Kitri: Maria Khoreva
Basilio: Vladimir Shklyarov
Gamache: Dmitry Pykhachov
Espada: Roman Belyakov
Street Dancer: Maria Bulanova
Mercedes: Olga Belik
Flower-Sellers: Maria Chernyvskaya, Shamala Guseinova
The Queen of the Dryads: Maria Iliushkina
Amour: Tamara Gimadieva
Variation: Anastasia Smirnova
“In any dances, one must be able to feel a sense of strength, but not of effort” – Semyon Kaplan used these words as an epigraph to a manuscript about the teaching methods employed by his own coach Vladimir Ponomarev, and it is clear that he was guided by this principle throughout his performing career. In Kaplan’s dance there was temperament and there was character – power and energetic strength were felt from his very first appearance on the stage. A congruously built and handsome athlete, with an ease of elegance he was able to deal with incredibly complex technical elements. Nature had given him generous capabilities as a ballet dancer and he, having trained his body under the tutelage of teachers at the Leningrad School of Dance, came to delight audiences at the Kirov Theatre with his mighty leaps and incredible ballon (the ability to appear suspended in the air) and his soft landings, impetuous spins and the staggering natural quality of his dance. “His movements and gestures filled the entire space... not a single millimetre was left empty and unoccupied. He never did anything to create an effect, but everything was fully-fledged and powerful,” Kaplan’s colleagues enthused about his talent.
Joining the theatre in 1930, over the course of his almost thirty-year-long stage career he danced a vast repertoire: lead roles in the classics, in ballets created at that period by Fyodor Lopukhov, Vakhtang Chabukiani, Rostislav Zakharov, Leonid Lavrovsky, Vasily Vainonen and Nina Anisimova. And in each and every role, be it the Prince in Swan Lake or in The Sleeping Beauty, a temperamental Spaniard in Don Quixote, the passionate Armenian in Gayaneh or the revolutionary Philippe in Flames of Paris, Semyon Kaplan meditatively lived the life of his characters, invariably enchanting his partners and audiences alike with his charm, and his dance had a culture all of its own – poses, gestures and how he wore the costumes. This had all been instilled by his teachers, those bearers of as-yet St Petersburg traditions who had caught the epoch of the Imperial theatres. Semyon Solomonovich Kaplan, too, having brought his career as a performer to an end and embarked on another as a coach, tried to pass on this baton of taste to his students. At the Kirov Theatre he coached roles with Valery Panov, Oleg Sokolov, Sergei Vikulov, Radjep Abdyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Boris Blankov and Vadim Gulyaev, helping them attain ideal technique and nobility in their dance style. Semyon Solomonovich also shared his knowledge and his great love of his profession at Leningrad’s Vaganova School of Dance: from his class, the Leningrad stage would go on to see the likes of Andrei Garbuz, Vladimir Ponomarev and Yuri Fateyev. Today, Kaplan’s students are themselves coaches of a new generation of dancers, and so the link is retained with the Golden Age of male dance in Leningrad, the glory of which to a great extent lay with the talent of Semyon Kaplan.
Premiere of the ballet choreographed by Marius Petipa – 14 December 1869, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow
Premiere of Alexander Gorsky´s version – 6 December 1900, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow
Premiere of Alexander Gorsky's version at the Mariinsky Theatre – 20 January 1902
Runnig time 2 hours 55 minutes
The performance has two intervals
Don Quixote, our legacy of the golden age of classical ballet, is a poignant example of how Spain is portrayed in ballets with its whirlwind ensemble dancing, castanets, fans, polka dot skirts, roses and decorative combs in women’s hairdos.
Despite its name, the ballet is not an adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’ novel. Only one episode of the ingenious hidalgo’s many adventures serves as the basis for the story and the dancing scenes. It is a story about the failed wedding of the wealthy Camacho (Gamache in the ballet) to the fair Quiteria (Kitri in the ballet), who is also the object of affections of the villager Basil (Basilio). However, Don Quixote is in no way the lead character in the story by the ballet standards. His role is mostly that of a pantomime artist or a stage walker, while all the dancing feats are accomplished by other characters.
This festive, hot-tempered and virtuoso ballet was staged in 1900 (and transferred from the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow to the Mariinsky Theatre in 1902) by Alexander Gorsky after the eponymous ballet of Marius Petipa, which had graced the St Petersburg stage from 1871. The young and passionate choreographer Gorsky was heavily influenced by Stanislavski (who had just opened the Moscow Art Theatre) at the beginning of the 20th century. To make the ballet more ‘lifelike and truthful’ he turned the symmetrical corps de ballets, so common in his renowned colleague Petipa’s works, into a playful, lively, and cheerful crowd. The first spectators recalled, ‘the lively and passionate crowd in the square makes you believe up to a point of delusion in the sun, which makes you fall in love so keenly, tease each other, chase after the running beauty, who hides behind her fan…’
Gorsky kept the contours of the libretto, the music written by Minkus for Petipa, and many of the choreographic pieces for his production. However, Gorsky rearranged some of the scenes of the existing production.
The modern Don Quixote arguably features the most diverse dances from among the ballet repertory: one can still see the echoes of Marius Petipa, Alexander Gorsky, Fyodor Lopukhov, who created the ‘folkloresque’ Spanish fandango in 1923, and Nina Anisimova, who added her version of the gypsy dance in 1946. Moreover, many of those dancers who performed the role of Basilio can be considered co-choreographers for the main character. On many occasions did their tricks and ideas aimed at showcasing the artist himself in full glory make their way into the variations. For soloists, Don Quixote is not just a measure of virtuosity, but also an opportunity to be in the midst of a game, where even the smallest of roles might blossom into a colourful humoristic touch. For spectators, this production, featuring in equal measure genre and everyday scenes, character choreography and pure classical elements, is pure charm due to its generous serving of dancing and the atmosphere of carefree festivity. Olga Makarova
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