Maya Plisetskaya

MAYA PLISETSKAYA, PEOPLE’S ARTIST OF THE USSER, LAUREAT OF LENIN’S PRIZE
“The Swan lake” is a ballet of all my life. I deputed in the dance of three swans on the Bolshoi theatre stage after finishing the choreographic school and danced the leading part almost 500 times. I am a lover of contrasts and try to convey from the stage everything connected with the contradictions of the man’s inner world. That is why, I want both, the acting and the dance, were perceived not only as an interpretation of a poetic fairy tale, but rather as a story about the contradictory character…
The queen of swans became the symbol of Plisetskaya’s art all over the world.
 It remained so, until spectators hadn’t learned her Carmen.
“Carmen suite” to Bize-Shchedrin music was staged by the Cuban ballet-master Alberto Alonso especially for Maya Plisetskaya.
 – I have been dreaming about Carmen since the school bench. Still in my teens I was wondering; why such a heroine and such a plot, as if created for the ballet, live on the stage only in the opera?
 – What predicted success? – I ask Maya Plisetskaya – (Anna Ilupina, a ballet critic, acquaints the reader with M.M. Plisetskaya and comments her answer).
 – Love, my love for this image, Carmen’s love of life, independence, truthfulness. The musical and dance language is understandable for the spectators in any country. There isn’t a person, who didn’t value love of life, honesty, striving for the truth. Plus self dignity. And the feeling of humor. And kindness.
 Love for the image, its understanding, interpretation have very deep roots in the very personality of the artist; his views, life and moral position, sympathies and antipathies, attitude to oneself and the people – all this feeds the fruits of our creative activity with juices. When you are on the stage, nothing evades the spectators’ eyes, and any appearance on the stage is not only the result of exhaustive trainings, rehearsals, but everything thought over, felt and lived through properly. And so every time, as soon as the curtain rises, and nothing already separates you from the people, coming for the meeting with you, confiding in you, and whom you will not deceive in their expectations. Again and again you have to prove having the right to such a confidence, nothing will excuse a mistake, laziness, miscalculation in these minutes.
 Entering the stage, you begin everything anew, life becomes a constant exam, you – constant pupil. Not in vain the ballet class, attended by us daily, is called just so – class.
Everything, I am doing on the stage, is not done for my own pleasure, but for the people, in order to bring them joy, thoughts, important for them, light feelings… I don’t understand, frankly speaking, and don’t much believe people, who say that they “dance for themselves.”
I am dancing for myself at home, when I have a time to improvise, listening to the way my husband Rodion Shchedrin is composing music. But these are quite different dances, not like the classical ballet, to which I have devoted my life. For the sake of it I refused from the carrier of a drama actress, though I have always loved and love still the theatre, and hardly kept oneself from the temptation to apply for the troupe of Vachtang theatre, when its  leader Ruben Simonov had made me, the graduate of the ballet school, the proposal, so flattering for the 17-year-old girl…
Then she was invited by Valentin Pluchek to play in the satire theatre – the leading part in the French comedy “Little angel”. Then she acted several times in the cinema not only as a ballet dancer. Let us remember Princess Betsy in “Anna Karenina” and Desire in the film about Chaikovsky.
Then she acted in “Fantasy” on Turgenev’s story “The Spring Waters”, as Mariya Nicolayevna Polosova.
 – This image combined in itself the dramatic performance, ballet, cinema – Maya Plisetskaya says about this role – and I, the ballet dancer, had to act in the drama, besides naturally dance. My partner by the role was Innocently Smoktunovsky, in the dance – Anatoly Berdishev. Anatoly Efros, the producer, didn’t claim for the literal embodiment of “The Spring Waters”. It was rather a reliance on the spectators’ perception.
This quite new aspect of work carried myself away so much, that I wanted to act and act in the cinema! –  in the films, produced by Anatoly Efros. I suggested him 6 themes, and he, most of all, will choose the seventh. But I know: It will be interesting to work with him, because the most interesting ideas and thoughts are always swarming in his head. And, like a true artist, he ignites momentarily, as soon as he likes something, when imagines the future work.
 Of course, I have a lot of purely professional obligations besides. And who knows, may be, just in this combination of perspectives – ballet and non-ballet, is the main charm, attraction and joy of what was awaiting me.
