Mats Ek: Three ballets that were considered a mockery. farewell matsa eka

Mats Ek is among the top five most
famous and talented choreographers of the world. Continuing the theatrical tradition
his family (his father is a dramatic actor, his mother is a choreographer, "live
classic "modern dance"), started as a dramatic actor and director, then
became interested in dance and since 1973 has been working in the mother troupe "Kullberg Balle"
- as dancer, choreographer, artistic director (1985-1993) and
a freelance artist who has stepped away from any leadership in recent years,
focused exclusively on creativity. Apart from Sweden, Mats Ek puts
ballets all over the world - from the Scandinavian countries to Israel, from
Metropolitan Opera in New York to Opera Garnier in Paris. His performances
"Saint George and the Dragon", "Bernard" (after Garcia Lorca), "The Rite of Spring",
"Antigone", "Cain and Abel", "Carmen" gave no less reason for discussion,
than the sensational versions of "Giselle", "Swan Lake" and "Sleeping Beauty".

- How do you understand the words "ballet" and "dance"?
- There is no meaning, as well as special significance. There are opportunities
human movement and the ability of the artist to communicate with the audience through this
traffic. When feelings arise on both sides, then there is
content. Only together with the physical action of the actor.
- Apparently, you can't formulate a creative credo either?
- Not.
- Have you ever wanted to come up with a beautiful aphorism "creativity is .."?
- Did not want. I doubt that this can be expressed in a clear definition.
You can, of course, say something banal, for example, that I put
performances about everything that contains life. I try to dig deep - that's all.
- Maurice Béjart called dance the main art of the twentieth century. you with it
agree?.
- Not.
- Why?.
- Because there is no point in artificially glorifying the dance, even if you
you do it yourself. Only all together is important. Not
competition between the arts. None of them look like the key to
life, unlocking all doors. Art is a world without a protagonist.
- You are often called a pessimist.
- Yes? First time I hear. (Laughs) Why do you think so?
- I don’t think so, but in Russia many zealots of the classical heritage
accuse you of criminal encroachment on shrines in order to throw off
pedestal high ideals of classical ballet. I mean naturally
your redrawing of Swan Lake, Giselle and Sleeping Beauty. We have
many people think that you did it on purpose - you slandered and vulgarized harmony.
So you are against it..
- Very interesting. But in general I am not a pessimist and not an optimist. I just
want to understand. By the way, it's wrong to see in classical ballets only
optimism. As for, for example, "Swan Lake", you are fine
you know - there was a tragic ending from the very beginning. Only after your
revolution, the communists wanted to have a happy ending in a play. it
later interpretation.
- Let's clarify specifically for your opponents: your performances are not
rebellion against the "castles in the air" that amuse those who do not understand
modern dance?.
- Castles in the air? Yes and no. Castles in the air and I have - you can
so call my imagination. But there is nothing like that on the stage - there is this
the air becomes flesh and blood. Only in this sense can one speak seriously
and about castles.
- Your versions of classical scores form a kind of trilogy.
Bald swans on splayed legs, Giselle, who did not fall into the otherworldly
world, but in an earthly madhouse, Sleeping Beauty, who grew up not in royal comfort, but
in a petty-bourgeois, zaturkannoy family family .. Everything is across the usual dances,
but united by a common principle: to penetrate the facade of traditional
ideas about these ballets..
- There was no idea to make a trilogy. I have no such ambitions at all -
break, destroy, penetrate the facade .. On the contrary, I live with a feeling
respect for the three hundred year history of classical dance and his own
ways of development. I don't want to touch it at all. And I don't want to argue. So I
I don't make any edits, I make my own versions. Using cultural
heritage - music, these fairy tales that underlie the libretto .. So does
any interpreter, even one that works with traditional versions
classics. I am just a link in the chain.
- Is there a philosophical system that is most authoritative for you? BUT
then it is customary to interpret you as a lover to seek truth in combination
"society-unconscious": after all, neurosis as a subject of ballet, problematic
the Prince's relationship with his mother in Swan, the sexuality of Carmen,
sublimation in "Bernard"..
- I'm not a philosopher at all. I just read smart books. (Laughs.) To me
interesting as an amateur. And selective craving for Freud, which you
hint, also no. There is an interest in human nature.
- But, you see, the temptation is great: to connect the relationship of a vulnerable hero
your "Swan Lake" with the imperious Queen Mother - with relationships in
your family. Son Mats Ek and famous mother - Birgit Kullberg, working in
one area of ​​choreography. Unforgettable is your play "The Old Woman and the Door", where you
took the risk of filming an 80-year-old mother in very risky scenes..
- I grew up with admiration for her work, I was brought up on it. Since childhood
understood that she was talented - in this ability to combine events on stage
into a whole, to put on dances that form meaning. Birgit has sensations
cosmic order, very pure, very sublime, but perhaps
a little aloof. This is what I got from her. We have always had very
tactful attitude, she never interfered in my work, and I - in hers.
We watch each other's work and talk about it. Enough
distant exchange of experience. Although my first ballet was made in her
company, and I am grateful to her. But I do not think that I was very dependent on her work,
- and many do not think so.
- What is the value of classical ballet today? Does he have a future
twenty-first century?.
- Complex issue. I should think. (Laughs.) I don't believe in
division of ballet into classical and modern. It's an old fashioned take on
dance. The future is in artistic community with other dance techniques. I
I use classical vocabulary as often as I can. For example, Forsythe
does it his way. I think that will be the case in the twenty-first century. I don't
I know where "pure" classics exist now - not museum exhibits, but
alive. Everything merges into one channel, the dancers become generalists,
choreographers think systematically.. Doors opened late in your country, and you
now you are experiencing in ballet the division that was in Europe at the beginning
century - with the appearance of free dance. Then the classical dancers
despised, and "modernists", in turn, denied the classics. But it's in
past.
- We are gradually going through the same process. What are your impressions of
modern Russian ballet?.
- I saw too little to know the true picture. And it was a long time ago
even before the collapse of the USSR. The possibilities of the dancers, as a rule, were great, but
choreographers are not free enough internally and think incoherently -
apparently due to ignorance of the work of many others in the world.
- And sometimes it seems to me that the opposite is true - from too good acquaintance with
other people's creativity. We've seen almost everyone. That's just with your
productions are familiar, unfortunately, in absentia. Is it true that Vladimir Vasiliev
invited you to work at the Bolshoi Theatre?
- Truth. But while everything is unofficial, we just discussed the possibilities. I
I still don’t know how the circumstances will turn out: I didn’t see the artists enough
Bolshoi Theater, but I treat this idea with great responsibility. Besides, you have
in Russia so far only short-term planning of future productions, while
I have plans for a long time. If I decide to stage and they will
all organizational issues have been agreed, I would like to do something taking into account
Russian ballet traditions and in the Russian manner.
- Vasiliev said in one interview that he sees you in the role of an operatic
director.
Well, if he said so...
- Which of the choreographers are you interested in?
- I try to watch as much as possible. There are two masters who are especially
important to me are Pina Bausch and Jiri Kilian. What they do is
exclusively, this never causes an internal dispute for me. interesting
and William Forsythe, Ohad Naharin, Teresa de Kersmaeker.
- A wonderful dancer and your wife Anna Laguna has been
the main "star" of your troupe. And then you worked with Sylvie Gil,
a classical ballerina - an associate and an artist of a completely different type ..
- Laguna danced in my productions for 20 years. I don't want to create her
"star" reputation - there are difficulties from a moral point of view. But,
of course, I used her artistic possibilities, while adhering to
a state of affairs that pacified everyone in the troupe.
As for Gilem.. They cannot be compared. I worked with Sylvie twice
made "Smoke", where she dances to the music of Arvo Pärt. I admire her
the possibilities of transforming from an ideal classical ballerina into an ideal
contemporary dance performer. But our contact was established with
labor. My work was related to video dance, and Gilem was very
interested in her classical performances. But then I saw her
susceptibility - and wanted to work with her again.
- How do you work with artists?
- I am a complete dictator. (Laughs.).
- What do you like to do besides ballet?
- I can not say anything scandalous. (Laughs.) To be with my
children. I enjoy being with them. I love reading and meeting
extraordinary people.
- Would you like to work in a drama theater now? How it was
earlier when you collaborated with Ingmar Bergman..
- Yes I would like to. Although the cooperation with Bergman was short. I was
young - only 20 years old - and worked as an assistant. We didn't see each other often, but
was of great importance to me. Although I have always gone my own way.
Stockholm-Moscow.
//* Source of information: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 03/31/98

