Bread, Brodsky, Church, Ballet

(from along my steet)

For us, an apartment is for life, the town is for life, the country is for life. The notions of permanence are therefore stronger; the sense of loss as well.
-Brodsky



Ok, so I’m really, really behind and really, really busy, so I’ll try be quick about things.

Wednesday after class Alisa and I went on a mission to find this delicious bread store Professor Golstein had recommended. We went to Liteny Prospect, knowing there was one there. And it was delicious. I got two loaves to bring home, one with fruit inside and the other full of various grains. After the bread place I wanted to find Joseph Brodsky’s old communal apartment building from when he lived in Russia. It’s not in the guidebooks, so I had my host father mark it down for me on a map. It’s not far from the bread place or the church we’d been to with the Turkish gun gates. I’m glad we found it. It might be turned into a museum at some point, but for now it’s just apartments still.





We also stopped by Professor Golstein’s son’s favorite church in Petersburg, which is very down to earth and synagogue feeling. I laughed when Professor Golstein told me his son wanted to be Jewish rather than Russian Orthodox (the faith his parents are raising him as), after seeing this church.



Pictures of Smolniy on the way to the ballet:




Pictures of my park:


Weird Soviet monument:


So in the evening was another ballet, this time a contemporary one by a Russian choreographer Eiffman (sp? I only know it in Russian). He was supposed to be very interesting and is very popular in Russia. The tickets were pretty expensive so we decided to see only one of his ballets, choosing Anna Karenina over Brothers Karamazov (which we’d heard from Svetlana was a disaster) and Red Giselle (which I would’ve been interested in seeing). But Anna Karenina has lots of dramatic potential and we’d all read the book. It wasn’t at the Mariinsky, rather at this ugly high school auditorium like building.

I kind of didn’t like the ballet, although the second act was a little more interesting than the first if just for the effects and change in choreography. There was no live orchestra and the sound system and acoustics were horrible. Hearing Tchaikovsky that way made me cringe, and almost brought Alisa to tears. Furthermore, Eiffman only seemed to pick out the most well known Tchaikovsky pieces and repeat their most hum-able strains. It was painful to hear the music to Balanchine’s gorgeous Serenade blast out of the speakers in the opening scenes. The choreography was all a bunch of cheap tricks, along with the costuming and staging. The ballet had serious structural issues and was fragmented, but not in a good “avant garde” way. His group scenes were more successful, however. Eiffman had a weird use of classical music and technique and the music overpowered his choreography no matter how dramatic he made the dancing. Sometimes it’s better to be more simple with great pieces. But everything was at the same high pitch--too busy, with not enough quiet moments for you to appreciate the emotional ones. There’s only so many times you can have “ballet sex,” and then it’s simply vulgar. And I didn’t just dislike the ballet because I only like classical ballet—I actually really enjoy contemporary ballet and modern. But I’ve seen better contemporary ballets than this from students at my old ballet schools. Unfortunately I guess this is what many people would expect from Russians (maybe why a lot of foreigners like him too)—passionate, libidinal, melodramatic.

The pictures say enough about the guy and made us laugh a long time.