RUSSIA-BOLSHOI/HERO OF OUR TIME Russia's Bolshoi premieres Lermontov's "A hero of our time"

Record ID: 149349

  • Title: RUSSIA-BOLSHOI/HERO OF OUR TIME Russia's Bolshoi premieres Lermontov's "A hero of our time"
  • Date: 23rd July 2015
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) BALLERINA, OLGA SMIRNOVA, SAYING: "Generally speaking this ballet is the first time when I work with a drama theatre director. And it is extremely interesting, because performance in this case has two levels: a drama level and a choreography level, so I have to work on both levels. What the choreographer invents later gets an additional meaning thanks
  • Embargoed: 7th August 2015 13:00
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  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVABXQTIFFRKW43RP1XD9JFXFLY
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Russia's Bolshoi theatre presented on Wednesday (July 22) a premier of a new ballet "A Hero of our time" consisting of three short ballets based on 1840 novel by Mikhail Lermontov. The new production includes three of the five stories from the book: "Bela", "Taman", and "Princess Mary."
    The ballet is a rare example of cooperation between a choreographer, a theatre director, and a composer.
    "Generally speaking this ballet is the first time when I work with a drama theatre director. And it is extremely interesting, because performance in this case has two levels: a drama level and a choreography level, so I have to work on both levels. What the choreographer invents later gets an additional meaning thanks to the drama director. It's great. I love ballets with a story, dramatic ones, when there is a plot and when you are telling your story. And in this ballet, it was possible to do that," said Olga Smirnova, who was dancing Bela - a beautiful young woman living in the Caucasus and who Pechorin kidnaps. She then falls in love with him, but is later kidnapped and killed by his enemies in the mountains.
    The role of the book's main character Byronic aristocrat Pechorin - unites all three ballets, but in each of them it is performed by a different dancer.
    For Kirill Serebrennikov, a famous Moscow theatre director, it is not the first collaboration with the Bolshoi.
    In the past he staged there opera "The Golden Cockerel" by Rimsky-Korsakov. But "A Hero of Our Time" was his first work in the ballet genre.
    "One rarely gets so lucky. In opera you work in the regime of interpretation, it's been staged many times before, there is a text, there are certain meanings already. But in this case you have a chance to start from scratch and to come up with way of expressing all of this through the language of movements. It is not a problem, it is a pure joy," said Serebrennikov.
    He was the one who invited 30-year-old Russian composer Ilya Demutsky to create music for the ballet.
    Demutsky said that in his work he tried to use wide-spectre of musical and acoustical means in each ballet to express the different mood and feelings of characters.
    "I used musical means typical for each particular one-act ballet, for example for "Taman" it is rather pessimistic language, allegories, special effects in music. In "Bela", of course, there is some Caucasus' colours. "Princess Mary" is a more traditional ballet, though not without surprises," said Demutsky, for whom "A Hero of Our Time" was a debut in the ballet genre.
    The second ballet "Taman" tells a story of Pechorin travelling to a small seaside town where he gets attracted to a young woman, part of a smugglers gang.
    The ballet "Princess Mary" is the longest and the most complex one.
    Pechorin is torn between young woman Mary and his old married love Vera.
    Kristina Kretova, who performed Vera in the ballet, said it was one of the most interesting and complex roles she has ever performed.
    "Yuri Posokhov created for me one of the explicit roles, because I have to show the emptiness that my character feels, because she was the most important love of Pechorin, but there is almost nothing left from their love. They both realise it leads nowhere and that's why I really tried to show not just suffering of my character, but to make people looking at me understand that despite all odds there is love between us," said Kretova.
    The new Bolshoi production was innovative in many ways.
    Every ballet starts with a text from the novel read out to spectators.
    Singers also take part in the ballet. In "Princess Mary" a female singer accompanies Vera dancing, telling about her love for Pechorin.
    Serebrennikov also invited wheelchair dancers to take part in the ballet, they perform soldiers wounded in the Caucasus war.
    Lermontov's novel innovative ballet adaptation received a warm welcome from the Moscow audience.
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