Petrouchka Notes - The National Ballet of Canada

Ballet Notes
the national ballet of canada
Petrouchka
A Delicate Battle
There, below
karen kain, artistic director
Ballet Talks and Ballet Notes
are generously sponsored by

A Delicate
Battle
Choreography Matjash Mrozewski
Music J.S. Bach,
Ricercar a 6 from The Musical Offering
Gavin Bryars, After the Requiem
Used by arrangement with European American Music
Distributors LLC, sole U.S. and Canadian agent for Schott
& Co. Ltd., London, publisher and copyright owner.
Costume Design Christopher Read
Lighting Design Christopher Dennis
A Delicate Battle is a gift from THE VOLUNTEER
COMMITTEE, THE NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA
There,
below
Choreography James Kudelka
Music Ralph Vaughan Williams,
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
By arrangement with G. Schirmer Inc. agents
in the United States for J. Curwen & Sons,
publisher and copyright owner.
Costume Design Claudia Lynch
Lighting Design Howell Binkley
There, below is made possible by a generous
gift from The Harbinger Foundation.
For C.A.P.

Petrouchka
Choreography Michel Fokine
Performed with the permission
of the FOKINE ESTATE-ARCHIVE
Staged by Gary Chryst
Music Igor Stravinsky
By arrangement with Boosey and Hawkes,
Inc. publisher and copyright owner.
Production owned by Les Grands
Ballets Canadiens de Montréal
Set and costumes courtesy of
Les Grands Ballets Canadiens
de Montréal after the original
concept by Alexandre Benois
Costume research and
coordination Kim Baker
Assisted by John Cowell
Lighting Design
Christopher Dennis
Petrouchka is made possible by generous
funding from Nancy Pencer & Michael
Benjamin and Imperial Tobacco Canada.
cover: tamara toumanova in 1934 production
of petrouchka by monte carlo ballet russes.
this page: aleksandar antonijevic in petrouchka.
opposite: top: christopher body and laura bolton
in a delicate battle. bottom: tanya howard
and nehemiah kish in There, below.
photos by cylla von tiedemann, andrew oxenham,
corbis images
the national
ballet of canada
The Walter Carsen Centre for
the national ballet of canada
470 Queens Quay West, Toronto,
Ontario m5v 3k4 416-345-9686
national.ballet.ca
cover photo: guillaume côté as romeo and heather ogden as juliet,
opposite: guillaume côté as romeo, peter ottmann as friar laurence and
heather ogden as juliet.

goat
the characters in
Petrouchka
Petrouchka
Created by the Charlatan, Petrouchka is a clown-like puppet that comes
to life and is tormented by his unrequited desire for the Ballerina doll.
Happiness is illusive to him and as he dances his movements are floppy
and turned in to represent his painfully introverted personality.
Petrouchka tries to impress the Ballerina with a series of magnificent
leaps, but is scorned when she ignores him, preferring his rival the
Moor. Alone in his dark cell he is filled with frenzied despair. To highlight
this character’s eternal struggle, Stravinsky created a fanfare motif
for Petrouchka that appears throughout the ballet, and with great effect
at the end, as Petrouchka’s ghost appears to mock the crowd. Petrouchka,
the tragic hero, triumphs over those who did not believe in him.
The Ballerina
The Ballerina doll is very beautiful, but lacks depth of personality.
She ignores Petrouchka’s sincere advances because she is dazzled by
the more opulent and exotic Moor. Her mechanical movements are
meant to be inhuman and bare, unlike stereotypical ballerina movements.
Her thoughtless actions have fatal consequences for Petrouchka.
The Moor
Alive in his red cell, adorned with exotic motifs, the virile Moor is more
interested in the secrets that might be held in the coconut he possesses
than the silly flirtations of the Ballerina doll. He momentarily acknowledges
her affections, but flies into a fury when interrupted by Petrouchka.
His movements throughout the ballet are turned out to represent his
expansive, extroverted personality. It is the Moor’s cold brutality that
leads him to murder the defenceless Petrouchka.
The Charlatan
A showman and magician of questionable integrity, the Charlatan has
endowed the Petrouchka, Ballerina and Moor dolls with many human
attributes. Remaining under his control the half puppets/half human
beings suffer real human emotions like sadness, love, lust, jealousy and
rage with tragic outcomes for all.
SYNOPSIS
The story, which unfolds in four scenes, takes place in St. Petersburg in 1830
during the annual Butterweek Fair, the Russian equivalent to Mardi Gras. The
first scene opens on a square filled with a rowdy crowd of peasants, aristocrats,
soldiers, street performers, vendors, and various others, all seeking amusements
and diversion. Their activities are interrupted by the appearance of a bearded
showman, the Charlatan, who presents his three puppets – the doll-like Ballerina,
the opulent Moor, and the sad Petrouchka – performing a mechanical dance.
Scene Two takes place in Petrouchka’s dark cell, dominated by a watchful portrait
of the Charlatan, and reveals the puppet’s awkward and despairing love for the
self-involved and uncomprehending Ballerina. Scene Three shifts to the Moor’s
colourful room. The Moor plays with a coconut and momentarily allows the
admiring Ballerina to distract him. His rage at Petrouchka’s entrance results in
a chase. In the final scene, back at the fair, Petrouchka runs out of the Charlatan’s
booth, followed by the Moor, who kills him. The crowd is horrified, but the
Charlatan picks up the limp puppet, convincing them that the corpse is just
sawdust and rags. As the fair ends, the ghost of Petrouchka appears above the
rooftop, both threatening and triumphant. The bewildered Charlatan drops
the doll and flees in terror.
costume designs by alexandre benois for the
original 1911 production of petrouchka.
charlatan

