior experience gave him no advantage here, with "Pierrot Lunaire." Perhaps he swallowed too much with his musical choice and subject matter – Arnold Schoenberg's 1912 "Pierrot Lunaire," and the Italian commedia dell'arte characters, which continue to entice choreographers, and bedevil them, too, it must be said.

Vishneva, along with Kirov Ballet principal Igor Kolb and soloists Mikhail Lobukhin and Alexander Sergeev, took turns as the hapless Pierrot, illustrating aspects of Albert Giraud's 21 poems, which form the basis of the song cycle. The musical ensemble and Kirov Opera mezzo-soprano Elena Sommer, led by Kirov conductor Mikhail Tatarnikov, were hampered by echoing amplification and low volume at first. But even as the sound improved, the dances themselves never rose to the poetic.

Sometimes, Ratmansky illustrated the German text literally, as in "The Dandy" section with two men preening, or when Vishneva became a sorrowful Madonna. What appeared to be abstract sections were more satisfying simply for the clever assemblage of steps. Here, Vishneva was let loose, such as during a too-brief solo of whirring turns and piqués.

But for those who don't speak German or hadn't memorized the poems, the ballet became a pile of movement phrases, exploding at double-time. It whizzed past on a single note, without emphasis or nuance.

Pendleton's "F.L.O.W., For the Love of Women" began like many a Momix piece, in black light with a disembodied white arm dancing to recorded songs. Two more white arms appeared (belonging to Maria Shevyakova and Ekaterina Ivannikova), and then legs. The appendages together formed faces, swans and so on.

In part two, Vishneva, in nude-colored leotard, lounged and stretched on a giant mirrored wedge (props by Michael Curry). Her spectacularly sensuous double image became a metaphor for desire; there was also, though, something freakish in this display. In the final section, the ballerina whirled, like a contemporary Loie Fuller, in a curtain of beads, which stood out horizontally as she spun.

We looked forward to Rhoden's "Three Point Turn" for its first-time match-up of Vishneva with Desmond Richardson, a modern dancer as incomparable and hard-working as Vishneva. Their duets – in a brusque, pumping movement vocabulary – well-captured the gut-twisting moments of a relationship on the rocks.

The other two Kirov couples were there, too, but their efforts faded into the background.

Rhoden's precipitous, gymnastic style of gesturing, kicking and frantic running was well-matched to composer David Rosenblatt propulsive score. But the breathlessness left this viewer empty and unable to truly see what took place. It did not serve Vishneva well, either, even though she is a strong allegro dancer. She was pulling down on Isabel Rubio's skimpy leotards – another bad fit.

It's hard to know who the master is with a project such as "Beauty in Motion." Should it be the artist, who wants to stretch, or the audience, who wants to see the artist they know? There might be a satisfactory middle ground, but this show didn't find it.

Цитата:

In performances on local stages by the Kirov Ballet, this 31-year-old Russian ballerina has often displayed her technical brilliance and interpretive daring in time-honored works from the imperial Russian and American neoclassical repertories. But Wednesday, she danced the premieres of three pieces that were created for her in a program titled "Beauty in Motion" (a label conferred on her by Vogue magazine) at the Orange County Performing Artscenter.

Ultimately it matters less that Vishneva and her seven guest dancers (all but one from the Kirov) rack up one triumph, one disaster and one qualified success than that she's staking her stardom on moving ballet and her own artistry into the future. She may be supreme in a tutu, but there's more than one way to dance a swan, as she definitively proves in Moses Pendleton's typically playful and dreamlike "F.L.O.W. (For Love of Women)."

A founder of the hyper-gymnastic Pilobolus Dance Theater and his own Momix company, Pendleton uses recordings by erO One, Lisa Gerrard and Deva Premal to accompany three kinds of movement theater.

Part 1 is a black light spectacle in which disembodied limbs form whimsical shapes -- including that swan. Part 2 finds Vishneva reclining on a mirrored platform, her constant shifts of position creating strange, seductive illusions. Part 3 places her in a silver gown and a large, circular headdress with strings of beads cascading nearly to the floor -- and as she whirls, the beads become a gleaming, ever-changing aura reflecting and magnifying her energy.

These are the only moments on the program qualifying as beauty in motion, for the other choreographers focus on more complex, nervy agendas. Pendleton alone has the gift of being simple and of being theatrical in a way that has nothing to do with bravura. He may not use Vishneva's classical prowess, but he enlists her imagination -- and the audience's. What's wrong with that?

"F.L.O.W." ideally belongs in a much smaller theater, as does Alexei Ratmansky's hopelessly confusing "Pierrot Lunaire," a setting of Arnold Schoenberg's groundbreaking song cycle in which Vishneva and three males initially appear identically dressed but keep changing roles and hats, reflecting the content of the text.

Partly because that text is in German and there are no translations or supertitles, the choreography never fuses with the music. It also never develops a life of its own. Forces led by mezzo Elena Sommer present the score diligently but can make no case for it against the restless stage action.

Currently artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, Ratmansky gives everyone floppy, antic clown moves derived from antique commedia dell'arte traditions, but he switches gears whenever he needs a shot of virtuosity. Then, suddenly, the dancers straighten up and execute the steps as if this were the Costa Mesa International Ballet Competition.

