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Ballet Royal: Arithmetic of the Ideal
Originally Eugeny Mokhorev’s photo session was conceived to be an applied one (search for the graphic image for the “Mariinsky” Festival). Therefore the photographer pursued a purely technical goal: to capture the five fundamental ballet positions, major body positions in space as well as all the possible related modifications. But unexpectedly enough, Mokhorev’s applied series that basically represent “correspondence tables”, “standard tables”, “calibration tables” acquired an aesthetic value, transformed into a conceptual gesture. For the first time in the world iconography ballet in these series appears to be as much purged of time, geography, circumstances, situation, plots, and style as possible. It is not only the human body that reveals itself naked, so does the metaphysics of the ballet. Remaining is just the play of muscles in the light and sexual distinctness – this is men’s ballet. This is Ballet Royal the way it used to be in the 17th century Versailles, the time when Pierre Rameau published his famous dance manual - Le Maître à danser, Paris, 1725 that opens the exhibition.
The engraved tables in the manuals by Rameau, Feuillet, Arbeau, Blasis and the photographs by Eugeny Mokhorev which appear to be the recent manual of classical dance encompass 350 ballets – from the Versailles entrée of Luis XIVth to the shifted axis pirouettes of William Forsythe’s era. Everything rests upon the five classical positions of the feet.
The exhibition also includes the 16th-20th century dance treatises from the Rare Books Department of St Petersburg State Theatre Library and a video-film shot in the classes of the Academy of Russian Ballet.
Curators of the project: Arkady Ippolitov, Pavel Gershenzon
Artist – photographer: Eugeny Mokhorev
Video-film: Sergei Dubrovsky
Video and photo production: Alexei Miroshnichenko
Video and photo featuring: Alexei Timofeev and Maxim Zyuzin (Mariinsky Theatre)
The exhibition is opened only till October 14
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2012 • [май]
Санкт-Петербург,
Петропавловская крепость,
Невская куртина,
левая сторона
(ППК)
[карта]
Телефоны:
(812) 233-0040,
(812) 233-0553,
Факс:
(812) 233-0040
e-mail:
office@proarte.ru
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