Ballet tribute to dancer
There will be a great Russian ballerina tribute concert for South Africa.
BALLET lovers are in for a treat next month when 10 of Russia’s star dancers present a spectacular performance in tribute to Bolshoi Ballet prima ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova.
The tribute concert, featuring stars of the Bolshoi Ballet and Ballet Moscow, comes to Durban as part of its South African Tour on 29 and 30 September, at the Playhouse Opera Theatre at 7.30pm.
The programme promises to be a real crowd pleaser featuring scenes and extracts from Spartacus, Don Quixote, Sleeping Beauty, Raymonda and the Nutcracker.
The wife and muse of acclaimed choreographer Yuri Grigorovich, Bessmertnova joined the Bolshoi Ballet in 1961 and was their prima ballerina until her retirement in 1995.
She shot to international fame with her performances in the Paris Opera products of two Sergei Prokofiev ballets, Ivan the Terrible (1976) and Romeo and Juliet (1978). But it was in the role of Giselle that Bessmertnova entranced the world with her innate lyricism.
Internationally renowned Mikhail Baryshnikov danced the role of Albrecht in Giselle with her twice, with the second time being his last performance in Russia before he defected to Canada.
In her 35-year career, she gave 3000 stage performances and received many top Russian honours, including a People’s Artist of the USSR in 1976 and a Lenin Prize in 1986. She died on February 19, 2008, in a Moscow clinic was laid to rest in the city of her birth.
Celebrating her remarkable career, the dancers in the South African tour will be under the expert guidance of Mikhail Bessmertnov, who joined the Bolshoi Ballet in 1991.
Tickets, priced from R150 to R300, are available now at Computicket. Early booking is advised.
