'I Feel Ukrainian': The Story of New York Choreographer Alexei Ratmansky

He was born in Leningrad and studied at the Moscow Choreographic School. But Ratmansky was not accepted into the Bolshoi Theater, and he worked in Kyiv, where his relatives live. “Today I feel like a Ukrainian, but I feel good in New York,” says the choreographer, who has been working with the American Ballet Theater for 10 years.

Photo: video frame Present Tense

13 minutes is the usual route from home to work. Walking through a city that has loved him mutually for 10 years now. Each passing day rapidly raises him higher to the ballet Olympus - like an elevator delivering to the rehearsal hall of the American Ballet Theater. It’s impossible to squeeze into his crazy schedule, so the minutes snatched from his life for an interview are almost a miracle. Who is he and whose now, when encyclopedias call him a Russian-American choreographer? Journalists talked to Alexei Ratmansky Present Time.

“My ballet school is Russian,” says Alexey. — I speak Russian. But now I feel more Ukrainian. My family and relatives live in Kyiv. But by and large, my home is in New York, and I feel great here.”

Photo: video frame Present Tense

A man of the world is his usual status. When he studied at the Moscow Choreographic School, he was a boy from Leningrad, where he was born. After graduating from college, he was not accepted into the Bolshoi Theater, and he went to dance in Kyiv - a Muscovite. Then he looked for himself in Canada, where he was considered Ukrainian, then work in Denmark, where they called him Russian. Finally, on the wave of global success, he was invited as a choreographer to direct the Bolshoi Theater ballet, where he already seemed like a foreigner from Denmark.

Photo: video frame Present Tense

Ratmansky was the youngest ever leader of the Bolshoi troupe. And perhaps his biggest loss, which he doesn’t like to remember after years of 10.

“I’m not sure that I would even like to return to this,” admits the choreographer. “But if you go back to that time, there are things that I would have done differently, probably...”

Photo: video frame Present Tense

“I came from Denmark, there is democracy, everyone is equal there - from the last person in the line of the corps de ballet to the cleaners and the general director, who arrives on a bicycle. I tried to somehow plant this culture. Of course, it didn’t work,” says Alexey.

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The American Ballet Theater opened its doors to Ratmansky virtually forever. Especially for him was created the honorary post of permanent director at the theater with the provision of carte blanche for any fantasy: from surrealistic to reconstruction of old ballets of the XIX century. Ratmansky was the last to get carried away so much that according to the records kept in the archives of Harvard, he deciphered and restored Petipa's performances on the stage to the smallest details, turning the ballet's past into his future.

Photo: video frame Present Tense

For theater fans, this was equivalent to the discovery, for example, of some lost Beethoven symphony.

“These are thousands of pages of classical choreography of the late 19th century - what constitutes the golden fund of our art,” says the choreographer. - This is our classic, our canon. It was recorded, but it turned out to be completely different from what they dance now.”

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Photo: video frame Present Tense

In New York, he received support, which hardly anyone could enlist before him. The director of the American Ballet Theater called Ratmansky’s invitation his greatest achievement in a quarter of a century of work, and the usually picky New York Times called him perhaps the most outstanding choreographer of modern times. Balanchine, Nureyev, Baryshnikov: here he was among the great ballet immigrants. So, leaving, came to his?

“You know, there’s this feeling a little bit. Now in this sense there is no drama - you come, you leave. I imagine what these people went through, who, when they left, knew that they could never return. This, of course, would be very difficult,” shares Alexey.

Photo: video frame Present Tense

One of the world's main venues is the Metropolitan Opera. At the gala performance in honor of Ratmansky's tenth anniversary in America, the hall is packed. The new season of the theater is officially dedicated to this anniversary.

After the premiere, the public utters a word that does not need translation: “Bravo!”, and viewers surveyed by journalists unanimously call Ratmansky a genius.

Photo: video frame Present Tense

Time, of course, is the main arbiter. But while critics are drawing a new world coordinate system of the Petipa-Balanchine-Ratmansky continuity, he himself continues to build his biography, where he walks 13 minutes to work, a crazy life schedule and a new season.

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