Film about the creative path of Mats Ek A Portrait of the Choreographer Mats Ek (Keeping Dance Alive)
you can see here
http://vkontakte.ru/video-393589_139997448
Description: Matz Ek: portrait of a choreographer.
"Mats Ek is the greatest Swedish choreographer and one of the cult figures of the ballet theater of the late 20th century. He belongs to the generation of intellectual choreographers who began to stage in the 70s. Colleague and peer of John Neumeier, William Forsyth, Jiri Kilian, he is the only did not pass the "studios" with John Cranko in Stuttgart. Unlike the aforementioned "Stuttgarters", he almost does not turn to classical dance in his productions, which he knows, loves and respects. But Ek staged all the major "key ballets" precisely on the material of the classical heritage ballet theater of the 19th century, encroaching on the “holy of holies.” He proposed completely independent versions of “Swan Lake” (1987), “Sleeping Beauty” (1996) and even “Carmen” (1992). fatal for many 37 years, opened this list. It produced the effect of an exploding bomb. He was cursed by the classic purists and extolled to the skies by the modernists. But everyone looked at the rare unanimity. " (Violetta MAINIECE)

Festival "The Age of the Rite of Spring - the Age of Modernism" at the Bolshoi Theater. Part two

How late

Negotiations on staging Mats Ek's ballet at the Bolshoi have been going on for several years. There was even an idea to negotiate with the choreographer about the resumption of his The Rite of Spring especially for the festival dedicated to the centenary of Stravinsky's score. But on this issue, the Swede remained adamant, considering his "Spring" a failure.

They chose between two names - "Apartment" and "Bernard", and in the end "Apartment" won.

The question arises - why did Ek's choreography appear in Russia so late?

Several times his "Giselle" was brought to Russia (in 1998 performed by the Bavarian Ballet, in 2010 - by the Lyon Opera), and the shows were always accompanied by a full house.

There are many reasons. The main thing is the ambitions of such theaters as the Bolshoi and the Mariinka.

Since 2001, when attempts began to include some foreign novelties in the repertoire of our main musical theaters, the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky Theater hoped to order exclusive productions for such masters as John Neumeier, Mats Ek or Jiri Kilian. For some reason, they believed that the masters only dream of working with Russian artists. But

choreographers, whose time is scheduled for at least five years in advance, could only offer these theaters transfers of their old performances,

because on transfers b about Most of the work of getting into the style of a choreographer is done by assistants.

