Review of the Chinese performance « From the inside » in Moscow
On the stage of the theater. The Moscow City Council in the framework of the cherry Forest festival was the Hiexin dance theater with the play from the inside (“from in”) of its founder Sing. Tatyana Kuznetsova, Frustrated by the skill of Chinese dancers, I did not understand how it was arranged from the inside.
It is not clear how these artists are arranged, inside which, it seems, there are neither bones, no muscles, nor joints – their bodies, as in a computer game, as if they do not know the laws of gravity, the boundaries of the possibilities and limit of movements. It is not clear how such partnerships are achieved when two-three-three-four people seem to be a single creature that controls the many limbs, heads and bodies.
It is incomprehensible how to fulfill this cantileine of combinations currently, as an endless river, which write down hieroglyphs with human bodies and secret text with a sequence of compositions.
And how to come up with such a meditative, logical and at the same time mysterious choreographic text, in which each movement unmistakably joins the following so indisputably, as if there is no other staged solution in the world.
Not otherwise than the Taoist alchemy and Buddhist psychopractics participated here, from which the comprehensive therapy of Chinese qigong, which underlies modern dance, synthesized by choreographer Sin, grew up. Proof? She herself, a woman without age, dancing at the head of nine artists of her troupe with all the above perfection.
Xiexin has already come to Russia, danced in Voronezh and in St. Petersburg (see “Kommersant” dated December 4, 2023). But to Moscow to the festival, Sin brought her first – the main one – the performance from which her own international career and the life of the troupe of her name began.
In the eleven years that have passed since the production of “from the inside”, the choreographer has turned into the personification of the Chinese dance avant -garde: no one boldly and organically could convert the millennia qigong into a national variety of modern dance. Si Sin became a world -class figure: she goes to European festivals with her troupe, she is invited to productions to Britain and Germany, to the Venetian Biennale and to the Parisian opera (See “Kommersant” dated October 4, 2023).
“From the inside” is a 75-minute Bess-shaped ballet to the music of Yin and Jiang Shaofen, who cleverly connected to European minimalism and specific noise (murmur of water, whistling wind) a sparing rumor of national percussion. Light plain, different shades of white costumes Lee Kun – almost Chinese pajamas with long wide pants and shirts – hide the bodies and floor of artists, but at the same time they favorably emphasize movements, prolonging them and increasing the amplitude. The light of Gao Jie put it taking into account global achievements: SFomatoma of delicate darkness is replaced by bright cones of light, the nails of soloists close -up, and the yellow and blue light rectangles are more likely to accompany the artists.
The chain of one in another episodes, according to the intake of the choreographer, explores human nature not only in “physical embodiment”, but also in a cultural context: this is “thinking about how the human body was at the dawn of civilization and how transformed in the modern world.”
To admit that it will not accept civilization, nor transformations in the performance are noticeable: vocabulary and technology remain unchanged, only the pace and nature of movements changes. They can be elegically meditative, ugly-indefatigable, excited, restless, even protesters. But poses are fixed only occasionally – in the finals of group episodes; Large (very large – sometimes 180 degrees) Batmans do not break, but last; Beautifully and unusually twisted support take off and fall in autumn leaves. The search for narrative logic here even interferes with enjoying the art of Chinese artists.
But if you still follow the synopsis, then the composition of the performance decisively rejects the progressive course of civilization. “From the inside” begins and ends with a marvelous duet, in which Si Sing bursts out of the bonds of the partner standing behind her, like the heroine of Rosa’s “death” Rosa Petit – only without a tragic tear and thirst for life, as Maya Plisetskaya dancing her rose. The dancer Si Sin accepts the brave arms of a man without protest and panic, without throwing and bitterness – as intended with the course of things, and dies silently and consciously, suddenly collapsing Umbisho into darkness.
