The next article in the column is Swan Lake in the Eye of the Chinese. It deals with a curious and unusual rendering of the legendary ballet shown in Moscow by a troupe of acrobat dancers from Shanghai.
Victor Ignatov keeps on presenting the publication cycle dedicated to the 75th anniversary of British Royal Ballet and to the premieres that were presented for the jubilee. Thanks to the broad variety of the Royal Ballet’s repertoire the troupe has an opportunity to convincingly demon-strate their excellence and high culture of dance. 

The BALLET THEME column presents today’s ballet of Byelorus-sia from a standpoint of a choreographer and dance instructor. Talking to Lyudmila Zueva are Valentine Elisariev, art director of the Grand Theater of the Republic of Byelorus, and Aleksandr Koliadenko, art director of the Byelorussian Choreography College. Their conversation touched upon many relevant subjects; they talked about their repertoire (there are 25 titles in their playbill), about their performing tours, about the new productions that appeared in their playbill in 2005 (these were Bayadere and A Love Under the Elm Trees). They also reflected upon the changes that have come about within the field of arts after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and about the situation the troupe has found itself in be-cause of the Theater building’s reconstruction. 
The readers will read about the Theater’s principal performers and, of course, about the relations between the Theater and the School, whose alumni are engaged in the productions of the troupe’s repertoire. It would be interesting to learn about the contacts of the Byelorussian School with the Lyon Dance Academy, and with choreographers from Paris and dance instructors from Poland. There are also productions specifically oriented to certain alumni’s talents, such as the recent one-act rendering of Don Quixote especially staged for Ivan Vasiliev, who became a winner at the Moscow Competition of Ballet Artists. 

The NEW BALLET column opens with Galina Inozemtseva’s article The Golden Age After a Twenty-Year Break, in which the writer reflects upon the hard fate of the ballet scores by Dmitry Shostakovich. “The Golden Age (1930), just as The Screwbolt (1931) and The Luminous Brook (1935) were all composed by the young musician under 30, who, just like his contemporaries, was full of desire to seek the new, to try, to dare…” The writer recalls the Yuri Grigorovich’s staging, which ap-peared at the Bolshoy Theater half a century since the music was com-posed, and also reviews the premiere of The Golden Age on Bolshoy Theater’s New Stage. 
The Theater’s playbill has been enriched and now boasts all three ballets to the music of the great composer. “As far as the form is concerned, the production turned out rather chamber in character. In the new Golden Age Grigorovich develops the palette of the characters’ psychological conditions in more detail than before, considering all the multiple meanings of their nuances and hues. The ballet has acquired a new, lively, flush, and, most importantly, contemporary ring.”

Arkadi Sokolov-Kaminsky presents The Undine, a ballet produc-tion staged at the Mariinsky Theater by French choreographer Pierre Laquott. As compared with the austere contemporary productions, The Undine attracts one with the variety of its scenic colors, the kaleidoscope of its flashy costumes, theatrical effects, crowded processions – that is to say, with all the signs of a “grand spectacle”. 

The choreographer had to overcome many thigs, including laxity of the script and lengthiness of the colorless music by Puni. Laquott boldly cut short the bulging original. “The production takes us back to the past and yet, in my judgment, it turned out an experimental one. It is yet an-other weighty, professional argument in the ongoing controversy about reviving the classics.”

Natalia Sheremetievskaya shares her impressions of the new concert program of the Beriozka Ensemble, which includes two premiere com-positions: Dedicated to the Defenders of Fatherland and The Four Sea-sons. “The dancing traceries of the Beriozka always charm one and com-pel to keep one’s eyes glued on them, trying to miss no detail of the fa-mous chorovod (round dance) which was created by the Ensemble’s founder, Nadezhda Nadezhdina, and which invariably serves as an open-ing number of its every concert. The Ensemble has long become a symbol of beauty of the Russian woman… For almost three decades Mira Koltsova has been preserving Ensemble’s performing culture. Not only does she uphold the traditions initiated by the Ensemble’s great founder but also further develops them, which we had an opportunity to witness once again at the recent concert at the Chaikovsky Hall.”
A review by Alexander Maskov titled A Youth and Death deals with the ballet Love and Death premiered at the Azerbaijan Opera and Bal-let Theater in Baku. The troupe recently showed it in Moscow as a final performance of The Year of Azerbaijan in Russia. The plot is based on an 11th century epos depicting the people’s fight against foreign invaders. Famous singer and composer Polad Biul-Biul Ogly composed the music and choreographer Vakil Usmanov did the staging. “Classical lexicon, dynamics of folk dance, aggressively creeping movements of the invad-ers, even a belly dance performed by four palace hetaeras – such is the palette of the dancing colors in the new ballet.”