The Mariinsky Theater turned out to be faster - they asked Neumeier for three one-act performances, one of which would be a world premiere. In such a cunning way, the Mariinsky Theater received its exclusive.

There is evidence that the planning department of the Bolshoi at the beginning of the 2000s wanted to ask Neumeier to stage M. Lermontov's Masquerade. Didn't they know that Lermontov was unknown in the West?

As a result, John Neumeier staged his old ballet A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Bolshoi,

and it was not a great success of the theatre.

It's a similar story with Kilian - four of his old ballets are danced in Russia, but he himself never came to the production.

And Ek is a doubly busy person, as he is torn between drama theater and ballet.

In addition, he is not so overgrown with a system of production assistants. He always launches his wife and muse A. Laguna forward to show the artists some key moments of the performance, then another assistant rides, and Ek himself is the last to drive up. But Laguna herself still dances and plays in the theater, her time is very biased.

Nevertheless, Ek's ballets have been staged in theaters much less majestic than the Bolshoi for a long time, and we received his non-exclusive only in 2013.

Whose apartment?

The "Apartment" was created by Ek especially for the artists of the Paris Opera in 2000, as a friendly gesture of the company, which he loves and respects. By that time, the French repertoire already included Giselle and Bernard.

In the "Apartment" there are no main characters, no minor ones.

Here people are mixed with objects, and parts of the ballet with characters. Part 11: Bidet, TV, Pedestrians, Stove, Strange game, Waltz, Vacuum cleaners, Orchestra, Ensemble (when only the Flash Quartet musicians are visible), people - 12.

Ek himself describes his ballet as follows:

“Everything in it unfolds around objects that are associated with the name. The word "apartment" has a double meaning: it is the place where you live, but apart also means "apart". I tried to create something around these different meanings, to show the relationship of different events. The music was created by the Flashquartet specifically for this performance, and the musicians are an essential part of the Apartment wherever it is staged.”

Ek's performances cannot be described as ballets, since Ek is theater, cinema, circus, and modern dance.

We tried to look at the work of the Swedish choreographer through the prism of Lacan's psychoanalysis and find the place of the "Apartment" within his multi-layered work.

Window in Eka

The world of M. Ek cannot be confused with anything. Through and through Magritte with its ironic objectivity according to the principle "this is not a pipe" - and at the same time poignantly lyrical in all its, even the most absurd manifestations.

From time to time, the junctions of lyricism and absurdity, as if by chance, disperse,

and in this universe suddenly there are gaps, gaps. As dazzling as a flash of lightning, they ruthlessly illuminate the space beyond meaning and language in a moment of revelation.

When Ek is asked what he wanted to say with this or that symbol, he usually annoyedly answers that he does not have any symbols at all: "A door is just a door." As in the famous psychoanalytic joke: "Sometimes a banana (variants: cigar or cucumber) is just a banana."

However, sometimes a pipe is not even a pipe at all.

Ek was asked: why did Aurora lay a black ostrich egg in his "Sleeping"? Answer: Because Carabosse was a Negro...

Ek was asked about the door in connection with his “Apartment”. In the ballet, which at first glance seems to consist of funny and touching everyday mini-scenes (peeped by Ek from the window of a Parisian bistro), such a stunning gap appears in the fourth episode under the unpretentious name "Stove".

A man and a woman (married couple?) at the stove, a woman is cooking something in the oven, a man is languishing with curiosity, what is there. And smoke begins to pour from the stove - the first harbinger of an alarming split: the gentle smoke of love languor in Eco's ballet "Smoke"? or smoke from a macho cigar in the mouth of his own Carmen? The couple are arguing loudly.

Finally, the wife jerks open the oven door, removes the charred baby from there and calmly leaves.

An absolutely crushed husband with a baby in his arms slowly falls into the abyss that opens up under his feet.

Metaphors away

There are no symbols or metaphors here. Well, except at the level of a language game - in English there is, for example, such a slang expression: “put a bun in the oven”, “put a pie in the oven”, that is, make a woman pregnant. Perhaps there is a similar expression in Swedish. In any case, there is a stove (oven) with a terrible “pie” here. And a baby is just a baby.

The epic dimension of ancient Greek myths and tragedies suddenly opens up before us.

J. Lacan, the famous French psychoanalyst, who significantly influenced the development of philosophy in the 20th century, called Medea a true woman (in her ultimate, extreme incarnation). Out of love for the Argonaut Jason, she leaves everything behind: her homeland, her family, she kills her brother. In myths and tragedies, she appears as an ideal loving wife and mother, albeit a little foreign witch. However, when Jason betrays her, she does not enter into any "reasonable" negotiations.

Her revenge is not to kill Jason - that would be too easy - but to take away his most precious thing - the children.

But since these are also her children, whom she deeply loves, this gesture at the same time turns out to be a total sacrifice. With this gesture, she makes a hole in her beloved man, which from now on he cannot fill with anything. She is fully invested in her monstrous act, finding her most effective weapon in her very helplessness.

A true woman finds herself in a relationship with a man not as a wife or mother, but as one that goes beyond language, meaning, into the unknown territory of the absurd.

There, where there are no laws, including the laws of human attachments, where there is no possession - but there is pure being without boundaries.