It's nice to see Igor Kolb's pristine pirouettes, but shouldn't Ratmansky ask him to dance in character? The 1962 "Pierrot Lunaire" by the late Glen Tetley that Rudolf Nureyev performed for many years was much more astute in its use of this music and also more unified choreographically.

Happily, Dwight Rhoden, co-founder and co-director of the Complexions company, sustains unity of style throughout "Three Point Turn," his turbulent, exciting sextet for Vishneva, Complexions guest Desmond Richardson and dancers previously used in the Pendleton and Ratmansky pieces.

Danced to live percussion by David Rozenblatt and Benny Koonyevsky, the piece initially seems a formula vehicle for three color-coded couples. But soon, very soon, Rhoden shatters the formula and all those comforting, hackneyed choreographic symmetries that Ratmansky relies on for something rawer and more genuinely contemporary. "Three Point Turn" is relentlessly overdriven, but at least it's going somewhere.

Whereas her artistry is often obliterated by Ratmansky, Vishneva glories in the unorthodox and often punishing Rhoden duets with the casually magnificent Richardson. And the fine supporting cast -- Mikhail Lobukhin with Ekaterina Ivannikova in blue, Alexander Sergeev with Maria Shevyakova in green -- helps make all the changing romantic entanglements forceful and satisfying.

Автор:	Octavia [ 13 фев 2008, 22:05 ]
Заголовок сообщения:	Diana Vishneva
Diana Vishneva's Next Stage Dance By JOEL LOBENTHAL February 11, 2008 Цитата: At 31, Russian ballerina Diana Vishneva has already lived several artistic lives. After graduating from St. Petersburg's Vaganova Ballet Academy in 1995, she joined the Kirov Ballet and was almost immediately acclaimed as a new star. Since then she has triumphed all over the world, as a dancer with the Kirov Ballet, and as a guest with many companies, including Milan's La Scala Ballet, Berlin's Staatsballett, the Paris Opera Ballet, and Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet. She first danced with American Ballet Theatre in 2003, and since 2005 she has been appearing annually with the company during its spring seasons at the Metropolitan Opera. She enjoys a freedom granted to no more than a handful of ballet or opera performers on the Kirov roster. Next week, Ms. Vishneva begins an entirely new venture when she stars at City Center in "Beauty in Motion," a program of three commissioned ballets. Ms. Vishneva is a driven and demanding perfectionist, and, like all dancers, she is acutely aware of the race against time. "Beauty in Motion" comes in the middle of an extraordinarily crowded season for the artist. Last fall, she spent more time dancing with the Kirov at the Mariinsky Theatre, its grand old home in St. Petersburg, than she had in some time. In November, she starred in a new production of "Giselle," by Nikita Dolgushin, at the newly refurbished Mikhailovsky (formerly Maly) Theater, across town from the Mariinsky. Three weeks ago, she opened the Kirov's week-long season in Washington, D.C., dancing Nikiya in "La Bayadère." As far as New York is concerned, "Beauty in Motion" finds her almost competing with herself; she returns to City Center with the Kirov for its three-week season in April, before dancing three performances with ABT at the Met. If "Beauty in Motion" marks Ms. Vishneva's first outing as virtual artistic director, it also descends from the Kirov tradition of the "Creative Evening," which during the Soviet era allowed major Kirov dancers rare opportunities to dance new choreography, works chosen or specially commissioned for the evening. Over the past decade, I've followed Ms. Vishneva's career closely, and I was in St. Petersburg last fall when she starred in what was perhaps her own answer to the Creative Evenings: an elaborate gala performance entitled "Silenzio. Diana Vishneva." According to Igor Stupnikov, writing in Britain's Dancing Times magazine, the gala was Ms. Vishneva's "brainchild" and "was shaped by her initiative," and it was she who selected Russian theater director Andre Moguchy to direct the evening. "Silenzio" began with Ms. Vishneva entering the stage dressed in a gingham shmatta. The stage was piled high with boxes; she might have been Pippi Longstocking working in the stockroom at Macy's. Then, over the course of the next 80 minutes, she performed snippets from virtually her entire repertory, unspooling in a postmodern scrimmage. "Silenzio" was hyped throughout the Kirov community as if it were an epochal act of creativity. The stage floor moved, fiber-optic projections were superimposed, and a flashlight-wielding horde of homeboys stomped on to disrupt classical propriety. Coming from the West, I found "Silencio" naïvely cluttered with putative technological and conceptual wonders that were only too familiar. Ms. Vishneva danced as well as ever; her performance was a remarkable display of stamina and versatility. But the decision — whether it was Ms. Vishneva's or the Mariinsky's — to schedule "Silencio" on Vladimir Putin's 55th birthday seemed overly propitiatory. I left the Mariinsky that night wondering whether the disconnect in aesthetic and taste could ever be bridged. But in "Beauty in Motion," she seems to be trying to close that gap. She's commissioned one Russian choreographer, Alexei Ratmansky, and two Americans, Moses Pendleton and Dwight Rhoden. Currently the Bolshoi's artistic director, Mr. Ratmansky has also choreographed one ballet for New York City Ballet and this spring will make another; he is also in talks to become the company's resident choreographer. At the Kirov, Ms. Vishneva has danced his "Cinderella." For "Beauty in Motion," he has made a quartet to Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire," that Ms. Vishneva will perform with three Kirov colleagues. Mr. Pendleton was one of the founders of Pilobolus and is the current director of Momix, which performed in St. Petersburg last year. His piece is a solo for Ms. Vishneva entitled "F.L.O.W. (For the Love of Women)." Mr. Rhoden's piece is a sextet, "Three Point Turn," that also features Desmond Richardson, with whom he directs Complexions Contemporary Ballet. Both men are alumni of the Alvin Ailey troupe, which has been a great favorite in Russia since its first tour there almost 40 years ago. "Beauty in Motion" will be performed to live music, something of a luxury in these days of cost- and corner-cutting in dance. However these works turn out, "Beauty in Motion" is a courageous exercise in self-actualization by a ballerina who is always hungry to do more.

