Театральная компания ЗМ

Every direction is North

Ballet Moscow
Presented in the frame of Russian Case 2018 Golden Mask winner in the category “Best Production in Contemporary Dance”, 2017
Contemporary dance

Choregraphy Karine Ponties
Original music David Monceau
Set design Guillaume Toussaint Fromentin
Costume design Sergey Illarionov

Dancers: Ilya Karpel, Roman Mustafin, Andrey Ostapenko, Alexey Narutto, Andrey Tihonov, Ilya Romanov, Alexander Shuisky

Running time 55 min
Age category 12+
I feel that with the Ballet Moscow performers I can do so much more about the work with the human body. Every time I offer them a movement, one or another, I can see them challenging themselves. They are like kids, as their thoughts are chaotic – apparently like those of kids during a game – and they follow these thoughts. They manage to express feelings not through the emphasis or frame of signs, but through the intensity and submission of their bodies to the external driving forces. They have those things I’m looking for in the art: accuracy, passionate enthusiasm and self-denial.
Karine Ponties
The improvisations by the Ballet Moscow performers are sincere, fervent and acrobatic. Merciless full force jumps on the knees, break stands on the neck, hand bounces, crossovers, flic-flacs, rolls and zigzags of convulsions testify with all the clarity that there is no harmony in the world, the search for one’s own path often leads to a dead end. Salvation from impotence and loneliness can be found in a strongly masculine fraternity: compositions in which the desperate seven, without breaking the chains of their hands wriggle, splash and beat like the tail of a dragon, inspire optimism with their ingenuity. But it is the tangle of bodies woven in friendly hugs that becomes the leading mise-en-scene.
newspaper „Kommersant“
An hour-long conversation of seven young and very energetic men about loneliness and growing up has been staged by the well-known French-Belgian choreographer Karine Ponties, for whom this is not the first collaboration with Russian dancers. EVERY DIRECTION IS NORTH has grown out of improvisations that the choreographer placed into a well-calculated form, cutting away psychologisms and focusing on movement. The dancers of the “Ballet of Moscow” took Ponties’ approach close to heart: in a rhythmically and lexically diverse show there is a place for exploring their relationship, as well as for the passion which is so typical for Russian performers, however rigid the framework they are placed into. Ponties’ previous two works with “Dialogue Dance” company from Kostroma were also nominated for the Golden Mask Award.

Kristina Matvienko