To this enchanted land Medea, again a goddess, and not the wife of a mortal, is carried away on a solar chariot drawn by dragons. Jason is destined to die an inglorious death under the wreckage of the dilapidated ship Argo.

In a collision with the violent and immeasurable world of women, men retreat, fearing to lose themselves,

their narcissistic ego, to lose what they think they still own. At this point Lacan's description is not very flattering...

Medea Women

Being beyond the boundaries of language and meaning in terms of psychoanalysis is called Real. Here it often rhymes with madness.

Ekovsky Giselle easily slides into madness, because she always balances on its very edge,

E. Piaf and C. Chaplin in one person performed by A. Laguna. A wild forest animal, she fawns over Albert, and with a sudden ingenuous gesture, clearly imitating childbirth, she removes a shapeless red object like a pillow from under her skirt. Albert immediately acknowledges his paternity, rocking the pillow like that ill-fated father from The Stove, or like Prince Desire, to whom Aurora gives birth to the proverbial giant black egg.

Strange things lurk inside a woman, mysterious objects that frighten her, canceling the very idea of ​​\u200b\u200bmotherhood.

Aurora, another insane (drug addict, according to Ek), endowed with the angular frenetic plasticity of a teenager, is trying to escape from the captivity of the caricatured bourgeois comfort, where she is returned by Desire, who “saved” her. The black egg, from which she crawls away in horror, is another such typical Ek gaping.

There are plenty of giant eggs of this kind in "Giselle", and in "Carmen" it rises like a black frightening pedestal in the very center of the composition.

male embryos

Love pushes Giselle beyond the brink of madness. The Jeeps turn out to be patients in a lunatic asylum, but again on an epic scale - a kind of maenads, tearing off the last covers from Albert, so that he crouches naked in a fetal position at their feet.

The embryo is the typical position of the Ekovian male hero.

In the "Apartment" one of the episodes is called "Embryos". It is placed immediately after the episode with the victorious step of self-sufficient women with phallic vacuum cleaners. In "Sleeping" instead of cleaners with vacuum cleaners there will be fairies with mops or creepy old women with reticules, in "Giselle" - all the same crazy maenads, as well as village girls with ostrich eggs, in "Carmen" - flamenco dances, and in " Lebedin”, of course, are alien swans.

The prince from Swan Lake is writhing like an insensible embryo, suddenly seeing his naked mother instead of the buffoonish Rothbart.

This hiatus is already just Freud's "primal scene".

Even in the extremely lyrical "Place" the hero of Baryshnikov, who is always on the verge of a heart attack from the intensity of feelings directed at him by the heroine of Laguna, habitually forms a semi-embryo under the carpet.

All about my mother

Soft, boneless male bodies sag, obediently fall under the pressure of female wholeness, slipping away from the boundless loving concentration of their girlfriends. One of the heroes of the "Apartment", sprawled in front of the TV, flows around all the twists of his chair, from where his girlfriend, who has just emerged from the abyss of her own little madness - a dance with a bidet on her head, is trying to pick it out.

Another heroine in love drags her man like a doll, gently trying to ignite passion in him,

and then hanging it on that very door, then pulling it out of there and always trying to get through to it. It is enough for the heroines to poke a man with a finger or knock with his knee, or just stroke him a little - and he immediately falls, as if knocked down, at her feet, as if pulled out of a socket.

In the scene “Pedestrians” (“Apartment”), they are just stacked on a footpath. Even the heroic and daring Jose in Carmen is, of course, a puppy in front of an older woman.

Effortlessly, she pulls the ribbon-heart out of his chest, the ribbon from the groin of the bullfighter, and the ribbon from the back of another youngster.

She dearly loves them all, but the witch essence takes over. That is her nature. The prince successfully marries Odette, but immediately after the wedding, she turns her black, olivia side to him. And he is again a child in the hands of an imperious and loving mother.

There is nothing unambiguous in Ek's universe, he safely avoids any clichés,

always keeping in a lively, quivering, gentle and ironic register of relations, never allowing falsehood and pathos. That is why he manages to reach pure structures, the creative play of the unconscious, free from the dictates of false truths.

His woman is tender, crazy, dangerous, passionate, a bit of a witch, a bit of a mother, but always in dialogue with a man, always calling for love.

The only time Ek explores the image of a truly terrible and merciless woman - a mother holding her daughters captive and turned off from a love relationship - he appoints a man to this role.

Such is Bernarda from Bernarda's House. And her erotic dance, mixed with Catholic pathos on the verge of blasphemy, is not a dance with her lover, but with a doll taken from a wall crucifix. A weak but humane man (that is, as we would say in the language of psychoanalysis, who has passed through the inevitable law of castration, the prohibition of incest) Bernard does not need. She needs a deity from the realm of the Real. And at the same time, the Jesus doll in her incestuous embrace, whom she/he voluptuously presses to her naked torso, is a baby boy completely belonging to her. She will not sacrifice him in a fit of despair and love, like Medea, but simply devour him herself. That is why she will never be a true woman, but just a fake transvestite.

The inhabitants of the "Apartment" in the Bolshoi

It cannot be said that the artists of the Bolshoi Theater ideally got used to the characters created by Ek for the Parisian troupe. Ours have mastered well the Ek language, which they had known before through epigone ballets, which filled the niche of the avant-garde here in Russia in the absence of originals.

