Red Exile isn't dead - he's just been distracted...

So 'real life' has intervened in the last few weeks in the shape of punishing work schedule; quite a lot of travel; a friend (and her 46kg dog) temporarily moving in and - which has been very stressy - the search for new offices in Moscow.

of course there comes a point, blog-wise, where after a longish absence it almost becomes intimidating to do the 'here's what I've been doing' catch-up post. I have got over this, however, by just dumping highlights from my facebook account. So here we go (with more shockingly bad photography from my handheld PDA), the recent past:

Yesterday

Red Exile is spending another public holiday in the office; surprised how humid it is outside, which is early in the season.
1:43pm
May 1
I was in Prague on business
Red Exile says: "If I should die think only this of me"... I like Shiraz with my chocolate course.
12:25am
April 30

Red Exile is watching the night twinkle on the Danube; a glass of bubbles to hand; a violin being played in the background.
10:40pm

Red Exile says "OK, so there is some football match coming up in Moscow? No, I don't have tickets and I gather the street price is edging towards Euros 1,000" - crazy! Since 'Chelski' has now won a place in this match, I am told the price is now Euros 4,500 for non-VIP tickets.
3:34pm

Red Exile does not have a PhD in applied sciences and therefore is struggling to work the shower in his hotel bedroom. Which was the Four Seasons - which is superb - and it's restaurant, Allegro, quite unbelievably good (and the holder of Prague's first and only Michelin star)
9:09am
Red Exile I have a table with a view; a pigeon breast; a 1/2 bottle of Côte Rotie: I love life, Prague & everything…
10:53pm

Red Exile is now over a bumpy flight - and normal, smiley service is resumed. We thank you for your patience in this temporary service difficulty.
9:39pm

Red Exile I have *never* thought of the Czechs as other than opportunists and wasters and, 30 minutes in, 4 yrs l8r, I see I was right! I am inclined to be in a very bad mood after landing - partly angry at myself for having been so scared 'up there', which is silly, and partly (justifiably) because Czech immigration, clearing flights in from China and Russia, didn't open the EU Citizens line; until people like me pointed out how crazy it was that we'd have to queue with all the non-EU citizens being admitted with visas. Also, the taxi system sucks.
8:18pm

Red Exile says the plane is what? Late?!? Arrgh!
5:24pm

Red Exile Has now had Aeroflot baked goods and a drink so calmer, checked in and now only to ponder age of plane about to fly...
4:30pm

Red Exile says my life is *so stressful* it is no wonder I have high blood pressure and the heart of an 80 yr old. *Made plane just on time*.
4:16pm

Red Exile hopes everyone enjoys Thursday's neo-cold war parade - cos rehearsals for it have screwed Moscow traffic even more than usual & I am l8 4 plane. The parade is 9th May actually. That didn't make the traffic less sucky.
3:02pm

Red Exile notes that one of his two female house guests is on heat. The 46kg, 4-legged one. Words cannot express... They're moving on Monday. When my mother arrives... I don't get my apartment to myself for another two weeks...
10:19am
April 28

Red Exile is off to a business lunch in brilliant sunshine.
12:00pm

Red Exile added a new photo to New offices - bought 'off-plan': what can go wrong? OK, so the building is still a 'work in progress' in a completely gutted, exterior cladding yet to be junked and re-done and completely needs rewiring and plumbing kind-of-way. But the developer *promises* me it will be ready for entry June 1st. This is good: our current lease expires 31st May.
11:46am

Red Exile Madama Butterfly / Stanislavski etc: tonight Irina Arkad'eva was *a goddess*. Act 2 finale a weepy *triumph*!
10:15pm

Red Exile is @ v. gd performance of Madama Butterfly, fuelling up before original 2hr version of Act2.
8:08pm

Red Exile is at the opera, Madama Butterfly, eyeing chandeliers warily... see April 18th for the last comment to make sense.
6:37pm

Red Exile has discovered of himself that the pathology of his fear of flying is fear of heights. He discovered this in the glass lift of Moscow's uber-elitny Lotte Plaza.
5:30pm

Red Exile Apropos his new office space, a mantra: elitny. Designerny. Loftny. *Not Pafosny*. Pafosny? Think Paris Hilton, Donatella Versace, Las Vegas and anything by Dolce & Gabbana. yes, that's right 'gay' (in the sense US highschoolers use the term) and achingly vulgar.
2:24pm

Red Exile has signed an office lease!! Designer space; central & official. Yay!

