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RUSSIAN NATIONAL BALLET THEATRE:
TCHAIKOVSKY’S ROMEO AND JULIET*
An International Passport Presentation
Wednesday, February 13, 7:30pm

Romance – Beauty – Splendor: It’s a dazzling spectacle of grace and beauty! The dancers of the Russian National Ballet Theatre perform to Piotr Tchaikovsky’s beloved masterpiece of doomed love, Romeo and Juliet. (The choreography is a new restaging by Elena Radchenko based on original choreography by the legendary Marius Petipa.)

The evening's presentation opens with Mikhail Fokine's short grand pas Chopiniana, featuring music of Frédéric Chopin.

*San Diego Symphony does not appear. 

RUSSIAN NATIONAL BALLET THEATRE PRESENTS

CHOPINIANA AND ROMEO AND JULIET

Wednesday, February 13, 2013, 7:30pm

Copley Symphony Hall

CHOPINIANA  

Grand pas

Music by Frederic Chopin

Choreography by Mikhail Fokine

Sets and costumes by Elena and Sergei Radchenko

Romantic youth           Aydos Zakan, Mikhail Mikhailov, Constantin Marykin

Eleventh Waltz             Elena Khorosheva

Prelude                        Ekaterina Egorova

Seventh Waltz              Maria Sokolnikova

Mazurka                      Maria Klyueva

Corps de Ballet

ROMEO AND JULIET  

Music by Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky

Choreography by Elena Radchenko after Marius Petipa

Sets and costumes by Elena and Sergey Radchenko

Libretto by Elena and Sergei Radchenko

Juliet                            Ekaterina Egorova, Maria Sokolnikova

Romeo                         Nurlan Kinerbayev, Constantin Marykin

Mercutio                      Mikhail Mikhailjv

Tibalt                           Alexander Daev

Paris                            Samat Abdrakhmanov

Lorenzo                       Yssenbaev Aziz

Father Capulet            Evgeniy Rudakov

Mother Capulet           Natalia Ivanova

Wet nurse                    Anna Gaydash

Corps de Ballet

CHOPINIANA

Music by Frederic Chopin

(suite of piano pieces orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov)

Choreography by Mikhail Fokine

Premiere: February 23, 1907 Marinski Theatre, St. Petersburg

Chopiniana grew out of Chopin’s Seventh Waltz and had its premiere on February 23, 1907. The favorite oeuvre of its creator, Mikhail Fokine, this work has now become standard repertoire for many of the world’s leading theatres.

Chopiniana does not have a traditional plot. The curtain opens to reveal a picturesque group of ballerinas, frozen in anticipation, the embodiment of the Young Man’s dream. The women rise like a romantic vision, circle around the Young Man, spread out like a light fog and then freeze again in their original poses.

This ballet is in one regard, a timeless poetic example of stylization, and in another, a work set distinctly in its own period. Fokine incorporated the cultural experiences of the past and the blossoming ideas of the present, thus saturating the work with universal significance. It is not the characters in the ballet that develop, but rather the themes, moods, and feelings.

-INTERMISSION-

ROMEO AND JULIET

AFTER WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDY

Full-length Ballet

Music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Original choreography by Marius Petipa

Restaged by Elena Radchenko

SCENE 1

The Capulets are hosting a magnificent celebration. By their house a crowd of guests is dancing in the square. The Montagues, who are the Capulets enemies and rivals, are naturally not invited.

There are Mercutio and Benvolio with friends. They try to persuade their friend Romeo, Lord Montague’s son, to put on a mask with them and sneak into the feast. Romeo agrees. In the course of the merriment and dancing, Romeo meets Juliet, who unmasks him. They instantly fall in love with each other.

Lady Capulet’s nephew, Tybalt, is a desperate rake and squabbler. On seeing the strangers at the celebration, he starts a fight with Mercutio. However Mercutio makes fun of Tybalt and cheers everybody up. Mercutio, Romeo’s best friend, gets villainously killed by Tybalt in a brawl. Romeo confronts and accidently slays Tybalt, who dies before the Capulets’ eyes.

They are in grief and ask for revenge. Romeo runs away. He hurries to a rendezvous with his beloved Juliet. Risking his life, Romeo gets into Juliet’s bedroom.

SCENE 2

The loving couple meet. They carry on a dialogue. They vow fidelity until death parts them and become a husband and a wife. Suddenly a nurse appears and warns that Juliet’s parents and Paris are coming. They have chosen him as a rich fiancée for their daughter. The parents have a stern conversation with Juliet, who doesn’t want to marry Paris. The father is outraged. He tells Juliet that she will marry Paris tomorrow. The three of them leave the bedroom.

Juliet is stricken with the news. She asks Friar Laurence to give her a hypnotic drug so that she looks dead and the wedding with Paris can be avoided. Juliet takes the drug to fall asleep, but Romeo does not know anything about it. Learning about Juliet’s death, he runs into her bedroom to die next to her. Romeo sees Juliet and believes that she is dead. He cannot imagine life without her so he has some poison prepared, and he takes it. Before his death Romeo has visions, and then everything plunges into darkness. Having woken up, Juliet sees her dead Romeo. He hasn’t left even a drop of poison for her. Juliet then stabs herself with Romeo’s dagger hoping to see her beloved and unite in the next world.

“For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo”

The Russian National Ballet Theatre was founded in Moscow during the transitional period of Perestroika in the late 1980s when many of the great dancers and choreographers of the Soviet Union's ballet institutions were exercising their new-found creative freedom by starting new, vibrant companies dedicated not only to the timeless tradition of classical Russian Ballet but also to invigorating this tradition as the Russians began to accept new developments in the dance from around the world.

The company, then titled the Soviet National Ballet, was founded by and incorporated graduates from the great Russian choreographic schools of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Perm.  The principal dancers of the company came from the upper ranks of the great ballet companies and academies of Russia as well as the companies of Riga, Kiev and even Warsaw.  Today, the Russian National Ballet Theatre is its own institution, with over 50 dancers of singular instruction and vast experience, many of whom have been with the company since its inception.

In 1994 the legendary Bolshoi principal dancer Elena Radchenko was selected by Presidential decree to assume the first permanent artistic directorship of the company.  Ms. Radchenko is the founder of the Russian National Ballet Theatre, and she has focused the Company on upholding the grand national tradition of the major Russian ballet works and developing new talents throughout Russia, with a repertory of virtually all of the great full works of Marius Petipa:  Don Quixote, La Bayadere, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Raymonda, Paquita, Coppelia and La Sylphide, as well as productions of, among others, The Nutcracker, Sylvia and La Fille Mal Gardee.