Lighting design Jacques Rouveyrollis
Choreography Igor Moiseyev
The 70 dancers of the Igor Moiseyev Ballet take us on a journey around the world and through the regions of the former Soviet Union, revealing an incredible multitude of folklores, including Moldovan, Belarussian, Ukrainian, Nanai, Kalmyk, Tatar, Adjaran and Caucasian.
14 dazzling, surprising and joyful ballets, including the major works from the repertoire of Igor Moiseyev. A show acclaimed throughout the world.
Igor Moiseyev staged the acrobatic parades on Red Square from the 1930s and established the Theatre of Folk Art. In 1936, Vyacheslav Molotov put him in charge of the new dance company, which has since become known as the Moiseyev Ballet. Among about 200 dances he created for his company, some humorously represented the game of football and guerrilla warfare. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Moiseyev's work has been especially admired "for the balance that it maintained between authentic folk dance and theatrical effectiveness". In 1955 the company performed in Paris, the first Soviet ensemble to appear in the West after the war, and scored an enormous success. In 1957, they came to London, and in 1958, by then numbering 100 dancers, they made their New York début, at the Metropolitan Opera House – the first major Soviet ensemble to appear in the United States.
Moiseyev was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1953, Hero of Socialist Labor in 1976, received the Lenin Prize (1967, for the dance show A Road to the Dance), four Stalin/USSR State Prizes (1942, 1947, 1952, 1985), Russian Federation State Prize (1996), was awarded numerous orders and medals of the Soviet Union, Spain and many other countries. On the day of his centenary, Moiseyev became the first Russian to receive Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 1st class — the highest civilian decoration of the Russian Federation. In 2001, he was awarded the UNESCO Mozart Medal for outstanding contribution to world music culture. He died in Moscow in 2007. The Moiseyev Dance Company continues under the directorship of Yelena Shcherbakova.
