Bolshoi Ballet Returns To London

The Bolshoi Ballet returns to London for a three-week summer season at the London Coliseum from July 30 – August 18, 2007, presented by Victor Hochhauser. Last year’s sold-out season of the Bolshoi Ballet in London was a critical triumph, leaving an enthusiastic public clamoring for more.

At this year’s National Dance Awards the Bolshoi won the award for the Best Foreign Dance Company of 2006.

The company’s 2007 programme opens with a lavish new recreation of 19th century classic Le Corsaire by the Bolshoi’s Artistic Director Alexei Ratmansky working with ballet master/restorer Yuri Burlaka. The role of Medora on the opening night is danced by the company’s leading dancer Svetlana Zakharova partnered by fiery Denis Matvienko.

International superstar Carlos Acosta appears as a Guest Artist with the Bolshoi dancing the lead role in Yuri Grigorovich’s heroic Soviet-era ballet Spartacus - a work which has become synonymous with the Bolshoi name.

The season also includes the British Premiere of Elsinore, a new one-act ballet by the greatly admired British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, in a triple bill with Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room, and Asaf Messerer’s Class Concert, a dazzling vehicle for the company’s leading soloists, and here revived by his nephew, UK based ballet master Mikhail Messerer.

Ratmansky’s rollicking full-length ballet, The Bright Stream, hailed as ‘the best new ballet to come out of Russia in years’, and voted Best Classical Choreography of 2006 by the Critics’ Circle, returns by overwhelming popular demand.

There’s also a chance to savour two other pillars of the Bolshoi’s classical repertoire – La Bayadère and Don Quixote whose opening night cast features remarkable 21 year-old Natalia Osipova. Osipova’s exuberant performance as Kitri in last year’s London season was unforgettable. This season she dances opposite the prodigiously gifted 18 year-old Ivan Vasiliev, who joined the company only last year – and who is widely being compared to the young Baryshnikov.

All the Bolshoi’s finest Principal Artists will dance during the Coliseum season including Maria Alexandrova, Maria Allash, Anna Antonicheva, Sergei Filin, Dmitri Gudanov, Yuri Klevtsov, Svetlana Lunkina, Vladimir Neporozhny, Marianna Ryzhkina, Galina Stepanenko, Nikolai Tsiskaridze and Andrei Uvarov,

Other soloists of the younger generation include Yan Godovsky, Nina Kaptsova, Yekaterina Krysanova, Andrei Merkuriev, Yekaterina Shipulina, Artyom Shpilevksy, Ruslan Skvortsov, Alexander Volchkov and Anastasia Yatsenko

Victor Hochhauser and the Bolshoi look forward to renewing their association with the London Coliseum, where the company last performed in 1999. Since then the theatre has been handsomely restored. It will offer a fitting frame for one of the world’s leading ballet companies.

Victor and Lilian Hochhauser have been associated with the best of Russian culture for over 50 years. Last autumn their unique role as cultural ambassadors was recognised by the Russian Government with the award of a special medal for promoting a positive image of Russian culture in the Britain.

Public and online booking for the season opens on Monday, March 26.

The Bolshoi Ballet at The London Coliseum, St. Martin’s Lane, London, WC2.

Monday, July 30 – Saturday, August 18, 2007
Online booking: eno.org/bolshoi

Ticket prices: £10 - £85