Автор:	Octavia [ 13 фев 2008, 22:09 ]
Заголовок сообщения:
Diana Vishneva stretches limits The ballerina relishes the challenges in three contrasting works made for her. She'll perform them at Orange County Performing Arts center. By Victoria Looseleaf, Special to The Times February 10, 2008 Цитата: NEW YORK -- DIANA VISHNEVA would seem to have it all. A principal with the venerable Kirov Ballet since 1996, the Russian dancer blessed with an uncommonly supple body, superb technique and a vivid dramatic presence appears routinely on the world's prestige stages. She's won praise not only in such classics as "Giselle" and "Swan Lake" but also in George Balanchine's neoclassical masterpiece "Jewels." But at the relatively young age of 31, this St. Petersburg-born ballerina wants more. Now she is venturing into the uncharted waters of choreography custom-made for her. Vishneva -- dubbed "Beauty in Motion" by Vogue -- will return to the Orange County Performing Artscenter from Wednesday through Sunday in a program with that same label featuring new works by three choreographers she cherry-picked. The engagement, to be followed by others in New York and Moscow, is being co-produced by OCPAC and impresario Sergei Danilian, whose "Kings of the Dance," a show built around four top-flight male ballet stars, originated at OCPAC two years ago. Vishneva's choreographers, an exciting mix, are tops in their field as well. Alexei Ratmansky, who announced only last week that he was retiring as artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, created a Kirov "Cinderella" for her in 2002. But the other two -- Moses Pendleton, founder of the quirky modern dance troupe Momix, and Dwight Rhoden, co-director of Complexions Contemporary Ballet -- were virtual strangers to her, which is precisely what Vishneva relishes. "Of course, it's a challenge," she said through an interpreter during a recent rehearsal break in Manhattan, where along with guest artist Desmond Richardson she was learning the intricate footwork of Rhoden's "Three Point Turn." Biting delicately into a chocolate bar, she said, "Dance is always a challenge, but I never think about it that way. Naturally, I love the classical repertory, but I am always looking for something else too. I have a gift with these choreographers, and once we know where we're going, we do what we do and hopefully the audience will come to it and enjoy." That straightforwardness has long characterized Vishneva. After being refused admission at age 9 to the renowned Vaganova Academy in her hometown, she doggedly studied elsewhere before winning a place there two years later. Then, at 15, she snagged the gold medal at the Prix de Lausanne, the international ballet competition held in Switzerland, and her career has been in orbit since. In "Beauty in Motion," though, she won't always be wearing pointe shoes, and she'll be cavorting on and with such whimsical accessories as a 16-by-14-foot raked mirror and a heavily beaded skirt and Vegas-worthy headdress, the latter in Pendleton's three-part "F.L.O.W." The work, says the choreographer, was created only after Vishneva had spent two weeks at his Connecticut studio. Plunging into the gymnastic Momix vocabulary, she took classes with the company and allowed herself to try on different personas. "The main thing is Diana doesn't really need to do this," says Pendleton. "But she is a different breed that sees challenges and will move in other directions just to experiment. What I love about Diana is she understands the metamorphic mind -- the transformation and connection -- the fantasy that her body is a bridge to." As it turned out, building that bridge took a bit of doing. "Moses' world is something completely different than what we have in Russia, it's not the same as the classical dance," Vishneva said. "For me, he is not making a ballet but a fantasy -- a dream -- something that was like childhood. There is even a section with black light." Although her collaboration with Ratmansky includes neither props nor special effects, in his case it was the choice of music, Arnold Schoenberg's atonal "Pierrot Lunaire," that at first proved alien to her. Indeed, she confessed to being initially afraid of the score, which felt so different from the Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev she was used to dancing to. "As a choreographer, Alexei's mentality is more Western than Russian," she said. "But he has such a good musicality, it was inspiring." Ratmansky, for his part, says he always envisioned Vishneva as Schoenberg's "moonstruck" Pierrot, who in his choreography appears with three male dancers from the Kirov. "It's a nice change for her, rhythmically and in the sense of mood," says Ratmansky, who first saw Vishneva perform when she was a teenager. "It's complicated, but because she's a fantastic dancer, she is capable of getting many different styles right." He also believes she has matured as an actress. "Diana's not only Pierrot," says the choreographer. "She's also Columbine. It's a bit more abstract, and she gets to show a range of moods and nuances." As for "Three Point Turn," set to a newly commissioned score by David Rozenblatt, it features a sextet in which two pairs of Kirov dancers are led by Vishneva and Richardson. Although the two had crossed paths on the gala circuit, they had never danced together, and theirs is easily the most striking partnership in "Beauty in Motion." (Former Alvin Ailey star Richardson is also co-founder with Rhoden of Complexions, which will come to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in April.) 'Something that stretches' AT the rehearsal, his and Vishneva's unmistakable chemistry belied the fact this was their first joint outing. Under Rhoden's meticulous direction, she fell backward repeatedly into Richardson's arms, until the move looked almost Chaplinesque. Then, after falling forward, she slid down his leg before the two unwound like corkscrews, until at last her head rested in the palm of his hand. "You have to explode apart," Rhoden asserted. "Let your bodies squirm -- just feel each other." And so it went, with sensual entanglements suggesting the interaction of longtime lovers. Although this pas de deux is the centerpiece of "Three Point Turn," the percussive score helps propel what Rhoden calls "a dialogue between man and woman." "I wanted to create something to honor their gifts," he explained, "and at the same time deliver something that stretches them. As for Diana, she's bringing something from 'Giselle' to me." Richardson, who will be familiar to some local dance-goers from his 2006 turn as a non-singing Beowulf in Los Angeles Opera's "Grendel," said he and Vishneva were having a ball. "Diana fits right in," he said. "We don't have to say many words -- there's a commonality and a kinship." That feeling, said Vishneva, was mutual: "Dancing with Desmond is like a partner for life. He's a gorgeous dancer." Vishneva hasn't forsaken tutus and tiaras. Her packed schedule includes upcoming engagements with the Kirov, American Ballet Theatre and La Scala Ballet. But it's apparent that she's on another kind of journey as well, something Ratmansky understands. "As a performer, Diana is constantly changing, she's moving forward," he says. "She's searching for perfection. And she's honest as an artist, because life is changing every day." Given how little time she has to herself, it should be no surprise that Vishneva said she currently has no significant other and instead chooses to swim and enjoy the outdoors whenever possible. This, though, is clearly her moment, one she is eager to seize. "When you work with living choreographers, it's difficult," she repeated after the rehearsal, having changed into boots, a flared wool skirt and a pearl-buttoned cardigan. "But I'm always bringing something from myself, whatever I dance. Without the risk, there can be no rewards."