7:30pm


Red Exile is so-near-and-yet-so-far. Do we have a lease deal or not?!?!
3:42pm


Red Exile was feeling wildly exuberant; but is now back under control to face the day's trials.
9:34am
April 24

Red Exile is an idiot! Left ballet ticket @home! So sulking shopped at Tsum & now @Cafe Bar-boy... which is what one of the girls I know Christened café des artistes - the name just stuck somehow

7:46pm

Red Exile is off to the ballet tonight. German State Rhine company. Stravinsky. Rites of Spring. A dose of sanity and love in my fraught life.
5:18pm

Red Exile "To the FSB senior officer whose convoy cut me up today but then whose car was pranged by his own follow vehicle not breaking fast enough: hah! Tosser LOL". This was really too funny to watch. Made my morning actually...
10:34am
April 23

Red Exile actually dares hope there *might* be a glimmer of hope. On the property side of things...
11:11pm

Red Exile has had, in truth, a $*#@ing shite day; and sometimes feels all the burden is on him as (some) just swish about... no doubt his default inner cheeriness will be back o/night. I was stressed, just leaving the office, over-worked and miserable. It happens...
9:29pm

Red Exile just came up with a strategy "find a 30-something woman, make her pretty and let's get her to cry on television" and is concerned that he doesn't feel cheap. It was a good strategy. And I am not cheap... 400 Euros an hour baby!
12:04pm
April 22

I was in Warsaw -I am not hugely fond of Warsaw...
Red Exile has too much work to do and no time to do it.
11:22pm

Red Exile has turned down the chance to eat escalope of crocodile. No kidding - it's available at the Intercontinental Hotel Tower's Mexican restaurant (don't ask!). The public space is crappy in this hotel, but the rooms are great and the view always good (well as good as a view over Warsaw can ever be).
2:58pm


Red Exile says: "well *hello!* Aeroflot you sexy thang!". They're flying brand-new A320-200s into CEE. Eat me, BA!
9:41pm

Red Exile knows he has lived in Russia too long: he finds the baked goods in the Aeroflot business lounge quite irresistibly alluring.
5:31pm

Red Exile setting of for the traditional traffic jam to Sheremetyevo airport, to fly Aeroflot to Warsaw. Ah the glamour of it all...
2:54pm

Red Exile has narrowly missed *death* at the ballet. An 8-cm diameter crystal fell from the great central chandelier and missed my head by inches before smashing on ground in 100s pieces. Felt cold draft of death did we. This really happened and the lump of crystal missed my head by less than 30 cms
8:06pm

Red Exile is off to the Stanislaski-Nemirovich-Danchenko tonight 2 them dance Romeo & Juliet.
5:26pm
April 18

Red Exile wonders if the 'rock song' whose chorus is "are you off your meds?: is Placebo. He laughs & luvs it. It is and I downloaded it from iTunes.
11:40pm

Red Exile is off to dinner with a mate from 'the small island'...as I now refer to the Britain
7:03pm

Red Exile has just used his best BBC voice to voice-over a TNK-BP corporate video. This is the second time I have done this (just to help them out for a favour - because it is crazy expensive for them to have it done in London and any old Brit RP voice will do - and because, in more weighty and feesome matters, they are also a client)
10:43am
April 15

I was travelling in Ukraine
Red Exile sees this new overnight train comes with anti-terrorism advice. In the event security forces are going to storm your Chechen terrorists "run-like-f*ck in other direction" seems to be the ambivalent advice. On the new trains there is a poster by the loos with safety advice. This include in cute little pictures what to do if security forces are storming your high-jacked train. And, yes, run in the opposite direction is the helpful guidance they proffer...
6:38am

Red Exile is witnessing drama @ border; 2 men arrested & dragged off train by Ukrainian troops. Unpaid parking tickets? Very exciting and the full-on paramilitary performance...
12:44am
April 14

Red Exile and his friend, Johnny Walker, are at the Russian border - for processing. LOL
11:50pm

Red Exile has had his day ruined - 'new' landlord informs him he has been gazumped on new space. So back to Square one and now 5 weeks to Moscow office is homeless... This was a low moment
7:32pm


Red Exile is having a very good day commercially and meteorologically: it is a gorgeous sunny day in Kyiv; the sky is almost ridiculously blue.
2:13pm


Red Exile now has a very deep and abiding love of Ukraine; its tragic and compelling history - the more you get to know it the less like Russia it is.

You learn a lot about Ukraine in the long drive between Kyiv and Lviv and back - abandoned villages and the wrecks of old collective farms testifying to the waste of Collectivised farming, it's failure and - actually - the enormous post-Soviet decline in Ukrainian agricultural output. Land reform is desperately needed to modernise and rejuvenate Ukrainian agriculture.