With the passing of time I am getting convinced more and more that the cinema helps me a lot. When you see oneself on the screen, you suddenly realize that you no longer like what seemed to you perfect before, untill you haven’t seen it, as if from the outside. You notice it and begin working and working. The cinema screen is a strict critic for me, constantly displeased by me, calling for something, more perfect and best.
Pity,  there is no films, showing the ballet dancers of the past, bringing glory to our profession. What great impression was produced, just by a few movie scenes of Anna Pavlova dances! She was filmed in the little room. The cinema technique was very primitive, but the talent, as you understand, was bursting itself out of these narrow frames, and every movement was amazing. When I am now thinking about Anna Pavlova, and I think about her often, these wonderful scenes flash in front of my eyes…
Cinema allows me to compare myself of yesterday and today, to understand what you are striving for, how change with the time. These changes are amassed with everyday work, succession of ordinary days and they are not visible. But they should be seen and known…
Still the first appearance on the stage of the junior class pupil Maya Plisetskaya attracted the attention of the spectators. The little Chinese boy in the miniature “Disarmament conference” by Leonid Yacobson and the performance of the dance “Tanka-Vanka”, composed by Yevgeniya Dolinskaya caused interest to the little artist.
 – At thirteen, performing the variation from the ancient ballet “Pahita”, – Maya Plisetskaya continues – I worked much at the high “twine jump” in the air. Then it was repeated with Kitri, heroine of “Don Quixote”, the role, full of light, humor, joy of life. It seemed to me that even the gloomiest man, looking at the stage, was beginning to smile and understand that life was wonderful. The life-affirmation became a leitmotiv for me also in the roles of Aurora and Raymonda. I tried to show the main parties of Chaikovsky’s “The sleeping beauty” and Glasunov’s “Raimonda” as radiant, regal and truthful in the very fantasy of fairy tale dreams. Many years after, the fragments of these ballets were introduced into the TV film, first shown in June 1974…
At the very beginning of my life in art I was realizing more and more, what a difficult way had fallen on my fate with every new role, what a great responsibility awaits an artist, going out onto the stage.  What else helped me a lot, was the fact, that I was a pupil of Agrippina Yakovlevna Vaganova. One might say that it was a real academy. None of her pupils said that it was easy to learn. What a difficult class it had been! And how immeasurably much it had given to each!
Talent, her pedagogic gift displayed itself literally in all. Standing at the stick in the class wall, you feel, as if hanging, like a bag. It is clear, looking from the outside, you will certainly get a comment, but this comment not always has a sense: to know and be able to – are different things.  Vaganova comes up, casts an attentive glance, changes the position of your hand and asks “Is it better?” Of course, better! You no longer hang, like a bag, but stand correctly, and, leaving the stick, keep oneself on your own feet.
Such episodes from the past keep in memory long, because the touch of the talent inspired.
 I can’t but mention Marina Semenova’s story. In far away times, on the stage of Peterburg’s Mariinkii Opera House the Italian ballet dancer had made 32 fouettes. The hall froze; It was a sensation at that time, the ballet didn’t know such a movement. When in the morning next day the educators and artists  gathered, they tried unsuccessfully to copy the Italian celebrity. Only Vaganova pronounced: “She has done so”. Then she stood up and repeated…
Vaganova’s school remained a present for the whole of my life. Asaf Messerer, who had been my teacher during long years, continued this school. I will mention, that both, Vaganova and Messerer, have published wonderful books about the classical dance method.
 – You dance not only in the classical repertoire, but in the new ballets as well, staged by the best soviet choreographers.
 – And such cases are not few. I shall call the leading part in Vahtang Chabukiani’s “Laurencia” on Crain’s music  to “Ovechy istochnik” (sheep source) by Lope de Veg. I saw in Laurencia, fearless leader of the people, rising against the tyrant, the avid fighter for freedom and justice. Pity, this ballet, full of the pathos of fight and life – assertion, has been taken off the Bolshoi theatre stage.