Автор:	Octavia [ 13 фев 2008, 22:15 ]
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Double Exposure Diana Vishneva plays both sides. * By Apollinaire Scherr * Published Feb 10, 2008 Цитата: (Photo: Armen Danilian) Great dancers are attuned to a strange fact: Dance doesn’t distinguish artist from art object, the dancer from the dance. Working to pry the two apart, dancers often end up proffering metaphors of escape—from circumstance, station, self-delusion. The young Rudolf Nureyev, to use an extreme example, seemed to be trying to overtake his own steps. You couldn’t tell whether he was a demon or shaking one off, but the possession was impressive. Diana Vishneva, 31, is also a mesmerizing beauty from the illustrious Kirov Ballet, a master of channeling feeling through a classical vessel’s restraint, and so peripatetic a performer that her repertory has become her only real home. She plays both character and creator at once. She digs into her role and lifts herself out of the story to reveal, godlike, its scope. If our culture ever developed a hunger for honest transcendence, Vishneva would become a real celebrity, with hordes of sensitive young women throwing practice tutus over their street clothes. In the meantime, next week brings “Diana Vishneva: Beauty in Motion” to City Center—a program of works made for her (including a major piece by the much-admired Bolshoi director Alexei Ratmansky, who, as of last week at least, looked poised to replace Christopher Wheeldon as City Ballet’s resident choreographer). In April, the Kirov moves in. And beginning in May, Vishneva dances as usual with American Ballet Theatre. Her take on Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet at ABT the past two years gives some idea of how she weds pathos to insight. In the scene where Juliet downs the sleeping potion that will lend her the “likeness of shrunk death,” Vishneva doesn’t just depict Juliet’s fear of death, she previews her dying. Gulping the ghoulish drink, she sinks to her knees and staggers up, again and again: a glimpse of Juliet’s terrible future that intensifies our suffering when it finally arrives. Vishneva does that Shakespearean thing of taking a modest theme (in Macbeth, ambition; in Hamlet, indecision) and letting it roll. On her knees, she echoes an earlier moment, when Juliet prays at the bedroom altar. The second, unstrung prayer confirms what the first merely hints at: Juliet is desperate, and she’s doomed. As the potion overwhelms her, she crawls splay-kneed like a baby onto the bed. She’s burrowing back to before she was a Capulet, when she and Romeo had a chance. Vishneva believes in story ballets. “They last because they are so rich,” she says. She even believes in the stories: Betrayed heroines predominate because “in real life, women are always betrayed.” But she doesn’t need a story to illuminate a dance. Last month, she learned an intricate duet with Desmond Richardson for Dwight Rhoden’s plotless ballet in “Beauty in Motion.” The piece is about two people who never quite connect, I was told. But this section, at least, was such a micromanaged, push-pull affair that it wasn’t clear how regret or loss would enter in. Then Vishneva started playing with timing. She stretched out the transitions between the exquisite tangles with Richardson until she was falling from one position to the next. And there it was—longing. NEW YORK CLASSICAL & DANCE

