New season of Big Ballet
The Mikhailovsky Theatre is to be represented in the new season of Big Ballet by Anastasia Soboleva and Victor Lebedev. Filming of the popular TV show begins on 28 July and rehearsals are already underway. The series is to be shown on Kultura in the autumn.
Big Ballet was first broadcast in 2012. The aim of this exclusive Russian show is to bring the art of ballet to TV viewers and introduce the public to masterpieces of Russian and world choreography, while at the same time giving young dancers the opportunity to showcase their potential as professionals.
The new season will feature 14 dancers from around Russia, including artists from the Bolshoi Ballet and the Mariinsky Theatre, as well as from opera and ballet theatres in Perm, Krasnoyarsk and Kazan.
Mikhail Messerer, the Mikhailovsky Theatre’s Ballet Master in Chief, is compiling the competition repertoire for Anastasia Soboleva and Victor Lebedev. He is also directly involved in rehearsals. In their first appearances on the show, our artists will dance the pas de deux from Giselle and Swan Lake and the adagio from Class Concert.
While giving classical ballet its due, the producers also plan to include contemporary choreography in the series. The programme is expected to feature works by Sir Frederick Ashton, Sir Kenneth MacMillan and Roland Petit, as well as works by some of the leading choreographers of the twenty-first century: Wayne McGregor, Jean-Christophe Maillot, Angelin Preljocaj and Alastair Marriott.
The performances will be assessed by a professional jury consisting of stars of world ballet: Brigitte Lefèvre, the French dancer, teacher and choreographer who until recently was Director of Dance at the Paris Opera Ballet; Xiao Suhua, choreographer, ballet theoretician and Professor at the Beijing Dance Academy; Lyudmila Semenyaka, People’s Artist of the USSR; Vladimir Vasiliev, People’s Artist of the USSR; Farukh Ruzimatov, People’s Artist of Russia; Evegenia Obraztsova, Principal at the Bolshoi Ballet; and Natalia Osipova, Principal at the Mikhailovsky Theatre and the Royal Ballet in London.