At the same time, as you drive past vast, pompous - but now sadly forlorn - Soviet-era memorials to WWII (more to bludgeon home a message of loyalty to the Ukrainians than a message of celebration) you realise how awful it must have been to be Ukrainian and part of the USSR. Wondering around Lviv today it is almost impossible to imagine that this bright, smiley, European city was once Soviet. It is totally unlike anything in Russia.
1:02am
April 13

Red Exile is about to have a hearty lunch of Turkey liver; veal, sour cream & dumplings & all trimmings. It is not cuisine minceur, but do eat at café Amadeus.
1:45pm
April 12

Red Exile is enjoying his birthday in Lviv, in which the whole history of Middle Europe can be seen. The ebb and flow of empires; the heterogeneous sweep of its European architecture; but still defiantly European (Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-classical, Art Nouveau...)
8:28pm
April 11


Red Exile is enjoying cafe society in Lviv; which is charming. Drinking champagne, sitting outside at the Vienna Café where people-watching is great fun
11:30pm

Red Exile is leaving lunchtime for the 5hr roadtrip to Lviv. The guy driving asks "do you want 'fast' or 'safe'?" - what the heck: fast! LOL.
12:30pm
April 10

Red Exile is having a fascinating day in Kyiv.
6:10pm

Red Exile s at the UKR border post, on the train, watching a beautiful sunrise. He is now though hungry & *very* thirsty!
6:29am
April 9

Red Exile Has just realized that as he is on tne slow-overnight 'express' - 13hrs - inexplicably it has neither restaurant nor bar. Nightmare!! This is the second time I have done this! memo-to-self: only Train #1 (Moscow-Kyiv) and Train #2 (Kyiv Moscow) have buffet cars. The others *don't*
9:54pm

Red Exile en route to Kyiv & then Lviv.
8:40pm

Red Exile is somewhere between despair (back to office property square 1) and elation (deal done). Only in Moscow do we live by these 2 emotional gears and no others. That last sentence, BTW, is probably the truest thing I have ever written about life in Moscow.
12:20pm
April 8

Red Exile did have to smile as he was cut up this morning by a rickety old Lada with *diplomatic plates*.
10:04am
April 7

Red Exile has had just the most sublime & wonderful night at the ballet; even if his body won't fly dream a soul can. Sometimes good performances make my purple-prose-restraint short-circuit.
10:26pm

Red Exile wonders what you say to a week that is pretty-much ruined before it has begun... hello? Property-related - a great development I was hoping to take was snaffled up - even though I had agreed terms with the developer - by a Russian bank.
10:15am
April 6

Red Exile woke up this morning dreaming about the future of capitalism. Last night he tried to dream about Tuscany. Oh well...
5:30pm
April 4

Red Exile is back to the drawing board: 8 weeks and counting to find new offices - or else it is hot desking in my front room! Another potential site fell-through (because this one was pretty far from a metro station and, in any case, I just learned that this particular station is about to close for a year's remont; which ruled the property out completely.
5:45pm
April 3

So there you have it. Normal service will now hopefully be resumed...

Moscow ballet: round-up from the last month

Sunday night I was lucky enough to see Nadezhda Gracheva dance the title role in Giselle: as it turned out very lucky indeed. Giselle is one of the things for which the Bolshoi is most famous. Nadezhda Gracheva is my age (she is 38!!) and she is a goddess. Technical perfection and so emotionally acute, as to twist and yet simultaneously make your heart soar. She made me cry twice. And I don’t give a shit if anyone reading this thinks that makes me a mincing girl-boy. Needless to say, there are just a handful of nights at the Bolshoi in Moscow, the city that raises ballet to the apogee of human artistic achievement like no other, which you never want to miss. Tonight was one of those nights. I stayed for all five encores.

In the face of such genius, don’t overlook equally veteran principal soloist Andrey Uvarov: at that age [Gracheva’s partner obviously can’t be too young] to leap so high; to be so strong and so elegant is literally heroic.

Hats off, also, to Vyacheslav Lopatin: so often a ‘character actor’ in the Bolshoi cast, tonight I think he was like a new man – in the ‘peasant pas de deux’ – and the ‘home crowd’ (us regulars) knew it and we made the rafters of the Bolshoi New Stage rock, in our congratulations to him!

If only for the Bolshoi Facebook group, I wanted to trot through some other opera and ballet highlights recently. And celebrate one of the real privileges of living in Moscow: the world-beating liberal, musical arts on daily offer here.

