Roland Petit Ballet

Allumez les Étoiles

The first part of the program was dedicated to the personality of the revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky . The title of this part ( Fr. Allumez les Étoiles - “Light the Stars”) is a paraphrased quote from the poem “Listen!”: “After all, if the stars light - / So - does anyone need this?” ^[4] .

The image of Mayakovsky in different periods of his life was embodied on the stage by various dancers of the Marseille Ballet troupe: Wojtek Lowski ( French: Woytek Lowski ) performed the role of “petrel of the revolution”; Denis Ganio ( French: Denys Ganio ) portrayed a young poet with whom Lily Brik performed by Barbara Malinowska ( French Barbara Malinowska ) is in love. Roland Peti himself portrayed Mayakovsky in the last years of his life. The leitmotif of this fragment was the suicide of the poet. To play the role, the choreographer specially shaved his head - the image of the poet with a shaved head, captured in photographs by Alexander Rodchenko , was also proposed by the spouses Aragon ^[1] .

For musical accompaniment of this part of the program, fragments of the works of Prokofiev , Shostakovich and Mussorgsky were used ^[2] .

The scenery for the production, made in the form of an abundance of red revolutionary slogans, banners, was regarded by the Canadian authorities as the use of communist symbols, and served as the reason for the ban on the tour performances of the Roland Petit Ballet in Canada ^[5] .

La Rose Malade

The second part of the program was inspired by the poem by William Blake "The Sick Rose" ( Eng. The Sick Rose , French La Rose Malade ). The central role in the production of Roland Petit was assigned to Maya Plisetskaya . A preliminary agreement on her participation was reached during a short meeting in Paris , however, due to her busy work schedule, Plisetskaya was not able to come to Marseille for rehearsals , so Peti and the prospective partner of Plisetskaya Rudy Bryans themselves arrived for trial rehearsals to Moscow . When it became clear that the partners easily work together, Louis Aragon wrote a special appeal to L.I. Brezhnev in order to obtain permission for the ballerina to participate in the production on the French stage. On January 1, 1973, Plisetskaya flew to Marseille for dress rehearsals before the premiere performances at the Paris Sports Palace ^[1] .

The production, performed under fragments of Mahler’s 2nd and 5th symphonies ^[2] , consisted of three acts. In the first act, “Garden of Love” (without Plisetskaya’s participation), six dancers of the “Marseille Ballet” depicted various types of love: between a man and a woman, between two women, between two men ^[1] .

The second act - a duet performed by Maya Plisetskaya and Rudy Briana - was a 12-minute production directly based on the plot of Blake's poem. Subsequently, Plisetskaya included this duet in her concert program and performed it in different countries of the world with different partners ^[1] .

In the third act, the costumes for which was developed by Yves Saint Laurent , Maya Plisetskaya performed on stage with six male partners ^[1] .

Pink Floyd Ballet

The initial idea of ​​collaboration between Roland Petit and Pink Floyd arose in 1970, when the choreographer suggested that the group create a joint ballet program based on the work of Marcel Proust, “ In Search of Lost Time ”. This idea was not implemented for a number of reasons, including due to the lack of time for musicians to read the multi-volume work of Proust and because of the alleged difficulties in the audience of Pink Floyd reading the Proust theme ^[6] .

As a result, by November 1972, a simpler choreographic staging in four acts was created based on the existing Pink Floyd music ^[2] :

1. One of these days
2. Careful With That Ax, Eugene
3. Obscured by Clouds - When You're In
4. Echoes

The group played on a three-meter high, set on stage , in front of which dancers performed. The first two acts involved the entire Marseille Ballet troupe, and the third and fourth acts were staged for the soloists of the troupe Rudi Briand and Daniel Jossi ( FR Danielle Jossi ) ^[7] .

The first show of the Pink Floyd Ballet took place in November 1972 in Marseille . In the concert hall of Valle ( French Salle Valliers ) on November 21–26, five performances were organized ^[2] .

During performances in Marseille, musicians and dancers faced an unforeseen problem: live performance of the song Careful With That Ax, Eugene traditionally abounded with improvisations and therefore varied in duration, while the choreography focused on a fixed length of the recorded song. For live performances with ballet, the group had to develop a version of a song of standard duration, however, the performance of this version was difficult, since the musicians were not used to such frames at concerts. To orient the musicians on the stage, an assistant was placed next to the piano , who monitored the rhythm and had to raise a card with the number of the current measure for every fourth beat . At measure 256, the group was supposed to finish playing, as the choreographic performance ^{[5] [8] [9]} ended here.

Before the official premieres in Paris of the full program of Roland Petit's Ballet, Pink Floyd and Marseille Ballet held rehearsals on 11 and 12 January, which were shot by French television. Fragments of the rehearsals were shown to viewers on January 12, and a few years later, on December 19, 1977, a full 38-minute program was broadcast ^[10] .

Because of the planned studio work, Pink Floyd could not participate in all the performances organized in 1973 in Paris, so the ballet performances on January 20-21 and January 27-28 passed under the phonogram ^[10] .

Roland Petit tried to continue to attract Pink Floyd to similar projects, which, however, did not yield fruit. At some point, it was proposed to create a musical-choreographic-cinematographic piece with the participation of Rudolf Nureyev and Roman Polansky , discussed a return to Proustian motifs, the use of Frankenstein and Thousand and One Nights themes, but, according to the musicians, no one had a clear idea, what is supposed to be done in practice, besides the musicians did not feel interested in a long stay in the atmosphere of ballet bohemia ^{[5] [11] [12]} .

• Mark Blake Chapter 6. New Car, Caviar // Comfortably numb: the inside story of Pink Floyd. - Thunder's Mouth Press, 2008 .-- P. 157, 190-1, 206. - 418 p. - ISBN 1-56058-383-4 . (eng.)
• Vernon Fitch. The Pink Floyd encyclopedia . - 3rd. - Collector's Guide, 2005 .-- P. 198,239-240. - 456 p. (eng.)
• John Harris Chapter 4. Forward He Cried from the Rear: Into Abbey Road // The Dark Side of the Moon: The Making of the Pink Floyd Masterpiece. - Da Capo Press, 2006 .-- P. 119-122. - 192 p. - ISBN 0-306-81500-1 , 978-0-306-81500-3. (eng.)
• Nick Mason , Philip Dodd. Chapter 6. There Is No Dark Side // Inside out: a personal history of Pink Floyd . - Chronicle Books, 2005 .-- P. 177-182. - 359 p. - ISBN 0-811-84824-8 . (eng.)
• Maya Plisetskaya . Chapter 40. Work with Roland Petit and Maurice Béjart // I, Maya Plisetskaya = I, Maya Plisetskaya. - Yale University Press, 2001 .-- P. 282-285. - 386 p. - ISBN 0-300-08857-4 . (eng.)
• Glenn Povey, Ian Russell. Pink Floyd: In the flesh. The complete performance history . - New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1997 .-- P. 124-125. - 256 p. - ISBN 0-312-19175-8 . (eng.)
• Glenn Povey. 1973 // Echoes: the complete history of Pink Floyd. - Mind Head Publishing, 2007 .-- P. 171-173. - 368 p. - ISBN 978-0-9554624-0-5 . (eng.)

• Ballets de Marseille. Roland Petit . - Paris, 1973. (fr.) - The program of premiere performances in Paris.