Word: moiseyev
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even the Soviets were flashing warning signs. Armed forces Chief of Staff Mikhail Moiseyev said the Soviet leadership should make no further concessions to the U.S., and noted pointedly that there are still too many disagreements to conclude a strategic-arms treaty by June. Gorbachev and Bush would have to meet again just to hash out these differences, said Moiseyev...
...opening night for the Moiseyev Ballet, the U.S.S.R.'s premiere troupe of folk dancers. The ballet was conducting the first major Soviet performance tour of America in a long time. I was excited to see it. I have always wanted to see a Cossack dance...
Some of the effects are startling. In Partisans the dancers impersonate wartime equestrian irregulars, without benefit of horses. In At the Skating Rink they gambol and glide along imaginary ice in a skaters' waltz of rare beauty. Typically, the narrative is minimal, the political content low; for the Moiseyev, the steppe's the thing. Whether miming a cavalry charge or approximating the flight of eagles in a Kalmuck ceremony, the company attacks each number with ramrod backs and bright faces, precise and impeccable...
...technique, though, is an end in itself; the characters are largely cliches (ardent swains, shy maidens, puff-chested popinjays, reeling drunks), and of genuine emotion there is scarcely a sign. No self-respecting Tartar could be as passionless as this. For most of the program, the Moiseyev is as impersonal as the production line at a Ukrainian tractor factory...
Until, that is, Night on Bald Mountain. In its 1961 tour, the Moiseyev brought P.S.: Surprise Encore!, an exaggerated effort to satirize American rock 'n' rollers. That work's time has passed, but the impulse that inspired it remains. In Bald Mountain, Mussorgsky's music is suddenly interrupted by a prolonged cadenza of what can only be called socialist jazz jungle drumming. Pairs of pig-snouted satyrs and lissome succubi writhe lustily as syncopated kettledrums accompany an orgy of things that go bump and grind in the night. The outburst is as unexpected as it is finally gratuitous. But after...