Saturday, September 27
Sunday, September 28
The Railway History Museum
Uzvaras bulvaris 2/4
7:00 PM
Duration: 1h 30
Tickets: 4 Ls

The Swan Lake
Provocative dance theatre. A cross-cut of power mechanisms

"Von Krahl" theatre, Estonia

Concept-direction: Peeter Jalakas
Concept-choreography: Sasha Pepelyaev (Moscow)
Music: P.I. Tchaikovsky, adaptation - Sergei Zagny (Moscow)

With the support of NA

Music recorded by the NYYD ensemble
Costumes: Reet Ulfsak
Actors: Liina Vahtrik, Tiina Tauraite, Erki Laur, Juhan Ulfsak, Taavi Eelmaa
Dancers: Triin Lilleorg, Kart Tonisson, Anna-Liisa Lepasepp, Tatiana Gordeeva (Moscow), Daria Buzovkina (Moscow), Olga Tsvetkova (Jekaterinburg)

Co-produced by the Kanuti Gildi SAAL (Tallinn), TSEH festival (Moscow), Hebbel theatre (Berlin), Association THEOREM

Premiere: January 30, 2003

Performance
Peeter Jalakas and choreographer Sasha Pepelyaev, dancers and actors from Tallinn, Moscow and Yekaterinburg dedicate "Swan Lake" to the theme of absolute beauty and aesthetic ideal. The performance is a surprising synthesis of stage and film art, achieved with the assistance of superb video and computer technology. Two excellent, internationally renowned artists Sasha Pepelyaev and Peeter Jalakas for the first time have united in a creative tandem to create a theatre of dance and video. What attracts the contemporary audience to "Swan Lake"? Its artistic value or social aspect? Is the aesthetics related to ethics and in what way? Why is it exactly "Swan Lake" that embodies the generalisation of ballet? These and similar issues are taken up by the performance.

It seems impossible to enumerate all productions and versions of "Swan Lake". They are classical, ideological, old-fashioned, modern, etc. "Swan Lake" staged at "Von Krahl" theatre is not just another interpretation of the ancient story. In terms of plot is has nothing at all common with "Swan Lake". The performance is a collage - a reflection of the social, artistic and aesthetic motives of the heroes. The synthesis of aesthetic and social contexts is of utmost importance. The authors of the performance touch upon not widely discussed phenomenon: Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" has been used as an ideological work of art. Its usage for ideological purposes reached the climax when the ballet performance was broadcast without interruption on all Russian TV channels during the coupe d'état of August 1991. The lacking or non-existent political information about the coupe d'état was expressed with the help of melancholic music by Tchaikovsky, humbly submissive corps-de-ballet, symmetrical choreography by Petipa-Ivanov. "We are interested in "Swan Lake" as a symbol, as a closed, completed system, and as well as a chance and necessity for it to change or to be changed. We deviate from the story, role casting and the canonised stage solutions.

We use many juxtapositions: black and white, man and woman, fire and water, individual and group, top and bottom, fiction and fact, as well as parallels: dancing, flying, swimming, dressing up oneself and others, sports, documentary shots, etc.," the creators of the performance state.

Tchaikovsky's music was arranged for the performance by Muscovite Sergei Zagny. He creates an atmosphere in which fairy tales, daydreaming and disillusionment are associated with real dreams, strange incidents, engines, boilers and mundane life, in which Prince Siegfried who sets Odette free reminds of a classical revolutionary. Perhaps he is not the Prince, but the evil sorcerer Rothbart. Perhaps liberation does not mean freedom?

