XII International Ballet Festival "Dance Open"

The XII DANCE OPEN International Ballet Festival in 2013 will bring together in St. Petersburg the best soloists of almost 20 troupe of the world. As always, the jury of the festival will be headed by Natalia Makarova, the famous ballet dancer, the ballet legend - who recently received from the hands of the US President, Barack Obama, the Center for the Performing Arts Prize. Kennedy. This year, the gala concerts of the DANCE OPEN festival are being shot by the French television channel Mezzo, reinforcing with their interest the international reputation of the festival, because, according to the British publication The Independent, DANCE OPEN is among the ten best spring festivals in Europe.

In addition to world-famous ballet celebrities, students of ballet schools from all over the world will come to the festival to take part in children’s master classes: from the USA, Brazil, Panama, France, Belgium, Poland, Latvia, Ukraine, Finland, etc. April 19 at 19.00 on the stage of the “Theater on Liteiny” a “Gala concert of young ballet stars” will take place, and he will begin the concert program of the festival.

The DANCE OPEN concert program in 2013 includes four evenings. For the first time in the history of the Festival, the evenings of one-act ballets will be held on April 19 and 20 at the Alexandrinsky Theater. Semperoper Ballett Dresden, Slovenian National Theater, Maribor and the Bolshoi Ballet Company of Russia (BTR) will present three one-act ballets in contemporary choreography. The creators of these premieres, choreographers Jacopo Godani, Edward Klug and Yuri Posokhov, are now in the focus of attention of leading ballet critics and journalists around the world.

100 years ago, Vaclav Nizhinsky for the first time staged the ballet Spring Sacred to the music of the young composer Igor Stravinsky. The audience of the Champs Elysees Theater booed this provocative and wild sight for its time, bearing a fundamentally different aesthetics. Today, the world celebrates the 100th anniversary of the ballet, and choreographers around the world are obsessed with “The Sacred Spring,” Stravinsky’s music endlessly provokes the search for new forms, expressive means and meanings.

Hommage a Stravinsky, choreography by Edward Clug. Courtesy of Slovene National Theater Maribor press-office

The world premiere of the Balkan choreographer Edward Klug “The Rite of Spring” is a powerful energy glow, bold compositional finds and scenic special effects - a waterfall will flow from the grate of the Alexandrinsky Theater. For more than ten years Edward Klug has been leading the theater in Maribor, and is known to the Russian audience for the ballets QUATRO and Radio and Juliet to the music of Radiohead. The iconic qualities of Klug’s choreography make the Sacred Spring ballet ultramodern.

The creator of the play "Spazio-Tempo" ("Space-Time") is a young Italian choreographer, former soloist of the Frankfurt Ballet Jacopo Godani. The sophistication and dramatic nature of the choreography, the impressive use of stage light distinguishes his work. In the ballet Spazio-Tempo, both the individual handwriting of Jacopo Godani and the echoes of the modernist style of William Forsyth are read. This is a vibrant dynamic spectacle of the original music of the German experimental electronic acoustic duo “48 nord”.

Sparkling, technical and humor are inherent in the ballet of Yuri Posokhov - “Classical Symphony”. Prokofiev’s “theatricality” and cheerfulness of music contributed to the choreographer’s plan, resulting in a plotless one-act ballet with original choreography of classical pa, pirouettes and rotations, filled with the ease and sophistication of plastic lines.

On April 21, the DANCE OPEN festival will present another surprise for its public - on the stage of the Concert Hall “October”, a gala concert “History of Russian Ballet” will be held.

- We decided on a difficult step: to unfold in front of the audience a “live picture” of the history of Russian ballet from its inception to the present day. “The masterpieces of Perrault and Petipa, Saint Leon and Fokine, Balanchine and Jacobson, Grigorovich and Ratmansky will breathe in a new way in the performance of the brightest stars of world ballet,” says festival director Yekaterina Galanova. “We will turn back the clock, thanks to the colorful photo and video content based on unique archival materials, as well as a fascinating story of the hosts, full of behind-the-scenes jokes and little-known facts.

Crown numbers of Anna Pavlova and Matilda Kshesinskaya, Galina Ulanova and Tatyana Vecheshlova, Konstantin Sergeyev and Vakhtang Chabukiani will appear in no less perfect but at the same time individual interpretation of our contemporaries: Ulyana Lopatkina, Anastasia Matvienko, Anastasia Kolegova, Igor Kolba, Yuri theater), Isabelle Syaravola (Paris Opera Ballet), Sterling Hiltin and Amara Ramazar (New York City Ballet), Evgenia Obraztsova, Anna Tikhomirova, Mikhail Lobukhin, Denis Medvedev and Denis Savin (BTR), Yana Salenko and Dinu Tamazlak ru (Staatsoper Berlin), Leonid Sarafanov (Mikhailovsky Theater), Erman Cornejo (American Ballet Theater), Denis Matvienko (National Opera and Ballet Theater named after T.G.Shevchenko).

On April 22, the culmination of the festival will be a gala concert of world stars of the DANCE OPEN ballet at the Oktyabrsky concert hall. This year, the program combines timeless classics with relevant modernity. Many numbers will be performed for the first time in Russia.

Exclusively for DANCE OPEN, a colorful fragment of the choreographic painting “Walpurgis Night” from Gounod’s opera Faust is renewed. His international trio will be performed specially assembled for this purpose - Daniel Ulbricht (New York City Ballet), Mikhail Lobukhin and Anna Tikhomirova (BTR). Also - a duet from the ballet "Cinderella" directed by the unique Christopher Wildon, the premiere of the performance took place in Amsterdam in December and was a resounding success. DANCE OPEN will present the number of one of the most respected choreographers - Briton David Dawson from the ballet A Sweet Spell of Oblivion performed by Yurgita Dronina (Dutch National Ballet) and Stephen McRae (Royal Ballet Covent Garden). The choreographer entered the jury of the festival and creates an author’s interpretation of this duet especially for DANCE OPEN.

A surprise for the audience will be the appearance on the stage of the troupe “Entredos Ballet Español” performing a synthesis of Spanish folk dance and flamenco dance. On stage this evening also: Jona Acosta (English National Ballet), Alicia Amatrian and Jason Riley (Stuttgart Ballet), Anna Tsygankova and Matthew Golding (Dutch National Ballet), Ashley Bauder (New York City Ballet) and Joseph Gatti (Boston ballet), Eliza Cabrera and Mikhail Kaniskin (Staatsoper Berlin), Lucia Lacarra and Marlon Dino (Bavarian State Ballet), etc.

Immediately after the Gala concert, for the fourth time, in the Marble Hall of the Museum of Ethnography will be held the closed ceremony of the International Ballet Award DANCE OPEN. The jury of the Prize consists of the leaders of world ballet companies and recognized ideologists of ballet art; they will determine the winners in seven nominations from among the participants of the DANCE OPEN gala concert. The winners will receive a crystal figurine - a replica of the sculpture from a cast of the foot of the great ballerina Anna Pavlova.

The ceremony is one of the most exquisite and solemn receptions of St. Petersburg. The prizes are awarded to stars by Russian sports and cinema stars, at different times they were Alisa Freindlich, Nikolai Valuev, Alexander Domogarov, Tamara Moskvina, Alina Kabaeva, Mikhail Boyarsky, Vyacheslav Malafeev, Konstantin Bogomolov, Daria Moroz and others. Winner in the category “Spectator Prize” sympathies ”will be determined by the audience by voting at the exit after the concert at the Concert Hall“ Oktyabrsky ”with their tickets.

Detailed information on the site danceopen.com