The choreographer Nikita Dmitrievsky undertook to tell the well-known plot of The Little Prince in such a way as to sweep away a layer of childhood from him and surprise the viewer with a new reading. This is not the first time that "New Ballet" takes a famous work as the basis of the production, however, Exupery's tale has already become an indestructible literary monument, which only complicates the task for the director.
The art experiment begins with three screens that take the audience to the Sahara, and a lonely table on which the narrator is located. The noise of the wind intertwines with a live orchestra under the direction of Alevtina Ioffe, who carefully conveyed the emotional experiences of the heroes through musical accompaniment. “Please draw me a lamb,” the Little Prince's voice suddenly sounds, voiced by theater and film actor Yevgeny Stychkin. The boy’s request immerses the narrator in thought about the adult world, for which there is nothing more important than numbers, and his whole life turns into an endless question “how much”. Having moved to the forefront, the pilot firmly declares his unwillingness to be an adult, and the synchronous attire of the corps de ballet seems to emphasize the identity of each resident of this world that is hated by the hero.
A variation of the proud Rose (Maria Plahotina) smoothly turns into an adagio with the Little Prince (Andrey Ostapenko), where each support literally makes not only the capricious flower, but the whole hall soar above the ground. The farewell scene is accompanied by the sounds of a violin, and a rainy landscape appears on the screens - from this moment the Little Prince begins his journey to other planets.
Observing the plot plot, the boy moves through unexplored, but equally lonely galaxies: starting from the planet of the king of power and ending with the planet of a geographer who never left his office. Once on Earth, the Little Prince meets the Snake, which tells a naive, crystal-clear creature that it is lonely among people. But the quintessence of the hero’s disappointment is the realization that flowers like his beloved Rosa are really huge, that he doesn’t own something unique.
An image of a swing appears on the screen, embodying real friendship. So the Little Prince meets the Fox, from whose lips the main truth of the work sounds: “Vigilantly only one heart. You cannot see the most important thing with your eyes. ” The prince decides to return to the once tamed flower, and as a souvenir the pilot promises to give stars who know how to laugh. The piercing voice of Yevgeny Stychkin against the background of a vivid video sequence created by Leonid Basin turns the fairy tale into a dramatic adult story that sometimes our mental blindness prevents us from sincerely rejoicing, creating and loving, as children can do it. The scene is filled with little men who seem to symbolize our whole world - so orphaned and crowded at the same time.
The music of Shinji Eshim and computer animation, presented on three screens, only exacerbate all the bitterness from the inability to know simple human happiness, which the director Nikita Dmitrievsky painfully keenly sees.