Автор:	Octavia [ 13 фев 2008, 23:45 ]
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Автор:	Octavia [ 16 фев 2008, 01:42 ]
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Ballerina's 'Beauty' thwarted Diana Vishneva's overly ambitious show only sparingly celebrates her star gifts. By LAURA BLEIBERG Thursday, February 14, 2008 Цитата: There is much to love about Kirov prima ballerina Diana Vishneva, the 21st-century dancer par excellence. She is that rare jewel. Lean, beautiful, athletic, lyrical, theatrical and spontaneous – a nearly unmatched package achieved through god-given physical talent, artistic insight, and plain determination. Unlike some stars (Frenchwoman Sylvie Guillem springs to mind), who turn on the auto-pilot mid-performance, Vishneva is utterly generous onstage. She is simultaneously vulnerable and triumphant each time out; each performance is unique. Given all of that, it was disappointing how little there was to love about Wednesday's premiere of "Diana Vishneva: Beauty in Motion," the vanity project packaged by producer Sergei Danilian and co-produced with the Orange County Performing Artscenter in association with the Mariinsky Theatre. Our lovely star was before us for almost the entire three-act show, and yet we barely got to know her. Specially commissioned dances by the Bolshoi Ballet's Alexei Ratmansky, Momix founder Moses Pendleton and Dwight Rhoden of Complexions cast her as an ensemble player or literally covered her up in fabric and props. Only modern dance choreographer Pendleton – who initially seemed an odd choice to collaborate with this quintessential classicist – at least partially gave us an enhanced Vishneva, the ballerina we know, but made larger-than-life. Ratmansky had cast Vishneva as the leading lady in his 2002 "Cinderella" for the Kirov, but this prior experience gave him no advantage here, with "Pierrot Lunaire." Perhaps he swallowed too much with his musical choice and subject matter – Arnold Schoenberg's 1912 "Pierrot Lunaire," and the Italian commedia dell'arte characters, which continue to entice choreographers, and bedevil them, too, it must be said. Vishneva, along with Kirov Ballet principal Igor Kolb and soloists Mikhail Lobukhin and Alexander Sergeev, took turns as the hapless Pierrot, illustrating aspects of Albert Giraud's 21 poems, which form the basis of the song cycle. The musical ensemble and Kirov Opera mezzo-soprano Elena Sommer, led by Kirov conductor Mikhail Tatarnikov, were hampered by echoing amplification and low volume at first. But even as the sound improved, the dances themselves never rose to the poetic. Sometimes, Ratmansky illustrated the German text literally, as in "The Dandy" section with two men preening, or when Vishneva became a sorrowful Madonna. What appeared to be abstract sections were more satisfying simply for the clever assemblage of steps. Here, Vishneva was let loose, such as during a too-brief solo of whirring turns and piqués. But for those who don't speak German or hadn't memorized the poems, the ballet became a pile of movement phrases, exploding at double-time. It whizzed past on a single note, without emphasis or nuance. Pendleton's "F.L.O.W., For the Love of Women" began like many a Momix piece, in black light with a disembodied white arm dancing to recorded songs. Two more white arms appeared (belonging to Maria Shevyakova and Ekaterina Ivannikova), and then legs. The appendages together formed faces, swans and so on. In part two, Vishneva, in nude-colored leotard, lounged and stretched on a giant mirrored wedge (props by Michael Curry). Her spectacularly sensuous double image became a metaphor for desire; there was also, though, something freakish in this display. In the final section, the ballerina whirled, like a contemporary Loie Fuller, in a curtain of beads, which stood out horizontally as she spun. We looked forward to Rhoden's "Three Point Turn" for its first-time match-up of Vishneva with Desmond Richardson, a modern dancer as incomparable and hard-working as Vishneva. Their duets – in a brusque, pumping movement vocabulary – well-captured the gut-twisting moments of a relationship on the rocks. The other two Kirov couples were there, too, but their efforts faded into the background. Rhoden's precipitous, gymnastic style of gesturing, kicking and frantic running was well-matched to composer David Rosenblatt propulsive score. But the breathlessness left this viewer empty and unable to truly see what took place. It did not serve Vishneva well, either, even though she is a strong allegro dancer. She was pulling down on Isabel Rubio's skimpy leotards – another bad fit. It's hard to know who the master is with a project such as "Beauty in Motion." Should it be the artist, who wants to stretch, or the audience, who wants to see the artist they know? There might be a satisfactory middle ground, but this show didn't find it.