a note on
Petrouchka
From 1909 to 1929 impresario Serge Diaghilev revolutionized ballet
by bringing together and nurturing the best choreographers, composers,
dancers and stage designers of this era. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes presented
season after season of avant-garde, controversial and enduring ballets.
Petrouchka, created in 1911, is generally acknowledged as being the most
perfect of all the Ballets Russes creations with a unified concept brought
together through the close collaboration of the creators.
It was after the success of The Firebird in 1910, that Diaghilev approached
composer Igor Stravinsky about creating a new ballet. Stravinsky was already
working on a suite for piano and orchestra based on the Petrouchka character,
a traditional member of the Russian commedia dell’arte. Diaghilev
suggested that Stravinsky continue work on Petrouchka in collaboration with
scenic designer Alexandre Benois, who also had a great knowledge of Russian
history and culture. Together Stravinsky and Benois worked out the libretto
for Petrouchka, each giving credit to the other for being the ballet’s true author.
It was not until the libretto and the music were completed that choreographer
Michel Fokine joined the creative team to instill each character with a fusion
of choreography and mime that related directly to the libretto.
The ballet plays with issues of life and death, fantasy and reality, while also
presenting a semblance of authentic Russian folk culture. It is noted that
Fokine insisted every person in the crowd scenes be a distinctive character,
something he felt Stravinsky also illustrated in his blend of folk tunes for the
music. Therefore, every segment of society is represented at St. Petersburg’s
Butterweek Fair, from military officers and aristocratic families to gypsies
and drunkards. The result is one of the most vibrant and varied crowd scenes
ever seen on stage. Benois went on to confuse the boundaries between performance
and reality by creating a false proscenium on stage to give the idea
that the audience was watching a play within a play.
Petrouchka premiered in Paris at the Théâtre du Châtelet on June 13, 1911.
Opening night featured Vaslav Nijinsky as Petrouchka, Tamara Karsarvina
as the Ballerina, Alexandre Orlov as the Moor and Enrico Cecchetti as the
Charlatan. With every element organically connected, the Paris premiere
was a success and Petrouchka remained active in the Ballets Russes’ repertoire
until the last season in 1929. It was the first time audiences were gripped
by the profound tragic nature of the action, not the dances themselves.
Nijinsky elicited immediate acclaim and awe for his ability to portray
Petrouchka, the puppet, with enough spirit to defy death. Known for his
amazing technical ability, this role demonstrated Nijinsky’s intense acting
ability. The audiences saw neither a puppet nor a man, but a mixture of
both. He imparted Petrouchka with tragic nuances from the depths of his
own genius. With or without the stage makeup, it seems that Nijinsky truly
understood Petrouchka’s plight. There is much speculation about the
parallel relationships between Petrouchka and the Charlatan and Nijinsky
and Diaghilev.
Petrouchka is new to the repertoire of The National Ballet of Canada in 2006,
however it had come close to being presented in the late 1970s. In 1978,
Tom Patterson (Founder of the Stratford Festival) approached the National
Ballet with plans to mount a film version of Petrouchka. Much of the production
was to be filmed outdoors in St. James Park, which was across from St.
Lawrence Hall, the company’s rehearsal studios at the time. Rudolf Nureyev
was contacted to star in the production.
ballerina
court
coachman
Nicholas Beriozoff came to Toronto to teach the revival of Fokine’s choreography to the company, however funding for completion
of the project never came through and the plan for the Petrouchka film died. In 1981 Nureyev revived Petrouchka with the Joffrey Ballet
and it was filmed by PBS. Unfettered by the budget constraints of the company, Beriozoff suggested the National Ballet mount his
version of Don Quixote and proposed several ways to make it affordable. Don Quixote made the stage on November 10, 1982.

