The Bolshoi Ballet
The internationally renowned Bolshoi Ballet is among the oldest and worldwide acclaimed ballet classical companies. The first ballets to be produced were by French and Italian ballet masters such as Filippo Beccari, the Morelli brothers and Jean Lamiral. Before long, however, young Russian choreographers such as Adam Glushkovsky took over, concentrating on ballets with Russian themes. From 1820-1830 the company developed in the French tradition under the influence of Felicite-Virginie Hullin-Sor and Fanny Elssler who familiarised the Moscow public with works of Jules Perrot and other masterpieces of romantic ballet.

 

By mid-19th century, Bolshoi Ballet developed its own, so-called Moscow Style, with the emphasis on acting. Marius Petipa's Don Quixote that received its premiere in Moscow on 26 December 1869 became a signature production of the Moscow Company, a work that, infringing all Imperial Theatres traditions, was transferred from Moscow to Petersburg, not the other way around.

 

Today the chef-d’oeuvres of classical ballet, such as Giselle, La Sylphide, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, La Bayadère, Don Quixote, Raymonda, Le Corsaire, Coppélia, as well as 20th century’s masterpieces by Yuri Grigorovich, Mikhail Fokine, George Balanchine, Pierre Lacotte, John Neumeier, Alberto Alonso occupy a leading place in the Bolshoi Ballet repertoire.

 

The Bolshoi has also produced a number of specially commissioned ballets, including works by Yuri Possokhov, Vyacheslav Samodurov, Edward Clug among others.

 

Nowadays Bolshoi dancers, Svetlana Zakharova, Ekaterina Krysanova, Anna Nikulina, Anastasia Stashkevich, Evgenia Obraztsova, Alyona Kovalyova, Eleonora Sevenard, Elizaveta Kokoreva, Yulia Stepanova, Eva Sergeyenkova, Vladislav Lantratov, Artem Ovcharenko, Semyon Chudin, Vyacheslav Lopatin, Denis Rodkin, Denis Savin, Artemy Belyakov, Igor Tsvirko, Egor Gerashchenko, Dmitri Smilevsky and others ensure that the Bolshoi's standards are held as high as ever.

 

Makhar Vaziev, former ballet director of the Mariinsky Theatre and the Teatro alla Scala, was appointed Ballet Director of the Bolshoi in 2016.