Word: bolshoi
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...long years of managing Soviet agencies without ever saying a flat yes or no had only enhanced his ability to look, dress and propose toasts like a Belgian burgomaster. "A real gentleman;' cooed a French chorus girl from a visiting troupe he once called on backstage at the Bolshoi. "A master at creating an atmosphere of relaxed tension," said a Western ambassador. In a face softened by comfortable living, his courtly smile was matched by the appraising eye of a riverboat gambler. Once, when Khrushchev & Co. were out of town, he accepted a toast to the Soviet government...
...apart from the fresh dance ideas that swept through Europe and the U.S. Later, the major companies commissioned works by modern composers, including Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, but all three tailored their music to the classic choreographic idiom. The Russians' failure in modern productions became most evident during the Bolshoi Ballet's otherwise hugely successful 1956 season at London's Covent Garden. The company expertly paraded such gorgeous old floats as Swan Lake and Giselle, but was peppered by the critics for the lack of imagination and heaviness of its scattered newer works. Back home, Russian choreographers petitioned...
Scrapping the Clichés. The Bolshoi's new extravaganza, with its 400 onstage musicians and dancers, tells the story of Rome's slave uprising as outlined by Sallust and Plutarch, ending in the betrayal and death of the slaves' leader, the gladiator Spartacus (a favorite historical character of Karl Marx). Composer Khachaturian, a Stalin Prizewinner, diplomatically finds the ballet apt "at a time when many peoples are fighting for liberation and colonial rule is crumbling...
Troubling the Audience. If Spartacus should prove the beginning of a revolution in Russian ballet, the Bolshoi Company clearly has the talent and technique to extend it. Most of the first-rate young dancers in last week's production (including Julia May Scott, daughter of an American Negro and a Russian mother) were unknown to the West. They were drawn from the corps de ballet on the theory that they would be less hidebound by classical technique than the older dancers (an exception: famed Soloist Maya Plisetskaya, dancing the courtesan Aegina). Lavishly supported by the government, the Bolshoi currently...
Undisturbed by the traditionalist reaction against Spartacus, the Bolshoi is planning to encourage the shorter ballet form that has been the vehicle for most new choreographic ideas in the West. Says Artistic Director Alexander Tomsky: "We are not after a ballet that merely delights the eye; we are for ballet of deep feeling. We want to trouble the audience...