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Ballet Highlight of International Dance Festival Birmingham 08

Tuesday  20 – Saturday 24 May
One of the world’s greatest ballet companies, THE KIROV BALLET, from the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, returns to Britain for an exclusive two-week spring tour to Salford and Birmingham. The tour is in association with Victor Hochhauser.
 
After one week at The Lowry Salford, the Kirov Ballet will make their debut at Birmingham Hippodrome from Tuesday 20 May to Saturday 24 May as part of Birmingham’s first International Dance Festival.
 
The 200-year-old Russian company, under the Artistic Direction of Valery Gergiev and Ballet Director Makhar Vaziev, will perform two full-length ballets: Balanchine’s shimmering Jewels and Don Quixote, one of the highlights of the classical canon, as well as a Gala Evening of balletic fireworks.
 
For its UK tour, the company will be led by the exquisite Uliana Lopatkina.  She is joined by principal dancers Viktoria Tereshkina, Anton Korsakov, Andrian Fadeyev, Sofia Gumerova, Alina Somova, Igor Kolb, Anton Korsakov and Leonid Sarafanov and the company’s ravishing corps de ballet.
 
George Balanchine’s Jewels: George Balanchine is justly regarded as one of the greatest twentieth century choreographers.  Trained in St. Petersburg’s Imperial Ballet – later to become the Kirov - he settled in the United States where he reinvented the language of ballet. His sublime three-act ballet Jewels, which opens the Kirov’s Birmingham season is a heavenly succession of stylistically diverse classical divertissements which take their tone from the jewels they are named after.  Elegant and romantic for Emeralds (set to Fauré), hot and jazzy for Rubies (set to Stravinsky) and glittering and aristocratic for Diamonds. Balanchine created Jewels for his own New York City Ballet, but the Kirov was the first company in Europe to stage all three acts in the same evening.  The Kirov production recreates Peter Harvey’s original décor – a shimmering cascade of jewels suspended in mid air – and the dancers wear magnificently bejewelled costumes based on the originals by fashionable New York designer Karinska. First seen in London in 2000, this Kirov production of Jewels left critics and audiences literally reeling with delight.
 
Gala Programme: A box of delights for ballet lovers, including Fokine’s romantic one-act ballet, Chopiniana (sometimes known as Les Sylphides) and the sublime Kingdom of the Shades from Act III of La Bayadère which shows off the Kirov’s legendary corps de ballet to perfection. The middle course of this splendid feast includes Fokine’s dreamy Le Spectre de la Rose and a dazzling sequence of balletic set pieces.
 
Don Quixote: One of the sunniest ballet’s in the Kirov’s rich classical repertoire. Created by classical ballet’s greatest choreographer, Marius Petipa, it tells the story of the rocky romance between Kitri, the playful daughter of a social-climbing innkeeper, and her lover Basilio, a barber who is handsome – but broke. Based on Alexander Gorsky’s 1900 production, this colourful Kirov production bristles with authentic Spanish dances, bullfighters and gypsies – all portrayed with an exquisite blend of wit and bravura. Its vivid Spanish settings have also been faithfully reproduced from the legendary turn-of-the-century production.
 
The Birmingham Hippodrome visit was made possible with generous corporate sponsorship from three long-term supporters of the theatre, Ernst & Young, HSBC and Wragge & Co.
 
Tickets can be purchased now from Birmingham Hippodrome Box Office priced £27.50-£80 on 0870 730 1234 or online at www.birminghamhippodrome.com.