A note on
A Delicate Battle
When Matjash Mrozewski’s A Delicate Battle
first premiered with the National Ballet
on May 2, 2001, it was hard to believe that
such a vivid, poised and elegantly constructed
work was the creation of such a
young choreographer. Here was a talent
with a sure command of the grammar of
dance and the confidence of a much more
experienced artist.
In A Delicate Battle, Mrozewski employs a
controlled and supple neo-classical vocabulary
to explore the nature of the artistic
process. Deftly blending abstraction and
narrative, and merging in an imaginative
crucible the past and present, Mrozewski
locates the struggles – large and small –
that go into the shaping of artistic work
and artistic integrity.
Set in a cool, neutral and wintry scene,with
J.S. Bach’s Musical Offering and Gavin Bryar’s
contemporary After the Requiem providing
the musical context, Mrozewski’s dancers
traverse a range of styles and moods, with
echoes of the baroque and the contemporary
brought together into the work’s
unifying idea: art arises from conflict
and struggle.
A chamber work with symphonic resonance,
A Delicate Battle provides an exciting glimpse
into the future of Canadian ballet.

A note on
There,below
James Kudelka’s reputation as one of contemporary ballet’s modern
masters was established early in his career. While much of his standing
rests on the works he has choreographed for The National Ballet
of Canada which include such seminal works as Pastorale, The Actress,
The Four Seasons, Swan Lake, The Firebird and The Contract (ThePied Piper),
his many works for other companies contain choreographic riches
to match these.
There, below was created for BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio in 1989
and was enthusiastically received. Barbara Zuck of the Columbus
and Dispatch wrote of the premiere, “Kudelka has deftly crafted a
choreographic understatement that speaks volumes…The couples,
each with their own movement motifs, move effortlessly and silently,
as though removed by some great distance from the weight of worldly
concerns. Each pair engages in remarkable pas de deux sometimes
expressing in detail the phrasing of the music, sometimes barely
moving as the music pulses.”
Set to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ haunting Fantasia on a Theme
by Thomas Tallis, There, below is a series of elegantly and sparely
constructed pas de deux, whose severity and simplicity serve as a
counterpoint to the lushness and romantic yearning of the score.
The tension between the rigorous abstraction of the choreography
and the sumptuousness of the music creates an unsettling and
unearthly feeling of dislocation.
Kudelka has also staged There, below for the Houston Ballet, Ballet
British Columbia and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal.
The Vancouver Courier wrote “There, below, James Kudelka’s 1989 gem
of a piece…is another wrenchingly beautiful example of spirit made
flesh... It flows along on an unstoppable wave of mighty sound,
complementing the intense intimacy of the choreography.”
opposite from left: rebekah rimsay and patrick lavoie in a delicate battle; alejandra
perez-gomez in a delicate battle. this page both images: aleksandar antonijevic and
sonia rodriguez in There, below.