Ballet in three acts | Music by Ludwig Minkus | Libretto by  Marius Petipa and Sergei Khudekov | Live in cinemas from the "Stars of  the White Nights Festival" on Monday 14 July       

The premiere of La Bayadère in 1877 was a triumph for Marius  Petipa, and this success has accompanied the ballet throughout its  theatrical life. The sad love story of the noble warrior Solor and the  temple dancer Nikia, who is poisoned by her rival, Princess Gamzatti,  formed the basis for Petipa's grand spectacle. La Bayadère is a  picturesque, 19th century encyclopaedia of India; cool temples in the  shade of palm-trees, majestic palace walls, frenetic fakirs flagellating  themselves during sacred dances, lithe dancers, colourful veils,  elephants, cobras and opium hookahs. This Indian exoticism was created,  however, using conventional ballet techniques of the nineteenth century.  The decorative luxuriance of the first two acts contrasts with the  third – the “white” act of the Shades – a triumph of virtuoso classical  dance.      
 

Source: Telmondis

More information: www.telmondis.com

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The history of the Mariinsky Ballet is closely  linked with the history of European choreographic art. The beginnings  and the emergence of the St Petersburg Court company are connected  with the activities of foreign ballet masters. In the 18th and 19th centuries  the foundations of the theatre's ballet repertoire were laid by  productions by choreographers from Italy and France who were invited to  Russia who also taught in school – training Russian dancers to perform  their ballets. In the late 18th century Giuseppe Canziani and  Charles Le Picq were working in Russia and the first Russian  choreographer Ivan Valberkh learned through their works. In the 19th century  the imperial capital's stage was ruled by ballets by the Frenchmen  Charles Didelot, Jules Perrot and Arthur Saint-Léon, while in 1847  Marius Petipa made his debut in St Petersburg as a dancer and  choreographer. Having taken on the post of the theatre's Principal  Ballet Master, over his lengthy career as a choreographer (spanning  almost sixty years), he developed the form of grand ballet –  a multi-act production, the plot combining fully developed scenes  of classical ensembles, colourful character dances, genre spectacle  scenes and pantomime. Even today the ballets The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake (together with choreographer Lev Ivanov) and Raymonda  created with the symphonist composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Alexander  Glazunov form part of the "gold reserves" of the classical legacy and  adorn the theatre's repertoire.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries,  the Mariinsky Ballet was famed for its galaxy of star performers:  Mathilde Kschessinska, Olga Preobrazhenskaya, Anna Pavlova, Tamara  Karsavina, Pavel Gerdt, Nikolai and Sergei Legat and Vaslav Nijinsky.  Many of these dancers presented Russian ballet during Diaghilev's  legendary Saisons russes, thanks to which Europe discovered  avant-garde Russian art of the time and the St Petersburg choreographers  Michel Fokine and George Balanchine who had set out at the Mariinsky  Theatre and launched their international careers.

In the difficult post-Revolutionary years many Mariinsky Theatre  dancers left the country. And yet to a great extent through the efforst  of Fyodor Lopukhov, a connoisseur of the legacy of dance and a bold  experimentalist choreographer, the theatre retained its classical  repertoire. The ballet playbill expanded to include new works relating  plots that were current in the new historical context.

The late 1920s and 1930s saw a veritable take-off of the dancers'  technical level: the Leningrad stage saw the arrival of Marina Semenova,  Galina Ulanova, Natalia Dudinskaya, Tatiana Vecheslova, Alexei  Yermolaev, Vakhtang Chabukiani and Konstantin Sergeyev. At that time  drama theatre exerted a huge influence on ballet. The success of works  created at the Kirov Theatre based on literary materials – Rostislav  Zakharov's The Fountain of Bakhchisarai and Leonid Lavrovsky's Romeo and Juliet – defined the rule of the drama-ballet on the Soviet stage in the mid 20th century.  The late 1950s and 1960s at the Kirov Ballet stood out for Leonid  Yakobson's searches for plastique imagery in the form of the multi-act  production and miniatures, the revival of the traditions of symphonic  dance in the ballets The Stone Flower and The Legend of Love by Yuri Grigorovich and Shore of Hope and Leningrad Symphony  by Igor Belsky. The success of these new productions was also ensured  by the skill and expressiveness of the dancers Alla Shelest, Irina  Kolpakova, Gabriela Komleva, Natalia Makarova, Alla Osipenko, Alla  Sizova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Rudolf Nureyev and Yuri Soloviev.

In the 1970s and 1980s following a lengthy period of isolation  the company revived contacts with international choreographers;  the Leningrad dancers worked with Roland Petit, Maurice Béjart and  Jerome Robbins. In 1989 productions by George Balanchine were included  in the repertoire for the first time. Altynai Asylmuratova, Zhanna  Ayupova, Galina Mezentseva, Tatiana Terekhova, Sergei Vikharev, Igor  Zelensky and Farukh Ruzimatov defined the face of the ballet company  in the late 20th century. Since then the Mariinsky Theatre  has actively collaborated with leaders in the field of world  choreography. The company has worked with John Neumeier, William  Forsythe, Angelin Preljoçaj, Alexei Ratmansky, Sasha Waltz, Wayne  McGregor and Hans van Manen. Their ballets, alongside works from  the classical legacy, 20th century masterpieces and productions by young choreographers, comprise the ballet company's repertoire today.

Source: Mariinsky Ballet

More information: www.mariinsky.ru

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