The NAME IN BALLET column presents Tatiana Mushinskaya's article dedicated to art director of the Belarus National Academic Theater, Valentin Elizariev, who recently celebrated his 60th birthday. He has headed the Byelorussian ballet for almost 30 years. The one-act Carmen-Suite was his debut on the Minsk stage. Other premieres followed: The Creation,
 Spartacus, and The Nutcracker, each one turning into a bombshell. The troupe unexpectedly proved amplitudi-nuous and unusually abundant in talents. Just ten years had been enough to improve its artistic image beyond recognition. Within a quarter of a century Elizariev has staged 15 productions in Belorus plus another seven abroad - in Russia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Turkey.
 The BALLET-PARADE column presents Christina Handlos and Galina Mitroshina's account of the Ninth All-Russian Folk Dance Festival, They Sing and Dance in a Ring all over Russia, dedicated to the centenary of Tatiana Ustinova. This year, contrary to the custom, there was no competition in the Russian city of Vladimir: instead, the audiences were shown the cream of what has been born during the entire history of this remarkable festival. Each one of the companies performing there was unique in its repertoire and artistic style, being determined by local features of the dancing lore.of the regions they represented. Almost twenty companies participated in a gala performance at the closing of the festivities. One was left with the impression as if the entire Russia indeed was singing and dancing in a ring. Pavel Nedelin's article covers the Perm' Ballet's Moscow performances at the 2008 Golden Mask Festival and Award, showing Jerome Robbins's productions: a neoclassical The Seasons to the music of Giuseppe Verdi and a merry, almost absurdist ballet Л Concert. The writer advises the readers to watch these masterpieces both together, one after another: this way the ballets overgrow the format of one-acters and form a dramatic whole, showing in their accents different facets of life, including theatrical one. The audiences were given a gift of a festive evening and of a wealth of positive emotions while  being reassured once again that that the Perm' Ballet is something which is always good, unusual and worthy.

The last piece in the column presents yet another Golden Mask ballet, Awakening of Flora by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, which was restored at the Mariinsky Theater by the expert "ballet restorer" Sergei Vikharev. The ballet was shown in Moscow with Olga Osmolkina in the title role, a Golden Mask nominee as Best Lead. Writer Olga Goncharova reflects upon how the ballet, which was staged for the princess Xenia Alexandrovna's wedding festivities in 1894, resounds today.
The NEW BALLET columg presents some premiere performances. The Moscovia Russian Ballet Theater under Lilia Sabitova and Stanislav Vlasov showed the ballet Antigone after Sophocles staged by Lilia Sabitova to the music of various composers of the 19* and 20* centuries that she herself had compiled. For the finale the choreographer invented an epilogue not found in the Sophocles's tragedy, by which she stresses a theme that is of particular importance for her: duty is dictated by love. Writer Natalia Sheremetievskaya presents the production in detail.

N. M. Zagursky Musical Theater of Irkutsk produced the ballet Romeo and Juliet staged by Ludmila Tsvetkova, who defines her purpose as a desire to "present to the audiences an old story in a new bookbinding". The production fully preserves the historical color and plot of the original, yet the action takes place not only in the medieval Verona: the prologue takes the spectator to the familiar environment of a contemporary city. The partying youths, at the will of the author, who pops up out of the blue, suddenly turn into actors trying on the Shakespearian characters. Writer Natalia Novikova reviews what comes of it all.
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"I have never sought after power and never aspired to it, but loving my Homeland I dared not refuse it when the interests of Russia demanded that I take upon myself supreme governance", thus said Admiral Alexandr Kolchak after accepting supreme power. He is an am¬biguous figure in Russian history and his significance in it may be interpreted in various ways, with many pros and contras. What will finally turn the historic scale? What did this man's work mean for Russia? These are the questions that the Musical Theater of Omsk's spectacle Apotheosis aspires to answer. It presents quite an unusual view of the Admiral's life. This is perhaps why a rather unusual genre was selected for the performance - that of neo-ballet. Alexandr Pantynkin composed original music, while Yuri Puzakov wrote the libretto and choreographed the production. Writer Una Krikovets reviews the show.
 
