Ballet

Ratmansky's Bolt, music by Shostakovich

Corps de Ballet of the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre of Russia

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Cast

Alexei Ratmansky — Choreographer

Viktor Smirnov — Libretto

Galina Solovyeva — Costumes

Gleb Filshtinsky — Lighting

Simon Pastukh — Stage director

Corps de Ballet of the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre of Russia

Orchestra of the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre of Russia

Pavel Sorokin — Conductor

Program notes

Bolt, Shostakovich's forbidden ballet which was never performed after its premiere in 1931, in a new scenic version by Alexei Ratmansky!

In 1931, the Moscow Art Theater commissioned the young national hero Dmitri Shostakovich, aged just twenty-five, to compose the music of a ballet that should, according to the rules of the Socialist Realism, depict and glorify the values of the USSR. However, after a first performance of the ballet, Shostakovich's work – composed to a book by Viktor Smirnov – was suspected to be satirical, and was immediately forbidden. In 2006, Alexei Ratmansky created a new version for the Bolshoi Ballet. This program is the first video recording of the ballet.

Shostakovich composed a caustically humorous ballet, blending popular tunes, serious music, circus music, waltzes, marches, tangos. He had imagined his ballet as a joyful lampoon of proletarian drama. His intention was to highlight the eventful and ambiguous relationship existing between proletarian experience and the representation given of it by the Soviet vanguard.

Alexei Ratmansky's choreography develops into a true marvel, opening with a ballet of giant robots ans ending in a blood red delirious grand parade.

© Picture: Damir Yusupov

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