Kulturkompasset | critics of culture events

Kristian Støvind – Balletpremiere in Yekaterinburg



” Kristian Støvind with his cast in Ekaterinburg – After the premiere yesterday- Ilia, Nactia, Anton and Olesia.

YEKATERINBURG: The young Norwegian choreographer and ballet dancer Kristian Støvind premiered his choreographic work at the Operahouse in Yekaterinburg, Russia, Friday evening.

The audience liked it, and so did the dancers.

Please enjoy video with some excerpts from the ballet: https://www.facebook.com/kstovind?fref=ts

Kristian Støvind forteller til Kulturkompasset (på norsk) om balletten sin:

“Operaen i Yekaterinburg og ballettkompaniets ledelse med balletsjef  Slava Samodurov i spissen. Samodurov er også koreograf og jobber hardt for at balletten i Yekaterinburg skal være det mest nyskapende av de store klassiske kompaniene i Russland, legger mye ned i The Dance Platform.

Det var helt utsolgt på Hovedscenen, god stemning og de gjør stykkene igjen til fredag. Mitt stykke heter Frieriet eller The Proposal på engelsk. Musikken er den berømte adagioen fra Spartacus av Khachaturian.”

Fra The Proposal, ballett av Kristian Støvind med Ekaterinburg Ballet.

“Det er en dobbel kjærlighets pas de deux hvor tvilen om man er i ferd med å velge rett partner er tematikken. (selv om det legges litt føringer i hva slags kjønn man bør velge der borte, kan det jo være vanskelig å vite om man har valgt rett alikevel).”

“Det var spennende å bruke et så “erke” russisk stykke og putte moderne bevegelser til. Det å blande noe kjent med noe nytt er ofte fint. Og jeg tror at man kan konsentrere seg mer om koreografien hvis ikke musikken også er ny. Danserne var veldig fine å jobbe med og veldig ivrige på å lære og prøve nye måter å bevege seg på. Særlig innen pas de deuxene synes jeg at vi fikk til mye bra.”

Kristian Støvind (til venstre) sammen med Ballettsjef Slava Samodurov. Han er også koreograf og jobber hardt for at balletten i Yekaterinburg skal være det mest nyskapende av de store klassiske kompaniene i Russland.

Kristian Støvind is a dancer and choreographer working with the Norwegian National Ballet.

 

Fra The Proposal, ballett av Kristian Støvind

His education is from the Norwegian National Ballet school and Ballettzentrum Hamburg, John Neumeier.
He started working as a dancer with the Norwegian National Ballet in 1997 and created his first choreography in 2002.

His experience as a dancer includes solo roles in both the classical and the modern repertoire, working with choreographers like: Forsythe, Kylian, Tetley, Neumeier, Ek, Duato and Lightfoot Leon.

As a choreographer he has by the summer 2012 made 15 works including 3 full evening productions for the Norwegian National Ballet (the first in collaboration with Cina Espejord).

Støvind has been nominated twice for the critic award in dance, for the choreographies of his two latest full evening productions.

Kristian Støvind, foto Erik Berg

HISTORY OF THE YEKATERINBURG OPERA AND BALLET THEATRE

The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theatre is one of the oldest opera theatres in Russia, a bearer of the Russian and international musical traditions, seeking to comprehend and incorporate the classical heritage in the context of changing cultural demands of the Russian society and to encourage further development of the music theatre in Russia.

In a few years, in 2012, the Theatre is going to celebrate its centenary which will be the first most remarkable jubilee in its history. This will be an event not only of local importance, but a landmark in the Russian musical theatre life as well.

Ekaterinburg Dance platform – Poster

The history of the Yekaterinburg Theatre had actually begun long before the first stone was laid in the foundation of its magnificent building. In the 1870s the stage of the first city theatre hosted first-class metropolitan opera companies. Having received excellent spectator schooling, in 1874 local opera fans formed a musical society, the only of its kind in Russia, where splendid opera productions were staged and the most difficult scores were brought to life. Their affectionate love and reverence for opera made the city authorities conceive the idea of building a local opera house, and in 1912 the New City Theatre opened its first season with the opera Life for the Tzar by Mikhail Glinka (music director Barbini, stage director Altshuller). The first ballet production, Drigo’s The Magic Flute (choreographer Troyanovsky), dates back to 1914, although it was not until 1931 that the name “The Opera and Ballet Theatre” appeared.