I mentioned here that I had seen the Bolshoi’s newish Le Corsaire (about which arts Moscow was very excited, but the night I saw it I was exhausted and consequently under-whelmed, I must see it again) and the Stanislavski-Nemirovich-Danchenko’s Carmen, which was a total triumph.

I had been planning, with fidelity, to review the things I have seen in Moscow opera and ballet, but – boring of me I know –my job has been sucking the life out of me recently …er….I have been busy, and I have struggled to blog regularly.

At huge expense, I had front-row seats for ‘Kings of the Dance’ at the Bolshoi on 28th October. At its best, ballet is an ensemble experience so - as recorded by critics in the USA – I was initially uncomfortable with the idea of four male soloists showing off for the evening.

It is my practice to scribble notes on the program – my opera glasses have a discreet night-light – of performances I see. The ones I scribbled of act one were…um…quite vituperative.

Kings of the Dance is an American construction clearly devised for the YouTube generation and for audiences who like regular doses of television to lighten otherwise ‘difficult’ evenings of pure performance. It starts with a ‘home video’, on a huge screen, of the four performers. It is twenty minutes long. Forgive me but (a) I do not go to the ballet/opera and wish I had been to the cinema and (b) it has to be said that just as actors are often foolish talking about ‘their art’ (and are better viewed actually acting), nothing is so certain as to turn one off ballet than to sit and watch a movie of dancers say how inspired they are and how wonderful it all is. Terribly insipid and, alas, vapid. And outrageous. After a twenty minute video, there were only 18 minutes of live dance before the interval – remember some people had paid $300 for their tickets. Audience-reaction-wise the performers were in no doubt ‘it was not going well’.

The Russian (home-grown) of these ‘Four Tenors’ of dance was Nikolai Tsiskaridze, and either reader of this blog might recall I am not a fan of his campy prancing. I wish he had retired two years ago.

But tonight – and I have never seen this happen at the Bolshoi – he stumbled and fell. Muscovites love Tsiskaridze and the groan of despair was huge and heartfelt. I have no wish to rub his nose in it and can therefore happily say that the way he picked himself up and, at the end, defied anyone to give him less than a standing ovation, as he strutted off the stage – like a Roman Emperor - was, in truth, an extraordinary, memorable moment. The guy is a star, even if I am not a fan, it must be admitted. And stars have balls and enormous self-belief. So I owe him my salute, if only for that one moment.

This being Moscow, this US show had to have a greater than usual Russian content – because, naturally, one cannot have Moscow audiences believe that Russia is anything other than the Alpha and Omega of ballet. And I thank the producers for it. We were treated to the always cheeky Sergey Filin and the moody-but-brilliant, Ilze Liepa, perform ‘the Lesson”. Hitchcockian menace combined with genuine comedy, this piece (choreographed by Flemming Flindt, music by Georges Delerue) is just genius. And terribly funny, in a dark sort of way.

The four Kings danced together in a Christopher Wheeldon piece, ‘For Four’. Hmm…Americans and Brits think he is the Damien Hurst of ballet. I must have lost the plot because actually I think his work artistically suburban, in a wannabe-GQ way.

In the US première of this confection, the star turn had been Ethan Stiefel dancing Fosse’s ‘Percussion IV’. Evidently, Russians and Brits are culturally united because we both thought this 90210 of dance rather silly (but in the US, rather over-excited ballet critics call him ‘Apollo’). Yes he is pretty, but real ballet-lovers really aren’t interested in that sort of thing; no matter what tabloid caricature might have you believe.

One stand-out moment of amazing brilliance though: Johan Kobborg – from Denmark (and I keep reminding myself I must go to Copenhagen to see the Royal Ballet there) – did an amazing piece, The Faun (choreographed by Tim Rushton, music by Debussy). In my scribbled program notes it says: “…best solo ever seen…mesmerizing…technically brilliant…raunch” (LOL).

Spain’s Angel Corella was also featured. But I struggle to understand why.

As part of its ‘Dance Inversion’ ballet festival, the Stanislavski-Nemirovich-Danchenko hosted the Portuguese National Ballet’s ‘Pedro & Ines’ (I saw the 18th November performance). This famous – if you are Portuguese – medieval tale is part Romeo and Juliet and part Eloise & Abelard.

This was quite unlike anything we ever see in Moscow. It was a small, dark jewel of a work: like a nineteenth century necklace made of jet. Both darkly glamorous and also deeply mournful, it was intelligent, challenging and very worthwhile to witness. And surprising. It is not often that one gets to see the romantic leads, literally, dance in a pool of water (the splashing was beautifully lit), nor have I ever seen necrophilia ever so movingly portrayed. It was dramatically dark and was a perfect Russkie-Iberico mix (choreographed by Olga Poritz).