Farewell Mats Ek

Vita Khlopova

No sooner had the new year 2016 arrived, we had not yet had time to move away from the shock of the farewell "Bolero" by Sylvie Guillem, when the great Mats Ek and his muse Ana Laguna announced their farewell to the stage. What does it mean to say goodbye to the choreographer's stage? This means that he does not plan to stage new works anymore, but what is most tragic is that he does not want to maintain the quality of the old ones. In simple words, together with Mats Ek, all his works from all theaters leave the stage, wherever they go. We hope you, at least, managed to watch the "Apartment" at the Bolshoi Theater.

Ana Laguna and Mats Ek perform "Memory". Photo - http://houstondance.org/

In 2015, the great Swedish choreographer celebrated his 70th birthday, of which he spent 50 years in the theater. Therefore, you can understand his desire for an empty diary and unplanned meetings.
Of course, he is a little cunning: he says that this is not a farewell, but just an evening of good dancing. And that you can never say "never". But this decision, taken two years ago, seems to him the most logical at the moment. He does not trust his assistants with his work, he says that many people work this way, but he must control everything himself. And he doesn't want to. Tired.

“I have been on stage for 50 years. Better to stop before you are asked to do so. Life lasts longer than work."

Probably, many people remember video cassettes, where over the crossed-out “Home Alone 1,2,3” was scrawled “Giselle. Mats Ek. These cassettes, rewritten to a loss of quality, opened the world of modern dance for us in Russia. Deprived of information about modern choreography of the 20th century, dancers, choreographers and researchers carefully passed Eco choreography from hand to hand. To say that we were shocked by the interpretation of the painfully familiar story of Giselle, whom he placed in a psychiatric hospital, is an understatement. Probably, it was his work that we first saw entirely from foreign modern dance. The rest is in snatches and fragments.

No fixed points decided to remember what a wonderful creative journey this fantastic creative couple had and thank them for the pleasure they gave us.

Photo courtesy of Stephanie Berger

Niklas and Mats Ek hold their mother, Birgit Kulberg, in their arms. Photo: Sven-Erik Sjoberg

Despite the fact that Mats Ek was born into an artistic family, he came to dance rather late.

Birgit Kuhlberg - not only the mother of Mats Ek, but practically the mother of modern ballet in Sweden. In addition to her troupe - Cullberg Ballet - Sweden has always had the oldest ballet theater, the Royal Swedish Ballet, where young Birgit also staged her ballets. But before that, she was educated at the Kurt Joss School and at the Royal Academy in London. In 1967, she created her own troupe Cullberg Ballet, which at that time included only 8 dancers. Each of her artists was a soloist, and therefore all received the same salary.

One of her key productions was a ballet based on the play by the famous Swedish playwright August Strindberg - “ Miss Julie» (1950). And 64 years after the premiere, in 2014, this work entered the repertoire of the Paris Opera.

"Miss Julie" performed by the Paris Opera Ballet

Performed by: Eve GRINSZTAJN/Audric BEZARD

Eka's father Anders Ek - also a well-known artist in Sweden, but he had little to do with choreography. Anders was a famous theater actor at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, who often starred in Bergman's films as well.

Mats Ek's mother - Birgit Kulberg

Mats Ek's father - Anders Ek

With such an excellent genetic set, it is unlikely that someone great would have come out of Mats Ek. And if his brother Niklas Ek- followed in the footsteps of his mother and became a wonderful dancer, and his twin sister - Malin Ek- became a dramatic actress, then Mats hesitated for a long time and balanced between these types of art. Neither dance nor theater at first attracted him seriously. As he later admitted: “I wanted this choice to be truly mine. I didn't want to imitate my mother.". For the first time, he stood up to the machine only at the age of 17, and even then, as part of summer courses. They were held Donja Feuer, who danced with Martha Graham and Paul Taylor, and later moved to Stockholm to work at the Royal Dramatic Theatre. There she met Bergman, with whom she subsequently collaborated for quite a long time.

But neither his mother Birgit Kulberg nor Donja Feuer were able to captivate the young Mats with dance: after completing his studies in theater, he began working in the puppet theater. And only at the age of 27, in 1972, he returns to dance, and enters the Cullberg Ballet troupe.

First success. "House of Bernard Alba" 1978

The first production dates back to 1976, but the first success is undoubtedly "The House of Bernarda Alba" based on the drama of the same name by Federico Garcia Lorca in 1978. It was then that Ek's style - a mixture of Kurt Joss's biting caricature and Martha Graham's meaningful movement - manifested itself so clearly.
The role of Bernarda Alba - the imperious crazy mother of four daughters, who buried not only her husband, but with the promulgation of his will to the inheritance and the opportunity to marry his younger daughters - was put on a male dancer. Grieving for her dead husband for 8 years, Bernard Alba puts her daughters in her world of mourning, each of whom would love and learn about the world. The only reminder of a man in the house is the furniture, which has coarse soldiers' boots instead of legs. Bernarda is inflexible not only in character, but also in the choreographic text: stretched into a string, she allows herself to relax and stoop only at the final moment, when she is left alone on stage. Even at the moment of revealing her daughter's suicide, Bernarda, unable to squeeze out any emotion from herself, does not react.
One of the few ballets by Mats Ek, where the title role is not given to his main muse - Ana Laguna. Even if this ballet, among others, is removed from the repertoire of various stages (including the Paris Opera, where it has always been brilliantly performed), there is an official old recording of the performance of the Kulberg Ballet. (on which you can spend an hour of your time just below)

Poster for the ballet "Bernard Alba's House"

Photo by Leslie Spinks from MATS EK, Max Ström Publishing

New wine in old wineskins

After becoming artistic director of the Kulberg Ballet in 1980, Mats Ek began his brilliant series of reinterpretations of the classical heritage. Indeed, for two hundred years, who has not been tired of watching the torment of the poor village girl Giselle or the well-known fairy tale about the sleeping beauty. (Only Swan is not tired, but Ek will take it too).

