10 February 2011
Paris Opera Ballet Is Going to Perform at the Bolshoi Theatre
The Year of the Russia in France and France in Russia cross-cultural exchange is over, but the mutual interest of these two countries for each other’s art is infinite! Under the aegis of last year’s Russo-French cultural program, the Bolshoi Theatre undertook the role of active organizer of the Paris Opera Ballet Company tour to Novosibirsk. This illustrious Company’s forthcoming season at the Bolshoi is a logical continuation of the project.
A visit by the Paris Opera Ballet (POB) has always been a key event in the life of the true balletomane. Tickets for the season are immediately sold out, and even before it comes to an end, the performances become part of the collective cultural memory, the lead dancers are proclaimed all-time idols, while any tendencies of development discovered are submitted to exhaustive analysis. The Bolshoi Theatre has played host to the Paris Opera on four occasions: in 1958, 1969-70, 1977 and 1991. The Ballet Company's last visit was twenty years ago. And though the Bolshoi constantly invites guest artists from the Paris Opera to appear in Moscow, and many of our balletomanes now follow developments in ballet at the Opera from their seats in the Palais Garnier auditorium, a large-scale Paris Opera Ballet Company tour at the Bolshoi remains, as before, an event with a capital E.
And the 2011 tour program itself is compiled in such a way that it is bound to arouse nostalgic emotions. For connoisseurs it is a retrospective, going back to the depths of the past century. While for neophytes it amounts to the achievements, and very varied achievements at that, of French ballet in the 20th century. The three one-act ballets, making up a triple bill, were created by three 'titans', whose names are as legendary in France, as they are in Russia. These are Serge Lifar (1904-1986), Maurice Bejart (1927-2007) and Roland Petit (b. in 1924). Lifar is represented by the famous Suite en blanc to music by Edouard Lalo (1943). Bejart - by the outstanding ballet Bolero to music by Maurice Ravel (1960), and Roland Petit - by L'Arlesienne set to music by Georges Bizet (1974), also a well-known work.
The full-length ballet forming the second part of the tour program, belongs to the new times, end of 20th century. Le Parc, to music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was commissioned from choreographer Angelin Preljocaj by Paris Opera in 1994.
POB one-act ballets will run on February 10, 11, 12 (13.30 and 19.00 PM). Le Parc will be presented on February 15-17.
Submitted on 16 December 2010, Thursday