16th November, I was at the Bolshoi again for the Shostakovich ballet, ‘The Bright Stream’. The orchestra was on top-form (courtesy I think of conductor, Pavel Sorokin, who I think is a real maestro). My program notes highlighted Andrey Merkuriev (I am a fan), Ruslan Skvortsov – no great actor, but well-suited for this part – and Yekaterina Shipulina. The comedic role danced by Irina Zibrova was also a highlight. But I think the best performance was Kseniya Pchelkina – incidentally an unusual Russian surname – as Galya, the schoolgirl. Bright stream is that wonderful, if very rare, night at the theatre: a comedy by Shostakovich.

19th November and for the 3rd time this season I saw the Stanislavski-Nemirovich-Danchenko’s ‘Chaika’. I l.o.v.e. this ballet. There was a slightly worrying opening when the otherwise excellent (and convincingly impetuous) Kostya (danced by Dmitriy Khamzin) handled Veleria Mukhanova (dancing the role of Nina) rather like a leg of lamb in Smithfield market. Opening nerves, I think, and he later truly excelled…he is a hugely talented young dancer and each performance I see of him is better and better: definitely a long-term talent to watch.

If is fashionable to direct Chaika (the Seagull) in a slightly Oedipal context these days, at least in the theatre. This ballet is no exception. Tatiana Chernobrovkina, as Irina, Kostya's mother, milked every cent out of that idea. And hers was a delicious performance. As I have said before, this is one of the most invigorating ballet productions I have ever seen and I just love how fresh and vital it is.

2nd December and, back at the Bolshoi, I enjoy another viewing of ‘Night of American Ballet’. I always try to go whenever ‘In the Upper Room’ is on (the Bolshoi has performed this one act piece eight times (?) and I have seen four of them).

Technically, this collection of three one act ballets is a is a ‘celebratory evening of 200 years of US-Russian diplomatic relations’ and a celebration of ‘American ballet’ (sic). Yeah right. The program is incredibly political and a huge bitch-slap towards American ‘Kulture’; but done in a hugely subtle (and therefore pas trop Sovietique way). The inner-truth, da vinci code-like (LOL), is in the program notes (along the lines of “there may be lots of ballet in America, but it is a land devoid of soul, culture and all the ballet there is stolen”).

Act one. Serenade. Music by Tchaikovsky, choreographed (1934?) by the Frenchman, Georges Balanchine. Um… this is a celebration of American ballet? Terribly dull, BTW, I am so over Balachine.

Then we saw the hugely mournful ‘Misericodes’ (choreography by [Englishman] Christopher Wheeldon, music by Arvo Pärt; an Estonian! Wonderful music actually, although a shockingly poor trombone soloist in the orchestra hid the fact well). Now, among serious ballet lovers, the jury is definitely out as to whether Christopher Wheeldon is a genius or an arse. Me? I am still deciding.

But the Bolshoi ballet notes leave no room for doubt in their propaganda: “…like the royal court for the long-awaited miraculous birth of [a] Princess…[t]hey rocked this ‘Wheeldon’ in its cradle, they [the American ballet establishment] played with it, gave it toys and were certain it was a genius though the infant has not yet managed to create anything brilliant. They loved it, they forgave it, they laid their hopes on it. This became the élan vitale of the trade union of American ballet critics…This story is therefore more interesting as the trade union of US ballet critics is made up of mostly ladies and young women with problems in their private lives [read: lesbians]”. Hysterical! [extract from the official program essay by Pavel Gershenzon].

“They preach feminism and Marxism,” like, it sniffs, they have nay the real idea, “they hate children and independent men”. You couldn’t make this shit up!! You have to admire the sheer brass balls of post-Soviet, Putinista Russia. Because here, as ‘twas ever thus, art is politics, is culture is war by another means).

The evening ended with Twyla Tharp’s, ‘In the Upper Room’. I cannot describe how much I love this work; his music, the young Bolshoi soloists’ performance. For the duration it is just me and them on stage, tunnel-vision-like, and I am conscious of nothing else. Fantastic!

A new Season underway...

I don't know why the sudden blogging hiatus - people go through phases I suppose - although this summer (for the first time since I started following blogs) the whole English-language blogosphere seems to have gone through some sort of collective sigh of ennui...

