BOLSHOI IN LONDON 2007

[leonid17]

The Bolshoi Ballet will be at the London Coliseum Theatre(London's best ballet stage) from 31 July to 18 August 2007.

The repertoire will include a new production of Le Corsaire, The Bright Stream and Hamlet a one act ballet choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon using music from Arvo Paart's Symphony No 3 with a cast expected to include Tsiskaridze, Lunkina. Alexandrova and Yuri Klevtsov.

[Buddy]

From Marc's website comes this information.

"LONDON, Coliseum Theatre, 31 July - 18 August 2007.

Programme to include: Le Corsaire (new production), La Bayadère, Spartacus, Don Quixote, The Bright Stream, new Wheeldon ballet, Les Présages (Massine)."

http://www.for-ballet-lovers-only.com/Burning3.html

[Helene]

Now, if only work will send me to Europe this summer...

[drb]

Now, if only work will send me to Europe this summer...

I hope it does! Here's the casting for the three-week London Season, from The Bolshoi's press release of March 14:

http://www.bolshoi.ru/en/season/press-offi...ex.php?id26=621

I see no listing of the Princess Diana ballet referred to on today's links. The composer seems to want the Bolshoi to do it in London this summer. No choreographer, no mention on the Bolshoi site, and a very odd home site:

http://www.princessofthepeople.com./index.html

[Rosa]

Osipova and Vasiliev will dance Don Q again. How exciting!

[leonid17]

The Bolshoi Ballet will be at the London Coliseum Theatre(London's best ballet stage) from 31 July to 18 August 2007.

The repertoire will include a new production of Le Corsaire, The Bright Stream and Hamlet a one act ballet choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon using music from Arvo Paart's Symphony No 3 with a cast expected to include Tsiskaridze, Lunkina. Alexandrova and Yuri Klevtsov.

Clement Crisp in the Financial Times has written an excellent introduction the Bolshoi season opening in London next week, which I first read on my local London ballet website.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d495e612-3c00-11dc...00779fd2ac.html

[delibes]

Anatoly Iksanov, general director of the bolshoi Theatre, gave an interesting interview to Interfax on July 20: I translate the general points he made - my translation is checked with the Bolshoi Theatre:

1. The political chill between Russia and England is not affecting the London tour; art and culture traditionally survive even colder tensions. The London tour is very large in scale, with proper programming for 3 weeks, including 10 ballets. The company will arrive in London July 29 (tomorrow), give the Corsaire premiere July 30.

2. The next season will contain even more foreign tours (both opera and ballet) than the current one with visits to Berlin, Amsterdam, Turin and Milan, and most important a tour to Paris. However, closer to their heart will be an increase in internal Russian tours, resurrecting a 'Bolshoi-Russia' project of domestic touring which had lapsed for many years, but which (eg most recently the visits to Novosibirsk and Rostov on Don) was intended to make renewed efforts to show Russia's chief theatre around the whole country.

3. To a question about the way that foreign tours became "rewards" for good behaviour in Soviet times, and how "intrigues" invariably arose concerning who went and who stayed, and who got the foreign fees and privileges, Iksanov replied that it was utterly changed now. Foreign tours, domestic tours, house performances were all treated as a routine part of artists' life. There was not the slightest "hullabaloo" any more about touring. This was partly explained by changes in fees, which meant artists earned as much at home as they did abroad, but naturally there would always be more home performances than foreign.

4. The next season's premieres were 2 opera and 3 ballet - chief interest in a new 'Queen of Spades' production conducted by the pianist/conductor Mikhail Pletnev and directed by famous theatre director (but opera debutant) Valerii Fokin, also a new 'Carmen', reverting to the original score with spoken dialogue, conducted by Yuri Temirkanov, the theatre's new chief guest conductor, and directed by English opera director David Pountney. The ballet premieres would be Flemming Flindt's 'The Lesson', on October 28 2007, a Johan Kobborg production of 'La Sylphide', and Alexei Ratmansky's new staging of the epic 'Flames of Paris', scheduled (like the Class Concert premiere) for the end of the season, July 3 2008.

5. The renovation of the Bolshoi Theatre was proving problematic, it is now "at the very least" [po menshei mere] six months behind. Although officially the theatre opens in October 2008, it will not be fully open to the public until well into 2009. The fabric of the building and foundations were far worse than originally realised, about 60 percent of the entire area proved to be crumbling once work began. New bricks to the old specifications were being made to reinforce the old masonry. Inside the stage, this generated a large new complication, since the old scenery girders lay on the old walls, but these walls could no longer be used. Hence a unique metal carcass is being constructed within the stage walls, not touching, but independently supporting the girders. Workers are working around the clock in three shifts to get it done.

6. Once the Main Stage reopened, the repertory would not be the same as the New Stage's, it would be a mixture of the great productions that could not properly be done in the New Stage and new productions for the Main Stage.

7. Iksanov was asked about something that was "no secret", but rather very "well known", that a large part of the Russian public and critics were complaining that the Bolshoi Ballet was now getting carried away with rehashing [perekraivat'] classical ballet too much. In a short final answer he said, "I absolutely disagree with that. We are not rehashing classical ballet, we are looking at it with the eyes of the 21st century audience."

There is also an Ismene Brown article in the Telegraph about the Wheeldon ballet and some points made above, including the interesting maybe sad information that Ratmansky has renewed his contract only to October 2008:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml...btballet123.xml