Word: yuri
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...growth would be heresy. Freedom is daily defined as freedom from want, and democracy is seen in terms of economic rights and Communist Party duties. The Western insistence on individuality is regarded as weakness and its passion for expression as a delusion. In a recent speech, Secret Police Chief Yuri Andropov expressed his contempt for the Western version of democracy: "How can one speak of civil rights for the masses in capitalist countries where people live in fear of losing their jobs?" The picture of the West in the Soviet press is uniformly black-a nightmare of unemployment, strikes, inflation...
...could not deny the tradition, authority and musical might that radiated from the stage. Yuri Simonov, 34, the Bolshoi's principal conductor, led a performance that had true epic range and that, in its bounce and snappy tempos, was refreshingly free of sanctification. Would that the Met had a chorus of such power and, rarity of rarities, group acting ability. The sets were eye-catching tableaux embodying a sturdy Russian medievalism overlaid with Byzantine splendor...
...BALLET. The key to the enduring Bolshoi mystique is its magnitude: the colossal technical prowess of its dancers, their grandeur of emotion, the elaborate theatrical productions. Alas, on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera the gallant dancers often sag beneath the weighty spectacle of the frantic choreography of Director Yuri Grigorovich. Yet Giselle, the company's corner stone, abounds in fresh lyrical dancing and finely drawn characterizations. Radiant young Ludmila Semenyaka and Vyacheslav Gordeyev, a powerful classical dancer, should win fans during the Bolshoi's nine-city national tour...
...great classics of dance-Swan Lake, for example, or Giselle-as if they were museum pieces on the move, as many of them are. The Russians' excessive awe of tradition can be a hindrance when it comes to creating new choreography. A striking case in point is Yuri Grigorovich's Ivan the Terrible, which was given its American premiere at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House last week by a large touring company of the Bolshoi. Grigorovich is probably the Soviet Union's finest classical choreographer, and the two-act ballet is his first original work...
...Anastasia, Natalia Bessmertnova-one of the most lyrical ballerinas in the world-has little to do but flutter her graceful arms and look demure. The only multidimensional character is Ivan, a role danced at the premiere by Yuri Vladimirov. An extraordinarily lithe actor with a frazzled mane and long simian arms, Vladimirov in his mad scenes looked oddly like a bemused orangutan who had suddenly been set loose from a zoo. That effect was heightened in the ballet's unintentionally ludicrous climax, when the paranoid Czar, hopelessly entangled among bell ropes, dangles above a crowd of foot-stomping peasants...