...part of the resason for which may be the rise of Facebook. I have become a Facebook whore. It's incredibly addictive and just crystallizes how brilliant social networking can be. It has put me back in touch with school friends whom I would never usually drop an email to, randomly, but the fact I read their Facebook updates, and they mine, sparks a dialogue which otherwise would be lost. I think it genuinely adds the humanity back to the Internet (and, perhaps, in contrast, can make blogging look rather sterile). Facebook-is-conversation:-blogging-is-rhetoric kind of thing.

Anyway, as winter hits Moscow - grump - I will start blogging again. A random email conversation (the opera/ballet season is only just a week old):

Red Exile replying to a friend on Facebook:

Hi there. Yes the little angels getting me down yesterday. Jean Jacques [very French bistro on Nikitsky Boulevard, rapidly becoming expat heaven in the heart of Moscow] I haven't been to yet, but my colleague swears by it. I might check it out tonight! Friday's Bolshoi was the new production of Corsaire - so-so I thought - more a parade of fiddly dance show-offy bits than a richly compelling narrative, and the music left me unmoved; but I was so tired from only having 2-3 hours the night before (overnight train to Moscow from Kyiv) that I wasn't on my best.

I have tickets for Norma at the Novaya Opera tonight, but not sure I am in the mood for Bellini.

Hot things in opera and ballet this season? Well, actually I think this side of Christmas the Bolshoi is looking rather tame (apart from the 'Kings of the Dance'; a four night spectacular, which is sold out but scalpers are now selling tickets for about $300 each, but fortunately I bought mine ages ago); so I have temporarily transferred my affections to the Stanislavski-Nemirovich-Danchenko (theatre on Dmitrovka Pereulok).

I think their new ballet, 'Chaika' (based on Chekov's seagull) is very fresh and has some interesting music, including Scottish percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie! [she has a great website! and an amazing life story] The production has a fine young cast and is another Moscow work for Hamburg ballet's John Neumeier, who did the Bolshoi's production of Midsummer Night's Dream and whose style of melding traditional with avant-garde, both musically and in terms of dance I think very intelligent and emotionally charged. Below is a YouTube piece from Kyltura TV on Chaika - it's in Russian, but you'll get a flavour of what this production is like:





Last week there, on the opera side, I just loved their Carmen: the tenor singing Don José, Mikhail Vekya, is just INCREDIBLE. He doesn't look how you imagine Don Jose to look, but the sound is extraordinary and he literally stole the show (there is a mirco-bio in Russian only here).

His final scene raised the hairs on the back of my neck and reminded me of another great Don José performance: check out José Carreras , from 1987 in New York, here.

The S-N-D is also organising 'Dance Inversion: international ballet festival' in November and I am going every night for about a week :) LOL

That's it for now from your Moscow arts correspondent!

End of the 2006/2007 Bolshoi Season

Last week, having scored a front row seat from my usual dealer, I watched the fantastic end to the 2006/2007 Bolshoi season: the gala concert "all the stars of the Bolshoi ballet". It was an incredible show and a very high note on which to end a great season...no more Bolshoi Ballet now until October (!) - but they will be on tour in London and, I think, Berlin.

An orgy of YouTube discoveries follows [although, in truth, I am...ahem...unable to make any claims as that the permission of the copyright holders was always obtained, by the people who made these vids...oh well].

In the First Half, Maria Allash wowed us with her Aegina from Spartacus; while the prima ballerina goddess that is Svetlana Zakharova gave us her extraordinary solo piece, 'Revelation'

[taken from Russian TV, I think, sound quality not terribly good]

[choreography by Mitoso Hiroyama; to music by John Williams]

In the Second Half we were treated to a performance of Middle Duet, a fantastic piece choreographed by Bolshoi Artistic Director, Alexei Ratmansky (who I think is really coming into his own now and nudging the Bolshoi to do some really edgy, raw and wonderful pieces):

[piece taken from Kultura TV]

This is an extraordinarily beautiful piece I think (music by Yuri Khanon). The duet is between the sublime Natalia Osipova and Andrei Merkuriev; who is, IMHO, featured as a soloist not nearly enough by the Bolshoi. You can see almost the full Middle Duet here (performed in this version I think in Seoul, by St Petersburg's Mariinsky Ballet). BTW, the staging is supposed to start very dark, very dimly through the shadows...

That gay old trouper, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, and the dramatic Ilze Liepa, gave us their La Dame de Pique which I am coming to like (nothing on YouTube yet, sorry), although I find Tsiskaridze a little too hammy a performer for my taste...

The finale was Zhakharova and Denis Matvienko, and the full company, performing the Grand Pas from Don Quixote:

[an illicit recording of a 2006 performance by Matvienko]

But since I am show-casing ballet on YouTube, I offer these two discoveries.

