French ballet star wins plaudits with contemporary stagings in Moscow

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French ballet star Laurent Hilaire, who this year joined Moscow’s renowned Stanislavsky ballet troupe as artistic director, has wowed Russian audiences with his first programme that introduced top contemporary choreographers.

Hilaire, a former principal dancer with the Paris Opera Ballet, took over direction of the Stanislavsky Music Theatre six months ago, a rare choice of a foreigner to head a Russian ballet troupe.

The audience responded with rapturous applause to his first programme which premiered Saturday and saw works by two internationally renowned choreographers performed by the troupe for the first time.

The first Frenchman to head a Russian troupe for 150 years, Hilaire has vowed to “open up” the repertoire of the historic Stanislavsky theatre, which focuses on classics.

Hilaire staged “Suite en Blanc” by the late French choreographer Serge Lifar as well as groundbreaking US choreographer William Forsythe’s “The Second Detail” and Czech Jiri Kylian’s “Petite Mort.”

“This is a challenge for the troupe. They had never done Lifar, they had never done Forsythe,” Hilaire told AFP, adding that the warm reception came as a pleasant surprise.

Also:

MOSCOW: The Bolshoi Theatre has postponed the world premiere of Nureyev, a ballet about famous Russian dancer, weeks after its director Kirill Serebrennikov was questioned as a witness in a fraud investigation.

The long awaited premiere of the ballet about Rudolf Nureyev, one of the first Soviet artists to defect to the West, was due to be held on July 11 but the Bolshoi said on its website late on Saturday it would not take place.

The theatre gave no reason for calling off the performance but said it would hold a briefing about the postponement on Monday. (Agencies)

Serebrennikov said it was the theatre’s decision but declined to comment on the reasons for the delay, according to the Vedomosti business daily. (Agencies)

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