The BALLET TIME column includes articles dedicated to note-worthy artists, teachers, and productions. Ilse Liepa, a frequent guest of the Ballet Magazine, remembers her mentor Natalia Zolotova, a brilliant teacher and incredibly artistic person who brought up many talented bal-let personalities. Having graduated from the Leningrad Choreography School, she performed principal parts in ballet productions of Yerevan, Minsk and Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) theaters, and since the late 60’s had taught at the Moscow Choreography School. “It’s only a few of us”, says Ilse Liepa, “who will be endowed with a presence on stage of the Bolshoy and receive reverence, flowers and standing ovations. It turns out that in this respect you can only hope that the Lord send you this amazing gift – an instructor who will become your teacher, mentor, friend. Natalia Viktorovna, a bearer of the best traditions of the Russian ballet school, has become such a person for me… It was not just the profession that she taught us. Now I come to appreciate how valuable is the fact that she was interested in all circumstances of our lives outside the ballet classes. It was important for her to know what we love, what we are interested in… Natalia Victorovna diligently tried to influence the formation of our char-acters, which is so necessary in ballet. She taught as what Chekhov, through the character of Nina Zarechnaya, called an ability to endure. She managed to bring forth ease, beauty of movement, and individuality of performance in our dance.” 

Julia Strizgekurova presents material dedicated to Mikhail Markovoch Gabovich, a brilliant dancer and performer of major parts, both lyri-cal and romantic. His dialogue with Galina Ulanova in Romeo and Juliet and The Fountain of Bakhchisarai remains a beautiful legend in the memory of generations. Mikhail Gabovich had been with the Bolshoy for almost 30 years – from 1924 to 1952. He was a universally gifted person – a talented instructor; a critic and theorist with profound insight of thea-ter, whose ideas are still relevant; a brilliant spokesman able to convince the audiences. His art and his very person are firmly imprinted in the his-tory of ballet, and it is hard to underestimate their significance. The remi-niscences by his colleagues and pupils (icluding Galina Ulanova and Igor Moiseev, Asaf Messerer and Olga Lepeshinskaya, Yuri Grigorovich and Vladimir Vasiliev) will help those who read them to imagine what Mikhail Markovoch Gabovich was like. Maris Liepa wrote about him, “Ga-bovich was an amazingly gifted spirit. Nature has bountifully bestowed on him many talents. Mikhail Markovoch knew how to use such gifts, how to perfect them and to be, not only a real professional in all the fields of his interest, but, as it were, a number one. Let me try to enumerate his professions. Quite a few for one person: an actor, an educator, a drama-tist, a theater critic. I don’t know if there is such a profession, but I would call him a philosopher of the art of ballet.”

Bronislava Nizhinskaya’s Ryzhik Turns 100 is a sketch by Larisa Abyzeva dealing with Oleg Stalinsky, winner of the honorary title of Dis-tinguished Artist of Ukraine, principal dancer of the Ivan Franco Opera and Ballet Theater of Lvov. 
For decades, he had performed principal parts in both classical and contemporary ballets. He made his first steps toward the profession at a studio in Kiev, where he made friends with Serge Lifar. Soon after the 1917 Revolution, Bronislava Nizhinskaya found herself in Kiev. She opened there a studio which Oleg, whom she dubbed Ryzhik (“red-haired one”), frequented.  The sketch in question relates of the artist’s life – his work in Kiev, Sverdlovsk, Tbilisi, Odessa, and Minsk; his war-time per-formances where he danced alongside Galina Ulanova; his renewal of The Corsair at the Kirov Ballet of Leningrad; about a hundred parts he performed in the productions of the Lvov Theater which became his home…

A King’s Order is a ballet fallen into oblivion. You will remember that Marius Petipa staged about 50 original ballets. Many of them are well studied, but some are considered by researchers to have fallen into the category of forgotten ballets. One of these is the 1886 production of A King’s Order to the music of Albert Vizentini. It is a typical ballet of the late 19th century, which has no place for the fantasies of romantic ballet. All its characters are real people. The research article presented in this is-sue by A. Grutsynova, who has gathered many exciting facts, will un-doubtedly expand our knowledge of Petipa’s creative work and, in par-ticular, of one of his not exactly famous productions. 

The BALLET LIBRARY column presents two sets of material. The first one introduces new publications of the Ast-Press Kniga publishing house and is presented by Yekaterina Belova, ballet publications editor. The second one is by Larisa Abyzova, head of the publishing de-partment of the A. Ya. Vaganova Russian Ballet Academy. She pre-sents publications of mainly educational character.