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| Arts Calendar / July 1 / Ballet |
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Comic ballet in two acts to music by Dmitry Shostakovich. Libretto by Adrian Piotrovsky and Fyodor Lopukhov. Choreographer: Alexei Ratmansky. Designer: Boris Messerer. Music Director: Pavel Sorokin. With its dancing farmers and cycling dog, Shostakovich thought his ballet The Bright Stream would delight Stalin. Instead, one of its creators was sent to the gulag. Now the Bolshoi has finally resurrected it. In the mass of Shostakovich centenary events that have taken place this year, ballet fans haven’t had much to celebrate. It’s not that the composer ignored the form — between 1929 and 1935, he wrote a trio of full-length ballet scores: The Golden Age, The Bolt and The Bright Stream. All three, though, were banned shortly after their premieres, leaving Shostakovich’s reputation so damaged, he was reluctant ever to write for the lyric stage again. It’s a cause of great regret for Russia’s monolithic ballet companies, the Kirov and the Bolshoi. Both are aware that, had Shostakovich been given full artistic freedom, he may have become one of the great modern ballet composers — as inspirational for the dance-makers of Soviet Russia as Stravinsky was for choreographers in the west. Instead, the two companies must content themselves with acts of restitution. This summer, as part of its 10-day Shostakovich festival at the Coliseum in London, the Kirov is performing The Golden Age, while over at the Royal Opera House, the Bolshoi is presenting the first British performances of The Bright Stream. Of the three ballets, it was The Bright Stream that was punished most grotesquely. The ballet’s co-librettist, Adrian Piotrovsky, was sent to a gulag and never heard of again, while the creative career of its choreographer, Fedor Lopukhov, was all but terminated. Shostakovich’s music was never again played during the Soviet era, beyond a heavily edited suite of his most popular tunes. For Ratmansky, the act of rehabilitating Lopukhov was very important. “The richness of his ideas, his courage in using contemporary stories in ballet, are still a real source of inspiration,” he says. Even though he could do nothing to restore the original choreography of The Bright Stream, which was never notated, in 2003 he created a new version, working from Lopukhov’s libretto, which was, he says, “brilliantly detailed, brilliantly constructed with the music”. Bolshoi Theater New Stage |
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