Mats Ek, with his inherent humor and intellect, twists and shakes up old stories, moving them into the realities of the 20th century. But most importantly, this psychological analysis of all these well-known stories has indeed been suggested for a long time.

“Each fairy tale is reminiscent of a charming village house, on the doors of which it says “The territory is mined.”

"Giselle" 1982
And so, in 1982, Mats Ek staged the first ballet of this series, after which he became already known outside of Stockholm. "Giselle" by Mats Ek thundered all over the world (it was shown more than 300 times in 28 countries), and also made famous the leading lady - Ana Laguna. Although the critics were indignant, many still later admitted that it was Ekov's "Giselle" that gave a new direction to modern dance. So: a young village girl becomes a simple naive eccentric in a funny beret. Albert is not a count at all, but quite a city dandy. The backdrops of the first and second acts don't even need a test for corruption: the mountains turn out to be female breasts, and the decor of the psychiatric hospital is stuffed with dismemberment. Giselle does not die at the end of the first act, but, as usual, goes crazy. Actually, the second act takes place not in a cemetery, but in a real mental hospital, where, you guessed it, Mirta is the head nurse, desperately reminiscent of Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But still, Mats Ek did not change the moral of the ballet: Giselle, with a bandaged head, opens up a new world to Albert and enriches his spoiled soul, but, unfortunately, there will be no happy ending here either. His final nudity is not Ek's outrageousness, but a way of showing Albert's complete renewal, the rejection of his past life. Hilarion covers him with a blanket, but what happens to Albert is up to each of us, as Ek leaves the finale open.

Swan Lake, photo Gert Weigelt

"Swan Lake" 1987.

Of course, “Swan” has been overgrown with various versions since the premiere: sometimes a happy ending, sometimes a tragic one, but the Freudian analysis was applicable here almost from the very beginning. But even here Ek found something to surprise. If other choreographers (except, probably, Matthew Bourne) were inspired by swans that exist on the water - elegant, graceful, then Matsu Ek was interested in showing them on land: ridiculous, clubfoot and hissing disgustingly. As for Odette/Odile, the choreographer's idea is that anyone wants to find his ideal princess (Odette), but he has to be content with an earthly difficult woman (Odile). Well, or: in any woman, both the ideal princess and the real woman coexist, the question is how to get along harmoniously with them. Siegfried, on the other hand, exists under the heel of his domineering mother, which gave rise to many passages from critics from different countries about the Oedipus complex.

"Carmen" 1992.

Eck's "Carmen" may be the closest interpretation of this image of Prosper Merimee. We are accustomed to a sonorous beauty with a pomaded curl on her temple, to a fatal seductress, taking static poses for beautiful photos. Carmen Matsa Eka changes men whenever she wants, she has a job in a tobacco factory, she is independent. Jose, on whose behalf the story is being told, on the contrary, wants what a woman usually wants: a ring on her finger, a family, simple human happiness. But with Ek, the roles are reversed, because Ek considers the modern woman too. She is hard to please, even harder to lure with some ghostly family hearth, and certainly hard to satisfy her sexual appetite.

Ana Laguna as Carmen

"Sleeping Beauty" 1996

Of course, one can understand those who, 20 years ago and now, do not accept Ek's new interpretations, many people think this is a mockery of classical plots. But least of all, you can accuse the choreographer of bullying. His work is brilliant not only as a choreographer, but also as a marketer. If the theater wants to see young viewers, then they need something to attract. Not Disney stories about eternal love, but those that can be understood by the new generation. This is what new readings of Ek attract young audiences to the theater.

"Sleeping Beauty"

The Sleeping Beauty, staged at the Hamburg Ballet, was inspired by a scene he saw on the forecourt of some European city: young girls, hooked on a needle, staggered with completely glassy eyes, as in a dream, syringes are lying everywhere, it’s hard to tempt run away. Spoiled girls who think they are old enough to exist without parents, but in fact - they are drawn into the maelstrom of violence and drug trafficking. Here she is - the Sleeping Beauty of the 20th century. The prick of the fairy Carabosse will be in a vein. And sleep is an existence in heroin addiction, from which even the handsome prince will not be able to pull her out. Modern "sleeping beauties", hints Ek, there is no way to count on a magic kiss.

Mats Ek's style is a very high quality mix of his knowledge. He is not a direct heir to Kurt Joss's dance theater, but only a blind person can fail to see Joss at Ek's. A ballet intellectual who managed to combine the classical basis, the technique of Martha Graham, the dance theater of Yoss, the expression of Mary Wigman into his style, Ek makes his “dance theater” unique. Deep plies in the second position, arms extended like arrows, wide body amplitudes, continuity of gesture, strange jumps - all this is clearly visible in his work.
Well-versed in dramatic theatre, he also often applies his knowledge of it to his productions.

Probably, with the current love to mark all age criteria for viewing, none of these ballets can be shown to a child, too cruel a world opens up in them. But his message is always perfectly readable, and everything is in order with morality, but, probably, to get acquainted with wonderful fairy tale ballets, Mats Ek's version should not be considered in the first place.