Music
"The general idea was to keep Tchaikovsky's music as unchanged as possible, but take out from it everything that causes embarrassment with the audience - exaggerated pathos and sentimentality. Other changes were done because of technical needs - instead of an orchestra we had an ensemble. The third change was a wish to change the aesthetics of "simplicity and naivety" to the aesthetics of "aristocratic perfection", we added into score different "signs of skill" which weren't in the original: refined changes, additional storylines, chosen passages etc. The fourth change is an attempt to find connections between Tchaikovsky's music and the music of other authors and other nations of different eras: sometimes a play that is very "Tchaikovsky like" has a XVII century-like end, other times there are lines from Buckner's symphony, etc. The fifth aspect lies in no changes - many episodes stay like they are in the original version. Episodes that are similar from outside are as though rewritten or reheard and on the inside they get a completely different idea. The last aspect brings up the problem of authorship and together with it the novelty issue. Because no matter what we think about it, the author of "Fragments from P. I. Tchaikovsky's Ballet "The Swan Lake"" is Sergei Zagny, not Pjotr Tchaikovsky. One can also look at the whole piece as a connection with a premonition about art courts that Hesse wrote about in his "The Glass Bead Game": the new pieces of art of future - they are not so much new texts, but the reflection of these texts and comments that exist today."

Sergei Zagny

Director
Peeter Jalakas (1961), director, producer and playwright, studied at the Tallinn Pedagogical University Theatre department and founded Estonia's first independent theatre company in 1987 - the "VAT Teater". He continued his studies in residences in Scandinavia (Odin Theatret etc.) then came back to Tallinn where in 1989 he founded theatre group Ruto Killakund. The following year, he created Baltoscandal, the first international theatre festival in the Baltic States, now a biannual event. He is also one of the founding members of the Estonian Stage Productions, a non-profit organisation providing information on contemporary creation in Estonia.

After working for a year in Germany, Peeter Jalakas founded the "Von Krahl" Theatre (1998), which is dedicated to contemporary dance and theatre. Several productions were created, some of them such as the international theatre and culture project Journey to Delphi toured all over Europe. Peeter Jalakas sometimes stages his own texts. He participated in many international conferences and seminars in Europe and the US. In 1995, he was commissioned to direct three miniature operas for the biannual contemporary music festival NYYD in Tallinn. In 1999 he was commissioned to direct four music performances for a co-production between NYYD Ensemble, Estonian National Opera and "Von Krahl" Theatre. Peeter Jalakas also produces a lot of street performances, with some of them even being presented in the "Von Krahl" Theatre venue itself. Principal productions include: Werewolf (1992) based on Kitzberg's play; Voices (1992) in collaboration with the New York Heap Theatre; Funny Angels (1993) by Peeter Jalakas; Estonian Games. Wedding (1996), a multimedia performance that toured in New York, London and Scandinavia; Estonian Games. Wedding. Release 2 (1999), presented at the "Theater der Welt" festival in Berlin, at the Hamburg Festival and in Amsterdam; The Grail! (THEOREM co-production, 2001); and The Swan Lake (2003) in collaboration with the Russian choreographer Sasha Pepelyaev.

Choreographer
After graduating from the Moscow State University (the Faculty of Chemistry), where he was the leader of a mime group, Pepelyaev started working as a mime soloist in the Taganka theatre and Moscow Concert agency. In 1987 he organized one of the first independent theatre in Moscow "Poor Yorik", which was closed because of difficult economic conditions in Russia in 1990. He graduated from the State Institute of Theatrical Arts in 1990, after studying drama for four years. Then he continued his work as a director and choreographer in a circus, on TV and in drama theatres in Moscow and abroad. In 1994 Pepelyaev has begun the project "Kinetic Theatre", which served as a platform for the realization of his experimental works. The project has eventually become a serious search concentrating on a definition of Russian contemporary dance. Since then, the combination of post-modern Russian texts with contemporary dance and traditional Russian dramatic style has been the main conception presented in the company's productions. Many talented actors, dancers and musicians from Russia and abroad have been commissioned by Sasha to participate in his performances. Many different works have been presented at numerous festivals, and been broadcasted on domestic and international television. Since 1998 Sasha Pepelyaev has been intensively teaching classes and workshops at a number of dance centres: Contemporary Art centre, Ekaterinburg, Russia; European dance development centre (Arnhem, the Netherlands); University College of Dance, Stockholm Young Dance Company; Copenhagen; summer courses in Estonia; Theatrical Institution, Helsinki, Finland

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