Irma Nioradze of the Mariinsky Ballet Company of St Petersburg
“The world’s number one ballet company!” This is how American critics hail the Mariinsky Ballet Company from St Petersburg which is now almost half through a three-week series of gala performances at New York City’s Lincoln Center. This is the first New York tour of the Mariinsky Ballet in six years, and the current visit, celebrating the theatre’s 225th anniversary, is longer and more intense than ever before. What makes this year’s tour so special, however, is that the troupe mostly consists of young dancers who have made their première since the Mariinsky last performed in the Big Apple in 2002.
Valery Gergiev, the artistic director and chief conductor of the company, said, “People have stopped saying the Mariinsky needs to be ‘examined’ in New York or London… We are simply showing our latest work, we believe in young talent and are helping them in every way. A famous theatre like ours has one foot in the past and the other in the future, if you know what I mean…”
The playbill for the three-week tour includes works representing three centuries of the famed Mariinsky Ballet Company: its legendary past, represented by the legacy of Marius Petipa (19th century), choreographers whose creative signatures were influenced by the Petersburg stage such as Michel Fokine and George Balanchine (20th century), as well as ballets by the famous American choreographer William Forsythe that have brought the company into the 21st century. And, as if this were not enough, the Mariinsky’s equally celebrated Opera Company is presenting Sergei Prokofiev’s Gambler at the Metropolitan Opera. All of this means that Americans have a great opportunity to simultaneously see and hear what they admiringly call “the quintessence of Russian classical art!”
5 April 2008
Voice of Russia World Service
http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=25268&cid=62&p=05.04.2008 (in English and Russian)
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