BRISBANE /Australia/, June 25. /TASS/. Australia’s aboriginal people have welcomed the Russian Bolshoi Theater’s ballet company by performing ceremonial dances for them ahead of the Russian tour in Brisbane on Tuesday. The performances of the renowned Russian company will begin in this large Australian city on Wednesday, June 26, and the tour’s organizers decided to surprise the guests from Moscow.
It is known that the indigenous Australians make up only a couple of percent in the whole population of the country. There are even fewer of descendants of the tribes that preserved their traditional culture. It is them who were invited today to one of the rehearsal halls of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre to welcome the Bolshoi Theater’s dancing company.
Language of music and dance
The Indigenous Australians decided to welcome the dancers of the Bolshoi Theater speaking the language that everyone understands - the language of dance and music. They performed three traditional ceremonial dances to the strains of ancient musical instruments.
The dancers of the Bolshoi ballet were very generous with applause.
The welcome ceremony ended with a joint dance, which the aboriginal people called happy, it was performed by everyone together, the Bolshoi ballet dancers and the Indigenous people. In the end, a fantastic trick was performed, one of the dancers lit real fire in his one hands. The Russian dancers thanked them for the magnificent show with a round of applause that did not end for a while.
Before legendary Spartacus
After an outstanding welcome ceremony the Bolshoi dancers continued their training in a ballet class, which was followed by a run-through of the Spartacus ballet.
"We cannot relax now. Tomorrow we are opening the tour with legendary Spartacus. The ballet accompanied by Aram Khachaturyan’s music choreographed by Yuri Grigorovich has been on the Bolshoi Theater’s list of productions for more than 50 years, which is a practically unique case," Director of the Bolshoi Theater Makhar Vaziev said.
He called Spartacus the "signature piece" of the theater and recalled that the first dancers of the main parts were brilliant performers such as Vladimir Vasiliev, Maris Liepa, Ekaterina Maximova, Mikhail Lavrovsky and Natalia Bessmertnova.
"But time passes, generations change and we hand <…> this majestic ballet over to new dancers, who will perform before the Australian audience," Vaziev said. The main parts will be performed by Denis Rodkin, Igor Tsvirko, Alexander Volchkov, Mikhail Lobukhin, Ekaterina Krysanova, Olga Smirnova, Maria Vinogradova, Yulia Stepanova, Anna Nikulina, Artemy Belyakov and other soloists.
During the tour in Brisbane, Spartacus will be shown eight times, the tour program also includes George Balanchine’s ballet Jewels, which will be performed five times. The tour will run until July 7, the performances will take place in the 2,100 seat Lyric Theater of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. The tour organizers told TASS that almost all tickets to see the Bolshoi Theater company are sold out.