Later I performed two contradictory parts in two variations of one ballet. They were Egina in Igoir Moiseev’s “Spartak” and Frigia in Leonid Yakobson’s “Spartak”. Antipodes, two extremes to Hachaturyan’s music and choreography of two ballet masters! Rome courtesan Egina and a courageous girl friend of the rebellious gladiators’ leader. Different plastics, different emotional saturation of the dance…
Quite a new, unexpected image was awaiting me in the miniature to Bach’s music prelude mi-flat minor.  Ballet masters Natalya Kasatkina and Vladimir Vasilyev created this thing romantically sublime and subtle, filled with austere light of deep, wise meditation… In this short performance – enlightenment and bitterness, futility of appeal and a protest, hope for happiness and deceived expectations…
 – Pessimism?
 –No! Never!
 – And how about your favorite heroines – Carmen and Anna Karenina? Both perish. Both seem doomed almost from the very beginning.
  – No! For one thing, they don’t seem doomed. Vice a versa, they are expecting happiness, and each, in her own way, fights for it. and where there is fight, there is no place for hopelessness.
Pessimism means passiveness, but these heroines are not passive.
Whatever it was, Anna in her death appears stronger, purer, nobler, than those “people of the world”, who had made her life humiliating and therefore unbearable.
“The dying swan”, danced by me since the pre-graduation school class, included today to the list of the most favorite concert items, also dies. But it fights with the death to the last second, and this duel teaches us durability and glorifies it…
 As to Carmen, her love of life means more than her death. And admit, leaving the theatre after “Carmen-suite”, what are you thinking about? Certainly, about life, not about death!
The same, I hope, takes place after “The death of rose”. Roland Petit, wonderful French choreographer,  produced this ballet for me to Maler’s Fifth symphony music. He produced it with the view to convey the idea about the necessity to save everything beautiful and valuable in life.
So, don’t remind me about pessimism. And it seems to me, I hope, that neither my favorite heroines, nor the ballet in general – art, so light, joyful and beautiful as to its essence, can’t be pessimistic.  It is not optimism, when a man knows what fun it is to laugh, but when he knows all about life and death and does everything possible for the assertion of life on the Earth, for the assertion of human mutual understanding, harmony and beauty.
It is the task of art. And my own task in art, which I am looking forward to solve.
 – And were there failures?
 – Of course, there were! – Maya Michailovna confesses at once – And not few. For example, the part of Zarema in “Bachchisarai fountain”, performance with a very poor choreography, though both heroines, being antipodes, were very attractive to me, lover of the extremes. They were created by Pushkin with a scale, akin to his nature: Zarema has an ardent, revengeful and strong nature, Mariya is fragile and gentle.  The next failure is a girl- bird  in “Shurale”, a fairy tale”, resembling a little the situation in the ‘Swan lake”. Then it was Masha in “ The Nutcracker”. It is not my heroine. You see, if something doesn’t find  response in the soul, then the dance won’t be able to express the heroine’s inner world, and there is no need for it…
 As always, she tells the truth about herself, nevertheless it is difficult to believe, that something went wrong with her.
 – Can we expect surprises from you, like Carmen and Anna Karenina parties, which opened new Plisetskaya for many people?
  – You mean that I “suddenly” became a ballet master?
The need to create something for oneself –begin e new life – appeared long. And if there is a ballet on Tolstoy, why not compose the ballet on Chekhov? I dream about “Chaika” (the seagull). And, what is more paradoxical, – on Gogol!
His peculiar sense of humor, “half with sarcasm” may give birth to ballets, never seen on the choreographic stage.  “Revisor” (the inspector), “Nose”, “Kolyaska’ (pram) – what new, unlimited possibilities for the producer and dancer!.   I have never danced in the comedian performances. One can understand, how I wish to try myself in the new sphere.
 What is awaiting me on this road? I don’t know, though believe in good, otherwise it was not necessary to begin. I am sure, that I will be able to appreciate correctly both, praise and critics, awaiting me on this road, besides, I seem not to be devoid of self criticism, so necessary in our work. The main thing is to work and work
 How solemnly and warm our country and our foreign friends marked the Bolshoi theatre 200th jubilee in spring 1976 ! How much good and kind had been written and said!.  How touching and pleasant it had been! And how much we would like to do, what great citizen responsibility lies on us, going out on the Bolshoi theatre stage,  seen in the most faraway corners of our country and the world.

Translated from Russian “Monologues of present- day people”, composed by B. Yakovlev, edition 2, M., m77. 1978