The art of dancing makes it possible to not only illustrate classical works with plastique, but also express attitudes to reality and communicate with the audience in a language of motions. This statement was once again proved to the audience by Radu Poklitaru, a Kyiv choreographer, with his young dancing team “Kyiv Modern Ballet.”
The choreographer used what is essentially a cult literary work-”Ward No.6,” a short story by Anton Chekhov-to create a plastic drama of the same name. However, the ballet staged by Poklitaru is not just the dramatized version of the story. Rather, it is a unique image-association based on its plot, as stage directors like to say as if justifying themselves before the author and the viewers. Poklitaru is not trying to justify himself; he simply puts the familiar plot into his own plane, where he feels free and at ease. That is why he remains honest before numerous fans of the “Kyiv Modern Ballet” theater.
The musical solution for the staging was, as usual, unconventional. Only taste and preferences of the stage director can account for this kind of choice. At the same time, the plasticity and visual impression of the ballet dancers’ movements dictate, define, and put forth their own demands. Thus, the works of the Estonian composer Arvo Part became the musical component of the ballet Ward No.6.
Norm and deviation, the doctor and the patient-a thin line divides people and forces them into certain spiritual, psychological, and physical limits. After all, in the madhouse there are both the insane and the doctors. The latter are attracted by the inner world of the madmen not just professionally but also emotionally. They are on a slippery ground-their “communication” is happening on a white slippery surface (stage setting by Andrii Zlobin).
For a doctor an inmate may be more than just a patient or the subject of research-he can be the best interlocutor. Their conversations are shrouded in the mystery of danger. That is because the patient and the doctor can always switch places, and each of them will be lonely in his own world.
The plastic dialogues take place in a somewhat psychedelic room with a table that instantly transforms into a bed. Only five actors take part in these dialogues, which is quite unusual for Poklitaru’s stagings because they typically involve the entire crew of actors. The actors are dressed in extravagant and even somewhat eccentric costumes designed by Hanna Ipatieva. They look as if they are chosen not only by the stage director but also by life itself.
The choreographic etudes are plastically harmonious at one moment and ragged just like pieces of feelings at the next, making an impression of some kind of an alchemy show in which the participants find their own philosophy, their own world, and keep on searching incessantly. Moreover, the limited number of the characters presupposes a certain unity and synchronism in actions, motions, and plastic tricks.
Poklitaru’s ballet cannot do without its traditional cliches — I mean the distinct laughing and screaming on stage. The sounds appear at the point when it is hard to be silent for any longer, and it is already time to let out at least some sounds if not words. This is even more true of a staging in which the action takes place in a madhouse and the stage director whose interpretations of universally familiar plots are unique in their allegories. Poklitaru can also transform a performance, in the European fashion, into a small show, combining it with promo-actions, presentations, and other events. For example, the staging of Ward No.6 was preceded by a presentation of Yurii Stanishevsky’s book History of the Ukrainian Ballet, which describes both the masters of the plastic art and our contemporaries.
