So, I just watched a video of the ballet The Firebird, music by Stravinsky. It was recorded by the Moscow Classikal Ballet (their spelling, not mine), and re-choreographed by Kasatkina and Vasilyov. I was very disappointed. The video quality was poor, the sound quality was tinny - but I can live with those in a transfer from older media. It is the re-choreographed part that upsets me. If I didn't know the Firebird story, I would have been terribly confused. The character of the Firebird herself was greatly diminished, with many characters added. The choreography didn't seem to match the music - and this upset me the most, since The Firebird was composed as a ballet score, this was not choreography to some music adapted for the ballet. It was ballet music, through and through.
Having seen parts of the ballet with the original choreography by Mikhail Fokine, I was looking forward to watching the complete ballet. I couldn't bear it. Why did the Moscow Classikal Ballet feel the need to re-choreograph a classic? Not just classic, but archetypal Russian ballet (well, that could open a can of fish, given that the ballet was written for a French audience, but for argument's sake, I'll just work with it).
Having spent a few weeks studying The Firebird and other Russian ballets, I feel like, in Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company, they approached something near the elusive gesamtkunstwerk - the "total art work" in a way that literary forms (that is with a text composed of some recognizable/nameable language) could not. In dance, there is the opportunity to tell a complete, universally understood, story. What makes the Ballets Russes special, in my opinion, is that they approached the gesamtkunstwerk not through individual effort, but through absolute teamwork (be it under the watchful eye of impressario Diaghilev). Between Stravinsky, Fokine and designer Alexandre Benois, they created a masterpiece of theatre - one that stood the test of time and continues to be enjoyed and studied. But, this wasn't enough for the Moscow Classikal Ballet, or for Kasatkina and Vasilyov. They had to make it their own. And, in doing so, destroyed it. Sigh.
Out of morbid curiosity, I decided to watch the beginning of Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) on the same DVD. Whoops... I can't even describe the disappointment there. Although it is difficult to find a production of this ballet on DVD (I gather this might be the only one), save your time, and check out the YouTube version with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago re-creating Nijinsky's original choreography... then you get an idea of what was ground-breaking about Le Sacre du Printemps...
You can watch that here, with 833,000 others: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjX3oAwv_Fs
So, the moral of this story: If you want to watch a DVD production of The Firebird, avoid the Moscow Classikal Ballet. Look for one with Fokine's choreography.
Ivan Bilibin, 1899
Ivan Tsarevich Catching the Firebird's Feather
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