A New Theatre Season: 60 Years of Legacy.

We are opening our newest season on 27 September. The Alexandrinsky Theatre will host performances of Swan Lake, a lasting favourite with audiences and an enduring benchmark of professional excellence and adherence to the academic tradition.
 

This autumn will mark both our 58th official season and the 60th anniversary of our troupe. Our company, originally known as Chamber Ballet, was founded in 1966 by Pyotr Gusev. At the time, it was the country’s only ballet troupe to operate outside the traditional structure of an opera theatre.
 

Leonid Yacobson, whose name we now bear, took over the company in 1969 and remained at its helm until the final days of his life in 1975. This autumn, a commemorative plaque celebrating Leonid Yacobson will be unveiled on the building of the former horse-training arena at 15 Mayakovskaya Street. A great twentieth-century choreographer and tireless experimenter, Yacobson developed a fundamentally new vision of the possibilities of movement as an art form. The plaque in his honour was created by sculptor Vladimir Nuzhdin, the only artist in Russia working in the counter-relief technique.
 

Our Theatre continues to preserve the spirit of constant artistic exploration instilled by Leonid Yacobson. Under the direction of Andrian Fadeev, who has headed the company since 2011, we have developed and consistently pursued a balanced approach to compiling our repertoire. Its three load-bearing pillars are the preservation of Leonid Yacobson’s artistic legacy, popular classical productions — some presented in unique versions created by their original choreographers, — and collaborations with contemporary guest choreographers.
 

Midway through the forthcoming season, the company will present the première of the three-act ballet Onegin. Based on Alexander Pushkin’s novel-in-verse and set to music by Sergei Prokofiev, the production is being staged with the support of a grant from the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives. The choreographer and director is Yuri Smekalov.
 

The company’s touring schedule for this season includes an appearance at the Norilsk Seasons festival. On 2 and 3 October, audiences in the Arctic city will witness a selection of shows spanning three centuries of Russian ballet: choreographic works by Marius Petipa, Leonid Yacobson, and Vyacheslav Samodurov.