Under the BALLET GALLERY column, Tatiana Saburova's sketch The Eloquent Shot of Yevgeni Um-nov reveals the world of this outstanding photographer, which can be reconstructed from the majority of book on  the art of ballet of the third quarter of the past century. His works have become a valuable source of knowledge about famous productions and outstanding performers of the 20" century, both for ballet scholars and ballet lovers. Some of his early works, such as Romeo and Juliet with Galina Ulanova, are considered classics of theatrical photography. Among his models were Maya Plisetskaya, Natalia Bessmertnova, Mokhail Lavrovsky, Yekaterina Maksimova, and students of the legendary stellar class of Asaf Messerer. Among the most outstanding pictorials of Unvov's are those of Yuri Grigorovich's rehearsals: the photographer attended and shot the staging of Spatracus, Swan Lake, The Sleaping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Ivan the Terrible.
Ш The WORLD OF BALLET column consists of two interviews prepared by Victor Ignatov. The first one concerns choreographic works of Rudolf Nureyev, whose 70* anniversary was recently celebrated all over the world. Brigitte Lefevre, Director of Paris Opera's Ballet, reminisces of the ways the great dancer worked, of his extraordinary character, of her meetings and dialogues with him. She also talks of "great power, fiery ex¬pressiveness and magical intensity" of Nureyev's dance and of his significant impact upon the Paris Opera's troupe, which he had headed for six years. The second interview is by Helgi Tomasson, head of San Francisco Ballet, one of the oldest American professional ballet companies, which is about to celebrate its 75* anniversary. Mr. Tomasson is an artist of a brilliant and original talent, who came to head San Francisco Ballet in 1985 and has since created over thirty productions, including new renderings of classical ballets as well as contemporary works. Here he talks about the 
 upcoming anniversary festivities, about specific features of his troupe, its repertoire and principals.
 The MEDICINE SERVES BALLET column inquiries into the perennially urgent problem of trauma. Ballet artists suffer from three general categories of trauma. The simplest ones are due to accidents and may happen to anyone. Perhaps eighty per cent of ballet traumas develop slowly and gradually, starting with a pain or ache in a cer
tain body part and developing into an illness. The third category consists of certain metabolic dysfunctions. It is possible, the writer claims, to recover from a trauma in such a way that one becomes even better and more harmonious a dancer and even healthier in body than before it.
 The INFORM-BALLET column contains quite a few interesting articles. The story On the Goddess Quay reports that on the wall of the house at 1/15 Kotelnicheskaya Naberezhnzya, where the great ballerina
Galina Ulanova had lived for almost half a century, a memorial plate has been installed, while her apartment has been turned into a museum under auspices of the A. A. Bakhrushin State Theatrical Museum.
Yekaterina Atamanova reports of the 14* International festival Stars of the World Ballet that took place in Ukraine. It opened with a gala concert in Lvov and then moved back to its home stage, the A. B. Solovianenko Opera and Ballet Theater of Donetsk. The festival's
playbill included the ballet The Marriage of Figaro to the music of Mozart staged and choreographed by Victor Yeremenko, presented by the National Opera of Ukraine. Its ballet troupe for the first time performed on the Donetsk stage in a body - all 59 dancers of it! Anna Chernetsova and Olga Shkarpetkina have attended rehearsals and performances of the Studio Theater Lege Artis under Polina Menshikh. The company is better known by the Moscovites as Celtic Ballet. The reason it was Irish dance that the company's leader chose is because her train¬ing years coincided with the time of glory of Riverdance and Michael Ratley's Lord of the Dance company.
- At the "curtain fall" of the issue, again following the tradition, the Editor-in-Chief addresses the readers. Valeria Uralskaya discourses upon relations between genuine interest for the art per se and what is habitually called "offstage life". Rumors multiply and distort the original information beyond recognition; they snowball and obtain life of their own. The reporters eagerly pick them up and push them into the mass media. As a result, a person who has just admitted that he never once attended a ballet, having heard such "information", asks me, "Is it true that..." Such people have no chance to experience the mystery of art, and for them there is no theater, no artist, and no art.