Bolshoi Ballet for Exclusive Brisbane Season

For the first time in twenty years Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet will perform in Australia. Peter Pinne reports.

The Bolshoi Ballet will perform Le Corsaire and The Bright Stream in their season when they play the Lyric Theatre, QPAC, 30 May to 9 June, 2013. It follows on the success of The Hamburg Season in 2012, and is the second in the QPAC International Series, a joint initiative by QPAC and Events Queensland.

Le Corsaireis a swashbuckling, romantic tale of pirates, slaves and intrigue set in Turkey inspired by Lord Byron’s epic poem The Corsair. It is typical of the exotic and ambitious ballets created during the Tzarist era. Premiering in Paris in 1856, it is one of the few ballets from the mid-19^th century that is still performed today. The 2007 revival choreography is by Alexi Ratmansky and Yuri Burlaka based on Marius Petipa’s reinterpretation of the ballet in 1899. The music of six composers is used in the production; Leo Delibes, Cesare Pugni, Pyotr von Oldenburg, Riccardo Drigo, Albert Zabel and Julius Gerber.

Le Corsaire contains one of the most famous pas-de-deux in the classical ballet repertoire. It comes in the second scene of Act One. Since 1962 when it was danced by Rudolf Nureyev as Ali, the slave, and Margot Fonteyn as Medora, his beloved, it has become an audience favourite and one of the highlights of the ballet. In this version the pas-de-deux is danced by Medora and Conrad, leader of the pirates.

Alexei Ratmansky’s The Bright Stream has an original score by one of the most celebrated Russian composers of the 20^th century, Dimitri Shostakovich. It’s a comedic romp set on a collective farm that incorporates Cossack as well as other ethnic dances and a hilarious cross-dressing spoof of classical ballet. This is the first production of this work in Australia.

Both ballets will be accompanied by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

Like they did when the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra played QPAC in 2011, the 4^th June performance of Le Corsaire will be simulcast live to eight regional Queensland cities; Burdekin Theatre Ayr, Moncrieff Theatre Bundaberg, Civic Theatre Cairns, Gladstone Marina Gladstone, Seafront Oval Hervey Bay, Entertainment and Convention Centre Mackay, Pilbream Theatre Rockhampton, and Empire Theatre Toowoomba.

During the season Professor Susan Street will facilitate a Conversation Series; What’s the Point[e]?, Old Tradition, New Tricks?, and But I Thought Ballet Was French?, and there will also be free dance classes and dance sessions which will encompass everything from Rockabilly to Swing and from Hip-hop to Tap, Feet First – An Invitation to Dance in the South Bank Cultural Forecourt Monday to Friday.

QPAC will also host Backstage Tours during the Bolshoi season, and will mount two exhibitions, Steppe by Step in the QPAC Tunnel, and Tools of the Trade – Exploring the Traditions of Ballet Costume in the Tony Gould Gallery.  

The Bolshoi Ballet was founded in 1776 and based at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow. It made its first international tour to London and New York in 1956, and followed with an historic visit to Australia in 1959. In that season only 12 dancers from the Bolshoi appeared in a program of excerpts from International classic and works by Soviet choreographers.

When the company visited a second time in 1961, 45 dancers came from the Maly Theatre, Leningrad, with a program that included Swan Lake (2^nd and 3^rd Acts), the Grand Pas from Paquita, Seven Beauties (3^rd Act) and divertissements.

In previous visits the Bolshoi Ballet has always attracted capacity audiences for their brilliant virtuosity and athletic physical style. Le Corsaire and The Bright Stream is the chance for past audiences to reconnect and for new balletomanes to discover the joys of this renowned company who have been absent from these shores for too long.

Images (from top): Alexey Loparevich and Irina Zibrova in The Bright Stream; Alexey Loparevich and Irina Zibrova in The Bright Stream; Maria Alexandrova in Le Corsaire and Denis Medvedev and Nina Kaptsova in Le Corsaire. Photographer: Damir Yusupov