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Автор:	Octavia [ 17 фев 2008, 19:59 ]
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Diana Vishneva of the Kirov Ballet steps into the future February 15, 2008 Beauty in Motion' features three dances created for her. She's up to the contemporary task. By Lewis Segal, Los Angeles Times Staff Write Цитата: In performances on local stages by the Kirov Ballet, this 31-year-old Russian ballerina has often displayed her technical brilliance and interpretive daring in time-honored works from the imperial Russian and American neoclassical repertories. But Wednesday, she danced the premieres of three pieces that were created for her in a program titled "Beauty in Motion" (a label conferred on her by Vogue magazine) at the Orange County Performing Artscenter. Ultimately it matters less that Vishneva and her seven guest dancers (all but one from the Kirov) rack up one triumph, one disaster and one qualified success than that she's staking her stardom on moving ballet and her own artistry into the future. She may be supreme in a tutu, but there's more than one way to dance a swan, as she definitively proves in Moses Pendleton's typically playful and dreamlike "F.L.O.W. (For Love of Women)." A founder of the hyper-gymnastic Pilobolus Dance Theater and his own Momix company, Pendleton uses recordings by erO One, Lisa Gerrard and Deva Premal to accompany three kinds of movement theater. Part 1 is a black light spectacle in which disembodied limbs form whimsical shapes -- including that swan. Part 2 finds Vishneva reclining on a mirrored platform, her constant shifts of position creating strange, seductive illusions. Part 3 places her in a silver gown and a large, circular headdress with strings of beads cascading nearly to the floor -- and as she whirls, the beads become a gleaming, ever-changing aura reflecting and magnifying her energy. These are the only moments on the program qualifying as beauty in motion, for the other choreographers focus on more complex, nervy agendas. Pendleton alone has the gift of being simple and of being theatrical in a way that has nothing to do with bravura. He may not use Vishneva's classical prowess, but he enlists her imagination -- and the audience's. What's wrong with that? "F.L.O.W." ideally belongs in a much smaller theater, as does Alexei Ratmansky's hopelessly confusing "Pierrot Lunaire," a setting of Arnold Schoenberg's groundbreaking song cycle in which Vishneva and three males initially appear identically dressed but keep changing roles and hats, reflecting the content of the text. Partly because that text is in German and there are no translations or supertitles, the choreography never fuses with the music. It also never develops a life of its own. Forces led by mezzo Elena Sommer present the score diligently but can make no case for it against the restless stage action. Currently artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, Ratmansky gives everyone floppy, antic clown moves derived from antique commedia dell'arte traditions, but he switches gears whenever he needs a shot of virtuosity. Then, suddenly, the dancers straighten up and execute the steps as if this were the Costa Mesa International Ballet Competition. It's nice to see Igor Kolb's pristine pirouettes, but shouldn't Ratmansky ask him to dance in character? The 1962 "Pierrot Lunaire" by the late Glen Tetley that Rudolf Nureyev performed for many years was much more astute in its use of this music and also more unified choreographically. Happily, Dwight Rhoden, co-founder and co-director of the Complexions company, sustains unity of style throughout "Three Point Turn," his turbulent, exciting sextet for Vishneva, Complexions guest Desmond Richardson and dancers previously used in the Pendleton and Ratmansky pieces. Danced to live percussion by David Rozenblatt and Benny Koonyevsky, the piece initially seems a formula vehicle for three color-coded couples. But soon, very soon, Rhoden shatters the formula and all those comforting, hackneyed choreographic symmetries that Ratmansky relies on for something rawer and more genuinely contemporary. "Three Point Turn" is relentlessly overdriven, but at least it's going somewhere. Whereas her artistry is often obliterated by Ratmansky, Vishneva glories in the unorthodox and often punishing Rhoden duets with the casually magnificent Richardson. And the fine supporting cast -- Mikhail Lobukhin with Ekaterina Ivannikova in blue, Alexander Sergeev with Maria Shevyakova in green -- helps make all the changing romantic entanglements forceful and satisfying. LOS ANGELES TIMES

