Eighty years of The Bright Stream
Eighty years ago, on 4 June 1935, Dmitry Shostakovich’s ballet The Bright Stream premiered at our theatre. The subject of the ballet, choreographed by Fyodor Lopukhov (the artistic director of a fresh young ballet company formed in 1933 that had enjoyed considerable critical acclaim with productions of Harlequinade and Coppélia), was a modern one. The story centres on a visit by a group of ballet dancers from Moscow to a collective farm in Kuban called The Bright Stream. According to Dmitry Shostakovich’s synopsis of the work: “The countryfolk initially view the performers with suspicion and are unsure what to make of them. The dancers likewise struggle to find a common language with the farmers. However, both sides soon discover that there are a mass of similarities between them. They are both building socialism: some at the collective farm and others on the cultural front. The romantic twists that arise against the backdrop of the Kuban countryside bring the agricultural workers and performing artists closer still.”
“We strove to create a ballet that prioritized the dance itself, in which the dancing was the principal, fundamental artistic and expressive vehicle of the work”, explained Fyodor Lopukhov in an article co-written with the librettist Adrian Piotrovsky to mark the premiere of The Bright Stream. “Replacing ‘evocative’ dance with supposedly true-to-life, realistic mime in the name of realism invariably leads to impoverishment of the ballet performance, and to the sacrifice of an authentically realistic style for the sake of a superficially conceived naturalism.”
Almost the entire Leningrad press covered the premiere. The Bright Stream’s choreography was singled out for particular praise, such as in an article by Rostislav Zakharov, entitled A Victory for Soviet Ballet. “The first-class ballet master Fyodor Lopukhov and the considerable achievements of his company undoubtedly contributed to the ballet’s success”, concluded the critic Ivan Sollertinsky. Others noted the “inventiveness” of the ballet and the “professionalism” of its choreographer.
The Bright Stream enjoyed even greater success with the audience. The entertaining, festive and non-confrontational atmosphere of the ballet was emphasized by Mikhail Bobyshov’s colourful costumes and decorations. The overwhelmingly festive and life-affirming atmosphere — the product of skilfully choreographed dancing and joyful chorus scenes — pushed the misunderstandings and confusions that occurred between the characters into the background. On this wave of success, Fyodor Lopukhov went on to become choreographer of the Bolshoi Ballet, and less than six months after the premiere of The Bright Stream at the Leningrad State Academic Maly Opera Theatre, the production was transferred to the nation’s foremost theatre. The Bright Stream seemed guaranteed a long and illustrious future, until an article entitled Ballet Falsehood appeared in Pravda on 6 February 1936, accusing Shostakovich’s music and Lopukhov’s staging of coarse naturalism and aesthetic formalism. The ballet was pulled from the repertoire of both theatres.
Despite the dramatic story surrounding its fate on the Russian stage, The Bright Stream has always held an important place in the history of ballet. Fyodor Lopukhov’s production proved that it was possible to create a ballet with a detailed and intricate modern plot, while preserving the best traditional choreographic methods of expressing comedy, showing the characters and their relationships through the language of dance. The nature and emotional content of The Bright Stream coincided with other great successes in the musical comedy genre seen in other forms of art. This is particularly true as regards its relationship to the cinema of the day, and The Bright Stream stands side by side with cinematic classics from the 1930s such as Grigory Aleksandrov’s films Jolly Fellows, Volga-Volga and Circus, and Ivan Pyryev’s Tractor Drivers and The Swine Girl and The Shepherd.
The Bright Stream was resurrected on 18 April 2003, when the choreographer Alexey Ratmansky presented his own version of the ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre. Like Fyodor Lopukhov before him, Ratmansky was also offered the position of choreographer at the Bolshoi Ballet not long after this premiere.
