Tag Archive: Oxana Kardash

New Takes

25. April 2025

“Stravinsky. Puppets. Dances”
Ballet of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre
Moscow, Russia
April 20, 2025

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf

1. D.Dmitriev (Moor), E.Zhukov (Petrushka), and O.Kardash (Ballerina); “Petrushka” by K.Semenov, Stanislavsky Ballet 2025 © Stanislavsky Ballet/Y.Gubina The Stanislavsky Ballet’s new double bill, Stravinsky. Puppets. Dances, attracted large crowds, especially because they scheduled only five performances over three consecutive days. The two ballets, Petrushka and The Firebird, were originally choreographed by Michel Fokine for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1911 and 1910, respectively. Both are set to compositions by Igor Stravinsky. The Stanislavsky Theatre presented new interpretations by Kirill Radev (The Firebird)—a former choreographer of the Barcelona Ballet—and Konstantin Semenov (Petrushka)—a dancer-cum-choreographer from the company’s own ranks, whose one-act piece, Through the Looking-Glass I saw in 2023. Both teamed up with stage director Alexey Frandetti (a Tashkent native who later moved to Moscow) and set designer Viktor Nikonenko. The internationally awarded Nikonenko is a puppet maker at Moscow’s State Academic Central Puppet Theater S.V. Obraztsov, which cooperated with the Stanislavsky Theatre for the first time (an exhibition of puppets and photos from the S.V. Obraztsov museum was shown at the Stanislavsky as well). (more…)

Heightened Drama

13. April 2017

“Mayerling”
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre
National Theater
Munich, Germany
April 06, 2017

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2017 by Ilona Landgraf

1. S.Polunin and A.Pershenkova, “Mayerling” by K.MacMillan, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre 2017 © W.Hösl Igor Zelensky invited Moscow’s Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre, his own former troupe, to perform as a guest company for this month’s Ballet Festival Week in Munich. Last October, after a short period of double directorship in Moscow and Munich, Zelensky decided to concentrate solely on directing the Bavarian State Ballet. Laurent Hilaire, former Paris Opéra Ballet étoile, took over Zelensky’s post at the Stanislavsky in January this year.

The Stanislavsky brought along Kenneth MacMillan’s “Mayerling”, a piece rarely performed on German stages. As a special treat, Sergei Polunin danced the leading role at both performances. I saw the opening night. Although Polunin left the Stanislavsky in summer 2014, he continued to perform with the company on occasion. In Munich, he has been a permanent guest dancer since Zelensky took up the reins.

“Mayerling” isn’t the sort of piece one eagerly watches again and again – for at the root of the catastrophe of the piece is a tragedy that is too sad and a society that is too disgusting to witness repeatedly. The story is based on a dark chapter of the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. The Emperor’s third child with Elisabeth (“Sisi”), Duchess of the house of Wittelsbach, was Crown Prince Rudolf, who at the age of twenty-three, was forced into a marriage with Princess Stéphanie of Belgium. The ballet begins with the couple’s wedding ball and ends with the double suicide of Rudolf and his mistress, Mary Vetsera, at the royal hunting lodge at Mayerling. (more…)