Rich traditions of private touring companies and musical societies helped the Theatre to gain confidence and its glorious name. A decade later the Ekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk) Theatre was beginning to get a mention among other provincial theatres. Starting from the mid-1920s, the Ekaterinburg Opera Theatre has acquired its reputation and fame of being one of the best in the country, primarily due to the constant presence of gifted musicians and performers on the company’s staff.

Yekaterinburg opera house

Throughout the years outstanding masters have worked here. Many singers, including Sergei Lemeshev, Ivan Kozlovsky, Irina Arkhipova, Boris Shtokolov, Yuri Gulyaev and others, who later made the glory of the Russian stage, started in Yekaterinburg. The tradition to give away the best masters to metropolitan and world theatres has always been the lot of any provincial company
. Among the recent “honorable losses” are conductors Ririll Tikhonov, one of the founders of “Helicon-Opera”; Yevgeny Kolobov, art director of “New Opera”; Alexander Tittel, chief stage director of Moscow’s Stalislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre; world stars Vladimir Ognovenko and Galina Gorchakova, the Bolshoi soloist Andrei Grigoriev; the “Helicon-Opera” soloist Andrei Vylegzhanin; the singer Elena Voznesenskaya, the “Russian Ballet” soloist Marina Bogdanova and many, many others…

Glamour and excitement to the Yekaterinburg Theatre has been brought by the talented music director and conductor Yevgeny Kolobov and later by the creative team of the conductor Yevgeny Brazhnik and the stage director Alexander Tittel, whose memorable productions include the operas Peter I by Andrei Petrov, Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Prophet by Kobekin and Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann.

Yekaterinburg opera house interior

The Theatre was the first provincial company to be granted the USSR State Prize (then it was called Stalinsky Prize) for staging Otello by Verdi in 1946 (music director Margulyan, stage director Brill, chorus master Preobrazhensky; singers Kiselevskaya, Azrikan). The series of artistic experiments led to the second State Prize in 1987 for staging the opera The Prophet by the Ural composer Vladimir Kobyakin (music director Brazhnik, stage director Tittel; singers Bobrovitskaya, Tyumentsev).

 

Fra Kristian Støvinds Ballett The Proposal med balletten i Ekaterinburg

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. Musikk fra Spartacus av Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

The only way for the Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theatre to maintain these traditions and stand for its name is to facilitate steady and fast artistic growth based on all the development factors: internal and external, traditional and modern, national and international. The history of music theatre development worldwide has proved that steady and rapid development of the theatre company has to be warranted by the high quality productions that are comparable to the highest international standards. This requires new ideas and new approaches to creative work as well as new technological level on the production side.

Ekaterinburg opera house, stage

The theatre bears responsibility of preserving the traditions of the national opera and ballet of Russia, and further advancing these traditions in line with the artistic demand of the society at its current stage of development. The ‘golden fund’ of national music culture has to be present in the company’s repertoire at any given time, while the repertoire itself has to change continuously using the latest achievements of the source studies, musicology and theatre history.

The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theatre has recently proved that it is capable of challenging itself artistically, and meeting such challenges. Recent successes have been the operas Eugene Onegin, Mazepa and Iolanta by Tchaikovsky, The Tzar’s Bride by Rimsky-Korsakov, Prince Igor by Borodin, The Magic Flute by Mozart, Il Trovatore, La Traviata, Rigoletto and Falstaff by Verdi, Madama Butterfly and La Bohème by Puccini, La Fille du Régiment by Donizetti, Il Barbiere di Siviglia by Rossini, Rusalka by Dvořák and the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky, Sheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov, Creation of the World by Petrov, One Thousand and One Night by Amirov, Don Quixote by Minkus and The Great Waltz by Strauss.

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