At age 22 I had an idea for a dance performance “Carmen”, based on the musical piece by Rodion Schedrin. At that time I was a student of the theater academy and had nothing to do with dance. I wanted my piece to be focused on the character of this gypsy girl, who is traveling through the story of her life, like a boat through a storm.
Kasija once said: “I choose fate like a dress, I put it on and go out”. You see, Carmen is dressed in red, obviously, because it suits her best. But back then in my twenty-two-year-oldness, someone told me, my concept wouldn’t work well, because “Carmen” is actually the story of Jose, an ignorant soldier, who’s life is destroyed by passion, and
Carmen herself is a symbol, a Kantian thing-in-itself. She’s an object of desire: she is wanted, she is unreachable, she is destroyed. This conversation took place in the center of St.Petersburg: the sky was moist, depressed clouds were leaning down to look into the eyes of passersby, and I realized: the main character of a story should always experience some development.
On this photo I am 30, I am standing on stage in Germany a few days before the premiere of my “Carmen”. These two moments are married: Russian gloomy afternoon with Carmen-in-herself contemplation, and general rehearsal in Germany. These two seconds are married in the same way, as the imaginary Bois de Boulogne of my teenage days and the real one seventeen years later…
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