Автор:	Octavia [ 23 фев 2008, 18:12 ]
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Three Sides of a Prima Ballerina, Made to Order Diana Vishneva, the dancer, the prima ballerina for the Kirov Ballet, in “F.L.O.W. (For Love of Women),” performs a triple bill of dances created for her at City Center through Sunday. By ALASTAIR MACAULAY. Published: February 23, 2008 Audiences who came of age in the Iron Curtain era still find it astonishing to contemplate a career like Diana Vishneva’s. Ms. Vishneva is the prima ballerina of the Maryinsky (Kirov) Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia, and appears on its foreign tours, dancing not just its old ballets but also its newly acquired Balanchine repertory. She is a leading guest artist with American Ballet Theater in its New York seasons at the Metropolitan Opera House, dancing both ballet classics and mid-20th-century gems by Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. Now she is presenting a season of her own at City Center, dancing in a triple bill of ballets created for and around her by more or less eminent choreographers. Any such career was a mere pipe dream 30 years ago, when Irina Kolpakova of the Kirov was barred from the new choreography of the West, and when Natalia Makarova, by defecting, cut herself off from the Kirov company, whose style she still exemplified. Since the first days of glasnost, other Russian ballerinas — notably Altynai Asylmuratova of the Kirov and Nina Ananiashvili of the Bolshoi (now directing the State Ballet of Georgia, which comes to the Brooklyn Academy of Music next week) — have managed to commute between East and West and between old and new, but none have been able to have their cake and eat it too as much as Ms. Vishneva. he deserves it. It’s hard to think of a more sheerly beautiful ballerina in the world today: the proportions of her body are delectably harmonious, and her porcelain-doll face is both wide-eyed and heart-shaped. And as her program’s title, “Beauty in Motion,” suggests, her beauty carries through from physique into physicality. She really can be doll-like, and sometimes adopts an air of contrived innocence; or she can be a true child of nature, gorgeously and blithely opening her lovely limbs out into the air like a nymph or sylph; or she can be a polished dynamo whose brilliance and control startle. Always she gives off light. Though these three ballets must have been intended to display all these facets of her while also displaying her as an exponent of the new, they leave audiences feeling that they’re not getting quite enough of her. Of the three, only two bring rewards. The program is billed as three acts. Act I is Alexei Ratmansky’s “Pierrot Lunaire,” by far the program’s most complex and rewarding work in terms of sheer dance. Schoenberg’s atonal 1912 score, still strange and difficult — even now, it sets listeners’ teeth on edge — abounds in paradoxes. The masculine title role is sung by a woman (here the mezzo-soprano Elena Sommer, singing the German text with a marked Russian accent), whose voice moves between speech and song. The Pierrot of the songs is both hero and fool; the drama contains excitement and pathos, naïveté and violence, and the mood shifts between delicate refinement and populist liveliness. Mr. Ratmansky’s choreography has a comparable range of paradoxes. It moves between the formal grace of ballet classicism and more deliberately imperfect genres, sometimes in mid-phrase. Its three men and one woman are at times the Pierrot, Harlequin, Cassander and Columbine figures of commedia dell’arte; elsewhere they are all aspects of Pierrot himself. Sometimes Mr. Ratmansky has them moving in four separate but simultaneous solos with marvelous intricacy; sometimes he has them moving together with the lunar fluency of Ashton’s “Monotones,” only to puncture any such ideal serenity. It is not principally a Vishneva vehicle; Igor Kolb, Mikhail Lobukhin and Alexander Sergeev are equal contributors. But it shows far more facets of both her and them than the rest of the program (though some of its strained naïveté becomes tiresome to those of us who are not devotees of the Pierrot character). Among its incidental fascinations are that it demonstrates Mr. Ratmansky’s skill in choreographing with the ballet vocabulary and, by contrast, his refusal to pigeonhole himself as an academic classicist. The program’s Act II, “F.L.O.W.” (“For Love of Women”), choreographed by Moses Pendleton, dips in and out of kitsch. Its first scene is a ballet of illusion for three pairs of hands and feet rendered luminous in blue against a black background. Some of the changing current of imagery is both poetic and funny; too bad some of it is merely cute. None of it need be done by Ms. Vishneva. In the final scene she wears a beaded dress/poncho/veil that spreads outward in different shapes as she spins. This is a nice modern descendant of the kind of dance theater that Loie Fuller initiated in the late 19th century, but it too would make the same impression with a far less remarkable dancer. The central scene of “F.L.O.W.” has Ms. Vishneva horizontal and seemingly nude on a mirrored slope. Now she is a dragonfly on the water’s edge; now a child curling back into fetal shape above her own twin; now one of those Cecil Beaton looking-glass photographs turned into dance; now Narcissus with his/her reflection. Though she never once rises to the vertical stance that is ballet’s element, some of the movement shows off her extraordinary lusciousness. She has stretch within stretch, pliancy forever, and a quality of basking, playful luxuriance that powerfully recalls the Makarova of the 1970s (just as Ms. Vishneva’s bloom and sweetness elsewhere recall Patricia McBride). Act III, Dwight Roden’s “Three Point Turn,” is wall-to-wall neo-academic, pseudo-erotic cliché for three couples (Ms. Vishneva with Desmond Richardson, Maria Shevyakova with Mr. Lobukhin, and Ekaterina Ivannikova with Mr. Sergeev). Everything onstage — the high extensions, the pirouettes, the lunges, the lifts — is big, showy, fakey, with no contrasts in scale. Everyone onstage dances like hell, and when we get to hell, it will be full of ballets like this. Its loud rock score, by David Rozenblatt, sounds like a refrigerator copulating with a hot tin roof.

Автор:	Octavia [ 23 фев 2008, 18:26 ]
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BEAUTY & THE FEET By CLIVE BARNES February 23, 2008 -- OF the current generation of Russian ballerinas, one of the most fascinating - and sexy - is 31-year-old Diana Vishneva, born and trained in St. Petersburg. A star with St. Petersburg's Kirov Ballet, she is also on the regular roster of American Ballet Theatre. She's now finding time to run her own small, very select chamber group, Beauty in Motion, which made its New York debut at City Center on Thursday night. Vishneva has surrounded herself with three classy male dancers - including the super-elegant premier danseur Igor Kolb - and a couple of women, all five from her home team in St. Petersburg. She also had America's own Desmond Richardson in attendance. The program was less interesting in what was danced than in how it was danced. By far the most interesting was the premiere of Alexei Ratmansky's version of Schoenberg's striking "Pierrot Lunaire," showing Ratmansky's exceptional individuality. Moses Pendleton of Momix devised an adroit, gimmicky little piece, "F.L.O.W. (For Love of Women)," which was less modern than he might have hoped. The final piece, Dwight Rhoden's "Three Point Turn" to violent percussion by David Rozenblatt, was a sextet led by Vishneva and Richardson that combined the loud with the obvious to an almost impressive degree of banality. Yet somehow, the divine Vishneva sailed through with breathtaking aplomb and majestic ease. DIANA VISHNEVA New York City Center, 55th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues.