Another muse

Sylvie Guillem in "Bye"
photo by Bill Cooper, courtesy New York City Center

Sometimes you can hear the opinion that this or that choreographer sings in his ballets either a woman (Balanchine, for example) or a man (Paul Taylor or Béjart), but Ek sang only Ana Laguna. Out of the box for classical and contemporary ballet, this beautiful Spaniard was given to Ek to embody his best female characters. An absolute chameleon, Laguna looks exactly like Carmen, Giselle or the Nurse in each of her roles on stage, erasing her ego in the works of the master. Possessing not only incredible technique, but also the ability to get used to her strong heroines as an actor, Laguna entered herself into the history of modern dance as one of its brightest performers. If suddenly after this article you decide to revise the work of Ek, then be sure to watch them in the recording with Laguna. You will hardly find anyone more innocent than her Giselle and sexier than her Carmen.

Ana Laguna as Giselle in Mats Ek's ballet of the same name.
Leslie Spinks

And if it becomes more or less clear about the performer of all the main roles of Eka's ballets, then the second muse of the choreographer is Sylvie Guillem- benefited from this tandem no less than Ek himself. Guillem, who long ago decided to expand her repertoire with modern choreography, moved from the "beautiful" modern Béjart ballet to the "ugly" stories about an ordinary woman.

Smoke/Wet Woman 1995

In 1995, Mats Ek directed two short films for Sylvie Guillem in the film-dance genre: "Smoke" and "Wet Woman". Familiar to many, "Smoke" was staged not for the stage, but for the film about Sylvie Guillem in the modern choreography of "Evidentia". Here, Mats Ek's 52-year-old elder brother Niklas, a brilliant dancer with an excellent school (Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and Maurice Béjart) plays a magnificent duet with a classical dance prima. Full of humor, gags and finesse, Smoke leaves no choice but to watch it over and over again. It was this duet that inspired Mats Ek to create "Solo for Two", which was brilliantly performed by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Ana Laguna.

Sylvie Guillem in Mats Ek's Wet Woman

« Bye" 2012

Saying goodbye to the stage, Guillem included Ek's touching number "Bye" in her tour. There, with the help of a video sequence, she went out of her world, where she was an indestructible queen, into the world of ordinary people, where she, thin and sometimes nondescript, is easy to miss.

Sylvie Guillem in Mats Ek's production of Goodbye.
Images courtesy Sadler's Wells Theater

Ek in the Bolshoi

Diana Vishneva and Denis Savin in the ballet The Apartment by Mats Ek.
Photo by Damir Yusupov/Bolshoi Theater

The last evening of Mats Ek's farewell block "From Black to Blue".

“There were three performances in total. If the first " She was black “ 1994, intellectual and gloomy, full of complex compositional constructions, rhythm changes, software for the work of Max Ek, and, according to the name of the whole evening, the starting point of the path, then what is this “Blue”, to which the movement is going?

„Solo for 2 “ 1996. Abstract wall with doorway, stairs. There are two main colors on the stage - brown, blue, and their shades. Light shimmers between them, and it seems that they are sides of the same plane.
The young man has a brown loose suit ( Oscar Solomonson) and the girl's blue dress ( Dorothy Delaby). Color and plane are the environment in which the action takes place. The girl runs her finger along the edge of the stairs, lingering at the transition from horizontal to vertical, continues the plane of the wall with her palm. The duet of two heroes is also often the construction of an invisible geometric space, where arms and legs indicate planes, where the angles of these planes are constantly changing. But physiological gestures are suddenly wedged into these abstract dance variations, such as the characteristic rhythmic movements of sexual intercourse or sniffing a partner. Or the heroine will suddenly bury her nose in the hero's ass. The heroes completely change clothes, change roles, trying on each other's movements. They explore the space, either hanging on the wall, or climbing the stairs head down, or even jumping over the wall into the unknown.

Suddenly, the backdrop pulls back, revealing brickwork, an electrical panel, and wires at the back of the stage. Workers dismantle the wall decorations, remove a hidden mat with a large white cross in the middle, bring a pile of firewood and a stump. So, without intermission, the action moves on to the next performance „ Axe “.
Under Albinoni's adagio, a stooped elderly man is chopping wood: he takes a log, sets it on a stump, a wide swing of the ax - the log splits into two parts. In his whole figure, in his position of the body, in a little baggy clothes - in everything there is some kind of fatigue, doom, humility to this work, but at the same time dignity.
His action and existence on the stage is like a miniature come to life depicting peasant seasonal work from the hour book of the Duke of Berry.

After a minute or two, an elderly woman appears, her gray hair pulled back into a braid, wearing a long, coarse skirt and a jacket of a muted brownish-greenish color. The woman crosses the stage from one angle, then from another, she is characterized by wide waves of her arms, not very slight tilts of her inflexible lower back. The old man does not pay any attention to her, he is immersed in his monotonous work.
A woman takes a log, presses it to her chest, like a baby, makes a circle, she lies down herself, like a log on a stump, as if exposing herself under an ax. Finally, moving with small steps backwards, she bumps into the back of the hero with her back, and thus stops the work of his body with her body.

The subsequent duet of two old men finally turns the performance into a parable, into a metaphor of life: their inflexible, careful plastique now and then refers to a dry tree, as to the image of an old man, "doomed to a log house", and, in the end, to be burned. But how much wisdom, simplicity, unconditional acceptance of the order of things is in this dance. It seems that these are not specific Ana Laguna and Ivan Auzeli, but the eternal “Once upon a time there was an old man and an old woman” from the fairy tales of all the peoples of the world.

