The Foundation - News

August 2011

Rodion Shchedrin's ballets at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York

During this year's summer festival in the Lincoln Center the ballet cast of the Mariinsky Theatre presented himself to New York’s audience from a rather unusual side. On the programm was no classical ballet repertoire and its famous highlights, such as „Swan Lake“, „Nutcracker“ and „Don Quixote“, which are regarded for quite a long time to be the epitome of Russian Ballet, but Russian contemporary works. The decision of Mariinsky Theatre for modern music was not taken thoughtlessly. The director of the theatre Valery Gergiev hoped, that by this Russian ballet would get a new impetus and a new opportunity to break with its traditions and to achieve a new level in its development.

It was not a real coincidence that in such a situation the choice felt on the works of Rodion Shchedrin, whose ballets and operas are an integral part of the theatre’s repertoire for years and enjoy a great popularity in the audience. Amongst them the ballet „Anna Karenina“ choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky – one of the most popular ballets in recent years. Thus the Mariinsky Theater brought to New York beside of this work also the ballets „The Little Humpbacked Horse“ and the famous „Carmen-Suite“ and performed them from July, 11th to 16th on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera with a sensational success. A New York critic wrote that it was almost impossible to buy a ticket for the shows in those days because the audience is hungry for good quality stuff – for good pieces, well performed.

By expanding the repertoire with contemporary works the Mariinsky Theatre wishes not only to open new perspectives for national ballet, but to break with stereotypical and one-sided ideas about the Russian ballet as only „Classical ballet“ in foreign countries as well.