Rite of Spring at the Bolshoi: Béjart, Bausch, and Wayne McGregor’s new version for the Bolshoi Ballet

The Bolshoi Theatre has announced its 2012–2013 sea­son and tour­ing schedule.

Milan’s Teatro alla Scala will kick off the sea­son on Septem­ber 6 with Robert Carsen’s acclaimed pro­duc­tion of Don Gio­vanni which opened La Scala’s sea­son last year. The Italian pres­ence con­tin­ues with Pier Luigi Pizzi’s new pro­duc­tion for the Bolshoi of Bellini’s La Somn­am­bula with Amer­ican sop­rano Laura Clay­comb. The six new opera pro­duc­tions also include Borodin’s Prince Igor, to be staged by legendary theatre dir­ector Yuri Lyubimov (class of 1917!)

The big event in the bal­let cal­ender is a mini-festival around Easter 2012 to mark the cen­ten­ary of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This will bring together four ver­sions of the bal­let by the Finnish National Bal­let, the Béjart Bal­let Lausanne, the Pina Bausch Dance Theatre, and the Bolshoi Bal­let itself.

Bolshoi Bal­let Artistic Dir­ector Sergei Filin in a press con­fer­ence said,

In addi­tion, the com­pan­ies will present some pieces from their cur­rent rep­er­toire… We will pre­pare our own new ver­sion of “The Rite” which will be cho­reo­graphed by Wayne McGregor.”

The Bolshoi Bal­let will also embark on a three-week tour of Aus­tralia and New Zea­l­and in toward the end of the sea­son, fol­lowed by its tra­di­tional Cov­ent Garden res­id­ency July and August 2012. Filin noted,

Our full-length clas­sical bal­lets con­tinue to arouse great interest. For­eign theat­ers either do not have them at all or have abridged ver­sions. Full-length, lav­ishly designed, pom­pous clas­sical pro­duc­tions with a huge corps-de-ballet are always the most wanted. Only Cov­ent Garden asked to bring new one-act bal­lets for the Lon­don pub­lic to see what our interests are like and what young dan­cers we have, as well as our cur­rent oppor­tun­it­ies and pro­spects for the future.

Photo by DmitriyGury­anov

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