Vaktanag Chabukiani video clip

[bart]

I've been reading about Soviet ballet in he 30s and 40s and have come across the Georgian-born dancer Vaktang Chabukiani. There's a brief video clip on You Tube in which Chaukiani, clearly in middle age, dances a powerful, desperate role of what appears to be a slave or prisoner. Based on his apparent age, this probably dates from the 1950s or even early 60s, after he left the Kirov and returned to Tibilsi.

It's like nothing I've ever seen in dance film. Can anyone identify the piece and tell us a bit about it?

[Natalia]

Bart, this appears to be the title role in his own balletic version of Othello.

[rg]

below are the NYPL dance cat. entries for Chabukiani's ballet, OTHELLO, identified above by Natalia.

first, the data for the stage version and then the credits for the undated film version, which is the source of the youtube clip.

the NYPL listings include noting a review of the film from 1960, which may be when the movie was actually made, perhaps to coincide w/ the ballet's entering the repertory of the kirov ballet.

Othello: Original title: Otello. Chor: Vakhtang Chabukiani; mus: Aleksei Machavariani; lib: Chabukiani after Shakespeare; scen: Simon Virsaladze. First perf: U.S.S.R.: Tbilisi, Paliashvili Theater, Nov 27, 1957.//Perf: Leningrad, Kirov Theater, 1960.

Othello : [1957]. 95 min. : sd. color

Produced by Gruzia-Film Studios. Director: Vakhtang Chabukiani. Camera: Felix Vysotsky.

Choreography: Vakhtang Chabukiani. Music: Alexei Machavariani. Scenery: Simon Virsaladze and S. Vatsadze.

Performed by Vakhtang Chabukiani (Othello), Vera Tsignadze (Desdemona), Zarub Kikaleishvili (Iago), Liana Mitaishvili (Emilia), Bichiko Monavardishashvili (Cassio), Eteri Chabukiani (Bianca), Revaz Tsulukidze (Rodrigo), Mikhail Dudko (Brabantio), Mikhail Tchelys (Montana), Vladimir Ivashkin (Duke of Venice), and members of the ballet troupe and orchestra of the Paliashvili State Opera and Ballet Theater, Tbilisi [Tiflis]. Conductor: O. Dimitriadi.

[bart]

Thanks very much, Natallia and rg. 1957 would make him 47 at the time of the filming.

The intensity and kinetic power are amazing. As is the desperation. I wonder how much of this choreography is an attempt to separate ) Othello stylistically from the "native-born" Venetians of his court, and how they themselves dance. Or how the pdds with Desdemona look, including her death at Othello's hands.

It would be fascinating to compare this, scene by scene, with Desmond Richardson's sleeker, more panther-like Othello in Lar Lubavich's version for San Francisco Ballet.