The fact that these two performances went on without a pause gave the viewer the right to consider them as one in the perspective of the other, and, perhaps, as a portrait of the choreographer in time. It is not for nothing that in the very title of the evening there is a motif of a path, a direction.
All four dancers came out to bow and Mats Ek himself threw his farewell bouquet to the audience.”

Marina Zimoglyad

Swedish dancer, choreographer and theater director Mats Ek was born in 1945 in Malmö into an artistic family. His father was the actor Andres Ek, his mother was the ballerina and choreographer Birgit Kulberg, who founded the Kulberg Ballet troupe. All three children in this family also connected their lives with art: Niklas became a dancer, Malin - Mats' twin sister - a dramatic actress, but Mats did not immediately decide on the direction. First he studied in Stockholm the dance technique of M. Graham, then he was fascinated by drama theater and even puppet theater. Since 1976 he has been working in Stockholm at the Royal Dramatic Theater as an assistant director, and at the same time in the Puppet Theatre.

However, a few years later, Mats returns to the field of dance. After completing a course at the Stockholm Ballet Academy, in 1973 he danced with his mother's troupe, and in the next two years in Düsseldorf, with the ballet troupe of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.

In 1976, Mats Ek made his debut as a choreographer - with the Kulberg Ballet troupe he staged the ballet The Batman to music based on the play by H. Buchner Woyzeck. In subsequent years, new productions appeared: "Saint George and the Dragon", the musical accompaniment of which was composed of fragments of folk and popular music. The same "team" was the music of the ballet "Soveto" - this time jazz and rock, and the main plot theme was the uprising against apartheid in South Africa. In this production, his mother and company director Birgit Kuhlberg appeared on stage for the last time - she played the role of Mother Africa.

In 1980-1981, the choreographer staged a number of performances at the Netherlands Ballet Theater: "Over There", "Something Like" to the music of G. Guretsky, "Journey" to the music of S. Reich. He also continues to stage ballets for his mother's troupe, which since 1980 he has led with her, and since 1985 - alone, in particular, "Bernarde" based on the play by F. G. Lorca "The House of Bernarda Alba" to music, F. Tarregi, E Villa Lobosa and.

Infinitely respecting classical dance, M. Ek focused on modern in his work. He considers the grotesque to be his path to beauty, strives for parody, the overthrow of authority, and even gravitates toward the theater of the absurd. This is especially evident in his versions of classical ballets. The effect of an exploding bomb was produced by his "" - a combination of classical dance, modern and minimalist gestures. In the USSR, such a "Swan Lake" caused a storm of rejection: barefoot bald swans, convulsive, "grimacing" movements, ugly poses ... But for the choreographer it was a way to show the duality of the human soul: beautiful and elegant in the water, swans become "clumsy" and aggressive on shore. Just as unexpected and even defiant was his "", where the girls in white are by no means jeeps, but ... patients in a psychiatric clinic. In Sleeping Beauty, Princess Aurora turns into a drug addict who is brought back in life by the first decent man she meets.

Mats Ek himself considered his production of The Rite of Spring to be unsuccessful, nevertheless the idea of ​​the performance was very original. The choreographer replaces the central motif of the ballet - sacrifice - with ... a wedding, which, by the way, does not contradict the pagan worldview at all: after all, a wedding is also a ritual death. And for a modern person, marriage is associated not only with hopes for happiness, but also with certain sacrifices ... The main characters of the ballet are the father, mother, daughter and her fiancé, who are waiting for an important event.

For the ballet "Carmen" to the music of J. Bizet / R. Shchedrin Mats Ek was awarded the Grammy Award. And here he remained true to his creative principles: the ballet is not a presentation of events in chronological order, but a kind of "kaleidoscope". In the understanding of the choreographer, Carmen is a woman who behaves like a man, hence the sweeping, rough movements, the heroine even smokes a cigar with men, while Jose, with his desire to build a home, on the contrary, looks more like a woman.

In many productions of M. Ek, the main female roles were played by his wife, the ballerina Ana Laguna. He also collaborated with the French dancer Sylvie Guillem, for whom he staged ballet films to the music of A. Pärt - “Smoke” and “Wet Woman”, a dance piece “Farewell” to the music of L. Beethoven. He created productions for Mikhail Baryshnikov - "The Other" to the music of E. Satie, "Place".

Being primarily a choreographer, Mats Ek is not only a choreographer. The experience gained in his youth in the drama theater was not in vain - since the late 1990s, he has staged many performances at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm, where he once began his creative activity: "Don Juan" by J. B. Moliere, " Andromache" by J. Racine, "The Jew of Malta" by K. Marlo, "The Cherry Orchard" by A.P. Chekhov, "The Merchant of Venice" by W. Shakespeare, "Game of Dreams" and "Sonata of Ghosts" by A. Strindberg. And in this area, M. Ek remains the same bold innovator as in ballet: for example, in the play The Cherry Orchard, some moments (in particular, Gaev’s monologue addressed to the “respected closet”) are replaced by choreographic inserts. This performance, like The Game of Dreams, was presented at the Chekhov Festival in Moscow in 2010.

Mats Ek also showed his worth in the field of opera directing, staging K. V. Gluck's opera Orpheus at the Royal Swedish Opera in 2007.

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