The Mariinsky Theatre is staging an unprecedented premiere - for the first time ever, a Russian ballet company will be performing ballets by William Forsythe as part of the IV International Ballet Festival "Mariinsky".

William Forsythe can justly be called the true heir of George Balanchine, the 20th century's greatest choreographer, and, via Balanchine, of Marius Petipa - and thus of the great dance traditions of the Mariinsky Theatre. Forsythe, who set the course for the development of ballet at the close of the 20th and start of the 21st centuries, had previously never been to Russia. A planned installation by the Kremlin walls was forbidden by the authorities in Moscow. In 2002, he came to St Petersburg for the first time where he and four dancers from the Frankfurter Ballett amazed the public at the Mariinsky ballet festival with the work Artifact-II. One year later, a group of Mariinsky Theatre dancers travelled to Forsythe's studio in Frankfurt. At last, the Mariinsky Theatre and Forsythe came to an agreement to stage three of his famous ballets at the Mariinsky Theatre.

Three ballets: "Steptext", "The Vertigious Thrill of Exactitude" and "In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated" will be performed on the 3rd March, 5th and 7th March.

At the Mariinsky Theatre, William Forsythe's ballets are being rehearsed by Ulyana Lopatkina, Diana Vishneva, Irma Nioradze, Darya Pavlenko, Elvira Tarasova, Natalia Sologub, Sofia Gumerova, Nadezhda Gonchar, Tatiana Tkachenko, Andrian Fadeyev, Igor Kolb, Andrei Merkuriev, Leonid Sarafanov, Anton Korsakov and many young dancers of the Mariinsky Ballet Company.

News source: www.mariinsky.spb.ru
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