Olga Pautova
Two Versions of the Choreographic Interpretation of Terteryan’s Fifth Symphony
In 1992, the ballet entitled “Versions. Part 1” based on the Fifth Symphony by Avet Terteryan was staged for the first time in Yekaterinburg, by the theatre “Provincial Dances” (choreographer – A.Bogdanova). The dance-performance entitled “Versions. Part 2” based on the same music was successfully staged by O.Pautova in the Berlin Academy of Arts in the beginning of 1996; the performance in renovated edition and new “Towards Sevan” title was and restaged in Yekaterinburg in 2003.
How did it happen, that Terteryan’s music, being, from the traditional point of view, unfit for dance, has acquired two entirely different stage incarnations?
In the very beginning of 1990s, Russia was still a country of information deficiency. Terteryan’s music has allowed producers to curtail the cultural gaps, to join the world cultural space with their works. Later, the reviewers have called these works “the first Russian incarnation of the Japanese Buto theatre” (staging by T.Baganova) and “the development of the prominent German Bauhaus school traditions” (staging by O.Pautova).
The music is cruel in the very meaning that Antonin Artaud put in this term, manifesting, advocating and trying to incarnate the idea of Theatre of Cruelty or Total Theatre on the stage. This allowed the stage directors to apply to this music, as to the great opportunity of the stage innovation.