The first is a piece that captures Carlos Acosta, whom I mentioned recently, as he performed the lead role in Spartacus:



As well as a fantastic segment of Twlya Tharp's In the Upper Room (music by Philip Glass), which I watched again on 14th July, with I think the best cast rotation for this piece (including Denis Savin, Alexander Smoliyaninov, Natalia Osipova and Andrei Merkuriev):

A quick catch-up on the last three weeks

29th June – last flight?

By now you must have figured I have become very scared of flying. This is despite the fact that I estimate that I have easily done over 300 international flights since moving to Moscow in Spring 2004 and; in my lifetime? Easily over 1,000 (I was an ex-pat brat).

Anyway, something snapped when I took the afternoon AeroSvit from Kyiv to Moscow. We landed in the immediate prelude to a huge thunder storm. On landing the plane was wildly erratic and at less than 50 metres I would judge the engines roared and we did a go around. Having landed on the second attempt, and exiting the plane there was this huge downward gust of pressure – wind shear: the invisible plane killer.



Wind shear scares me silly out here: CIS airports almost never have, I’m told, wind shear radar on the ground and these twenty-five year old Boeings and the Soviet planes don’t have on-board wind shear detectors.

So, suddenly, dust and rubbish shot up into the end before a squal of blackness crossed across the runway. As we bussed into Terminal 1c you couldn't actually see terminal 2 – just straight across the runway – because visibility sank to nothing as a huge storm crack overhead and the heavens opened…

…and I have not been on a plane since. A whole month without flight (when I normally do three flights a week). I have to do something about this, because soon my bosses will notice…I recently asked my Chief of Staff to look into taking the Moscow-Budapest-Moscow train for a Board conference in September: madness! But might be kind of fun…there’s something sexy and glamorous about Eastern European train travel (well not if you’re not in first class, granted), which air travel these days can’t match (except on those long, epicurean and pampering transcontinental flights to the Middle East).

I have done three trips to Kyiv. Each by train. Train #1 out of Moscow (dep 23.20, arr. 08.30) and Train #2 out of Kyiv on the way back (dep. 20.17, arr. 06.39). I always book a twin-person carriage for myself and usually now take a small night-time picnic,

Customs and immigration out of Russia, in Souzemka, and Khoutir-Mikhailivskiy in Ukraine are a pain (the towns are 20 minutes apart and the Russian side is very slow, but at least they come on board to your carriage). They wake you up at around 1.00am back into Russia, but I get back to sleep afterwards; on the way in, the wake up is 4.00am (finishing around 5.00am) and so I watch dawn in Ukraine, not bothering to go back to sleep.

The Ukrainian side also now have PDAs (which is why they are faster than the Russians) so are able to do onboard registration on my entry (whereas the Russians have to alight from the train and call in my visa details for clearance).

6th July – weird things

I had been in Kyiv again (actually I have dropped by the office for a couple of days every week over the last month) and had a very interesting meeting with a future force in Ukrainian politics, now launching his own NGO: he’s a very high-powered local lawyer.

The Ambassador of a small Central European country and I share the same taste in whiskey…and bars. He’s become quite my regular drinking/talking global politics buddy. For some reason I think this very cool...

At 1.30am – waiting to enter Russia, I am awake on the train and a journalist friend calls from Doha, in Qatar. And we’re chatting – via satellites bouncing a signal Lord knows where – me being all George Smiley on my post-Soviet overnight train and yet, also, chatting to a mate at a party in the Middle East…

…who then worried me because he was heading out on a trip with Hezbollah into Southern Lebanon. Now this is a patch I know (and if you know Lebanon well, Hezbollah is all part of the scene) and I say: “Dude, down to Sidon, you’ll be fine, just stay north of Sidon” “er…” he replies, “I am going well South of Sidon”.

So we chat and I point out that while his employer might be an Arabic TV station, he’s a blonde English guy and the Hezbs in Southern Lebanon aren’t the diplomatic dandies in Beirut we know, but are ‘the real thing’ and might not welcome a Brit. That and the Israelis have been shooting at TV cars across the borderline (because sometimes Hezb pretends to be TV). So I was kind of worried for my friend…

We spoke a week later, he partying in Damascus – damn I love that City – and he clearly has some good war-stories: being shoved into a cell overnight with armed guards for instance: “but we got some great shots and broadcast live way farther South than the BBC or CNN would ever dare”…which is what passes for delivering understanding into global living rooms apparently.

8th July Spartak!

A one-night only special starring the Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta. There is a good piece about this on Russia Today (LOL – that’s a sentence hardly ever used!).

