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Prelude: Reaction to the Premiere
The ballet Prelude has made its world premiere. Nacho Duato's new production demonstrated that the distance between classical and modern dance is not as great as we often think. The ballet proceeds as in a single breath, yet translating its impressions into simple language is none too easy. The ballet columnists of the daily papers are struggling with what is “lost in translation”.



Vedomosti opines that Prelude “...is impossible in classical art. It is something almost completely unknown on the stage, a revelation of mutual understanding, an attempt to find a point of contact and to create a common language. The process is sometimes entrancing, more often prosaic and laborious, but for ballet lovers it is absolutely captivating.” This ballet enables us to understand “how a style is created, one that with time becomes… classical, perfect.” (Anna Galaida, 'In test mode', Vedomosti, 17 June 2011).

Kommersant thinks that in Prelude “...seasoned ballet aficionados will find refined psychological insights, soaring romanticism and the cruel drama of relationships”, which “is all built on the strong foundation of classical academic dance, refracted through the prism of an original choreographic style.” Changeable emotions couple with the fluidity of choreographic forms: “...the suddenness of aerial impulses are cooled by innuendo, a transparent veil of confusion flits over the inner harmony.” (Olga Fedorchenko, 'Duato has reached for the expanses of the Universe', Kommersant St. Petersburg, 17 June 2011).

Kommersant's reviewer highlighted the performance of Leonid Sarafanov. His character “unites independent worlds, he is a kind of intermediary between them – an eternal wanderer, a dancing vagrant and the lord of a plastique world”, which “interferes in human destinies and relationships in search of a conciliatory principle.”

The Nezavisimaya Gazeta columnist remarks on the duet of Irina Perren and Marat Shemiunov: “It is they, unencumbered by accessories or a variety of colours, who were called upon to carry the principal part. They mastered a unique plasticity, in which the expressionistic cry and liquid beauty of the modern style was evident, to tell a story of Paradise and its loss, the uneasiness of the soul and the eternal perfection of fully expressive bodies.” (Natalia Zvenigorodskaya. 'Prelude after Death'. Nezavisimaya Gazeta. 17 June 2011).

The Kommersant review concludes with an exquisite metaphor: Prelude is “...a choreographic contour map of Nacho Duato's dance universe. Roaming the gloomy alleys of choreographic post-modernism, you emerge into a brightly illuminated space of pure classical dance, subsequently to be whisked off into a nirvana of cosmic being.”