St Petersburg Ballet Theatre at the London Coliseum
August 27, 2016
Irina Kolesnikova devised this ballet for the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre with high ambitions of evoking the horrific refugee crisis engulfing the Middle East and Europe. She visited two refugee camps in the Balkans with her original collaborator Andrei Kuznetzov-Vecheslov. The two disagreed radically as to the direction of the production on their return and parted company. One can only wonder what Kuznetzov-Vecheslov might have created as Kolesnikova has been badly let down by her team.
From the moment that Bizet’s score floods the auditorium, the doubts creep in. Spain is imbued in every phrase but these refugees have hardly trekked over the Pyrenees. Dancers run around with torches in the auditorium – but what are we supposed to think? Are the refugees fleeing the authorities, are they on a raid? It is never explained. We are just left to rub out eyes in discomfort.
Vladimir Firer’s set and costumes are not only hideous and inappropriate, they deprive the ballet of all context. For some bizarre reason, the set comprises neon lights, sometimes straw, sometimes red, making the scene more reminiscent of a nightclub than a refugee camp. The dancers wheel sections of heras fencing around for no obvious reason; one half expects them to suddenly start using them as a barre. The refugees’ costumes comprise leotards and culottes in primary colours, with the odd nod to the hoodie. They all wear neat jazz shoes, the laces flapping and catching the light as feet are extended en l’air.
Photo Marilyn Kingwill
There are two teams of t-shirted officials, some with the designation ‘P’ and others ‘V’. Again, no obvious reason why. Some wear similarly designated baseball caps, looking for all the world like a perky team of baristas. They grin like chorus girls and boys and seem content to show off the prettiness of their technique rather than bothering with acting. At least their shoes are made into facsimile training shoes.
Carmen herself comes on in culottes with her face cowled under a hoodie. She joins in a twee game with a soft football that may as well be one of the endless games of blind man’s bluff played in classical ballet for all the reality it conveys. Suddenly, Carmen divests herself of street clothes to reveal a skimpy red dress. She flirts first with the chief of police, Garcia (Yuri Kovalev) and then with José the mafia leader (Dmitry Akulinin), the latter played like a pantomime villain, albeit a rakishly attractive one.
Olga Kostel’s choreography is largely forgettable but she does give Akulinin and Kolesnikova a halfway decent pas de deux. Akulinin literally walks over his acolytes to get to Carmen. They tussle in a variation on a theme of an Apache (just as camp and just as clichéd) and Carmen is thrown to the floor. She paddles on her back with her crescent feet and then hoists herself onto her shoulders, spiking Akulinin’s gullet with the platforms of her shoes then kicking him away.
Of course, as we knew before the start, her dalliance with Garcia is interrupted by José and he kills her. But, oh does she take forever to finally die and put us all out of our misery.
There is a weird sub plot with an irritating child that jigs around with a doll and at one point gives Carmen some kind of token. Is Carmen her mother? Carmen appears to do a deal with Garcia to enable her to escape. Ultimately we care neither about her nor anyone else in this sadly wasted effort.
Ballet can deal powerfully and effectively with contemporary issues, but as well-intentioned as this ballet may be in tackling the refugee crisis, this is not the team to do it.