Acosta was quite extraordinary and, as I was chatting with a friend afterwards in post-performance dinner at café des Artistes, sitting outside, we agreed it was one of the highlights of the Bolshoi this season…and then Acosta comes to the restaurant with a small entourage. He’s charming and has excellent English (he’s danced with the English National and the Royal). He’ll be guest-starring with the Bolshoi this Summer at Covent Garden in London. Mug or steal yourself a ticket if you’ll be in town…

Tonight – 22nd July – I am going to the Close of Season Gala Concert, with all the leading Bolshoi Ballet stars. It should be a wonderful night…but then no Bolshoi until October 5th…

…I must travel abroad – the summer ballets put on at the country estates outside Moscow are very bourgeois and ‘chocolate box-y’.

Now then, how to get from Moscow to London, without flying, by train…

What's been impressing me at the Bolshoi...

In the last few weeks I have tried to get back into my habit of going to the Bolshoi Theatre at least twice a month. It used to be weekly, but when work went manic in Autumn 2005, that proved impossible to maintain.

So this week I went to see Dmitri Shostakovich's opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Now I am a big fan of Shostakovich; having known his symphonies since even before coming to Russia and then discovering the Bolshoi's new productions of his ballets has been very rewarding. His Lady Macbeth, though, was something I had missed.

Often better known for what happened after its premiere, than for the opera itself, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is not an-easy-to-love opera. After its First Night in January 1936, it was famously excoriated in Pravda, with the notorious editorial: 'muddle instead of music". Shostakovitch, of course, was forever having his music banned in Russia (or, rather, just not performed) and his international reputation would probably never have risen so high were it not for his epic and time-defining 7th symphony, the Leningrad. The story of how the 7th was written and first performed during the siege of Leningrad in 1942 has entered contemporary Russian folklore. The story is interestingly well told in Solomon Volkov's engaging short book, 'Shostakovitch and Stalin'. Even if you never usually read a musicology book, read this one. You'll be pleased you did.

So, back to The Lady... Act 1 weighs in at a tonally burdensome 2 hours and, for a work night, it was quite a strain. Indeed, Act 1, scene 1 is so irritating that, for the first time in almost three years, I gave serious thought to abandoning the performance altogether. Aside from it being just plain ignorant of me, there were three reasons why I hung on and, in the end, found it a worthwhile evening. The first was Irina Rubtsova as Ekaterina (the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk). She is a wonderful singer and a great actress and she really gives emotional depth to what would otherwise be a cast not sure if they're in a farcical romp (the early scenes) or a horror flick.

Secondly, the mercifully less elongated Act 2 is a masterpiece of Shostakovitchian menace and soaring emotion with a very effective use of the Bolshoi chorus: Alexandra Durseneva has a great time, and we love her for it, as the tart, Sonyetka. It's a very striking production design.

So what to make of the opera overall? While I haven't asked one, I think a Shostakovitch expert would say, though, that this was the whole point of Mtsensk: a story set amongst Russian country folk, portraying the petty jealousies that then was life in Russia, culminating clumsily, yet inevitably, into something horrible (his commentary perhaps that this process was, also, unavoidably Russian). Stalin, who knew exactly what Shostakovitch was about and understood a thing or two about art-as-political-metaphor, crushed it. He wanted an heroic Soviet opera; he got something he suspected was almost seditious.

So far this season, the opera highlight for me has been the Bolshoi's production of Nabucco; and in one of the cast rotations, Irina Robtsova sings Abigaille, the wicked leading role, wonderfully-well. Rubtsova is my current Bolshoi opera favourite, although having seen Yelena Zelenskaya's Tosca a couple of weeks back, it's a pretty tough choice.

We seem to have had fewer ballet performances this season - which of course is to be expected while the Main Stage is still under restoration (reopens 2008) - and what has been performed has been conservative (seemingly endless Swan Lake and Giselle). However, a couple of weeks ago I saw the Night of American Choreography that the House has put on to celebrate the "200th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States". Three American single act ballets are given a twirl and it is a highly successful combination and a great evening. For me, though, the young Bolshoi cast dancing to Philip Glass's music, in Twyla Tharp's piece, In The Upper Room is just amazing. Possibly the most physically demanding piece of ballet ever choreographed (or that I have ever seen), it is amazingly exhilarating and perfectly illustrates the tonal progression of Glass's chant-like, almost religious electronic music.

There is a piece on YouTube I have found below of one of the calmer, earlier movements of the piece. I love the music. I hope you enjoy it. At the end of the performance I saw, the whole audience of the Bolshoi New Stage went wild with applause. It was huge fun and very uplifting.