Автор:	Octavia [ 24 фев 2008, 03:37 ]
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In New Vishneva Ballets, Lovers Beat the Heck Out of Each Other Review by Tobi Tobias Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Even the curtain call was costumed, the ballerina wearing a gleaming black gown cut Victorian style but slashed to reveal bare skin and cradling in her arms an extravagant sheaf of calla lilies. ``Diana Vishneva: Beauty in Motion,'' at Manhattan's City Center through Sunday, was devised by the same folks who concocted the disappointing ``Kings of the Dance.'' Like that earlier venture, this glitzy showcase for the phenomenally accomplished Kirov ballerina appears to be mainly focused on exploiting the star's box office appeal. The program takes the novelty route, with three ballets commissioned for Vishneva that are pointedly unlike the material she dances with her home company or with American Ballet Theater, with which she now performs every spring at the Metropolitan Opera House. Dwight Rhoden, who heads the Complexions Dance Company, provided the most striking piece, ``Three Point Turn.'' It explores the theme of fraught love as athletically as can be imagined. Vishneva and Desmond Richardson, who might be called Rhoden's muse, are backed up by two other couples, at first more innocent and dreamy, then infected by the savage extremes set by the main pair. Initially Vishneva and Richardson embrace, kiss and make gestures of submission and tenderness. Then they proceed, at inordinate length, to beat the hell out of each other. They finish on a note of unexpected conciliation -- a hard-won happy ending. Maybe 20-somethings will see themselves in this mirror. Black Light Moses Pendleton, who directs Momix, a Pilobolus spinoff, created ``F.L.O.W. (For Love of Women),'' which presents Vishneva in three gimmick-driven guises. In the first segment, she's unrecognizable, one of three women animating black-light effects in which undulating limbs seem to float like swans on a lake or skeletons come unhinged. Next we get the ballerina alone, wearing only a flesh- tinted leotard, bathed in a golden glow as she lies on a large mirrored platform tilted toward the audience. Hints that the figure is making love to herself take narcissism to a new dimension. Finally, in another solo, Vishneva sports a cage of bead chains that fall from her head to the floor or swirl around her as she turns. Protean Quality Surely Vishneva's protean quality is better revealed in her customary repertory, which has an extraordinarily wide range -- from her tragic Juliet (in the Kenneth MacMillan version of the classic) through her jazzy ballerina in Balanchine's scintillating ``Rubies.'' ``Pierrot Lunaire'' -- choreographed to the Schoenberg song cycle by Alexei Ratmansky, artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet -- is by far the show's most intelligent item. It's a postmodern take on commedia dell'arte. Granted it lacks the traditional knockabout plot and Harlequin figure. Still, it boasts not one but three Kirov men as Pierrot, moonstruck, the eternal clown and visionary, miming in the grotesque commedia style but dancing classically. Vishneva is a charming Columbine type, a marvel of technical exactitude and mercurial moods. The two big drawbacks to the piece? Vishneva -- the woman who can do everything -- lacks soul, and Ratmansky is not quite up to the strange beauty of the music. Even if the commissioned ballets were more worthy, and even though Vishneva's skill and versatility are remarkable, the program proves that a ballerina is most potent in the context of a full company -- at best, her own, from which her style springs, or a least an institution of the same caliber.

Автор:	Octavia [ 29 май 2008, 20:10 ]
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Ballerina Is Injured By ROSLYN SULCAS; Compiled by LAWRENCE VAN GELDER Published: May 28, 2008 Diana Vishneva is injured and will not dance as scheduled in American Ballet Theater’s “Swan Lake” on Thursday night at Lincoln Center. (Her replacement, one of Ballet Theater’s other Russian stars, Nina Ananiashvili, will dance with Marcelo Gomes.) Ms. Vishneva’s manager, Sergei Danilian, said the dancer originally hurt her ankle in April, while performing with the Kirov Ballet during its New York season. Ms. Vishneva did dance a short solo, “The Dying Swan,” at Ballet Theater’s opening-night gala, but Mr. Danilian said that her injury has worsened. Kelly Ryan, a Ballet Theater spokeswoman, said that Ms. Vishneva would not appear in Twyla Tharp’s new “Rabbit and Rogue,” which opens next week. “We are hopeful that she will be able to perform in ‘Don Quixote’ on June 11, and in ‘Giselle’ on July 11,” Ms. Ryan said. In addition to her Ballet Theater commitments, Ms. Vishneva is scheduled to appear on June 15 in Moscow, at a gala arranged in honor of the Bolshoi ballerina Marina Semonova, and in St. Petersburg, Russia, on June 22 in her own show, “Beauty in Motion.”

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