Bolshoi Brasil Features “Chopiniana” on YouTube

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Today, August 22nd, at 5 PM, the Bolshoi School will perform the ballet “Chopiniana”, on the Youtube channel ‘Bolshoi School Brazil’. This piece promises to delight the audience, where students and dancers take on the responsibility of conveying the full sensitivity of this ballet, also known as “Les Sylphides”, which is part of the repertoire of major ballet companies worldwide, choreographed by the Russian Mikhail Fokine, who died on August 22nd, 1942.

Chopiniana

A ballet by moonlight in a classic setting where a young dreamer, always in search of something new, dances among the sylphs, which are invisible airy creatures. The work describes, only suggestively, the sensations they perceive to the sound of Chopin’s music. The ballet has no fragments or parts. It is only one act.

The corps de ballet is the very essence of the work. The plasticity and lightness of hands and the gentle gestures of the head complete the atmosphere of the ballet.
“Chopiniana” was recreated for the Bolshoi School in 2007 by Russian teacher Galina Kravchenko, dancer at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and wife of one of the greatest performers of this piece, Alexander Bogatyrev.

Mikhail Fokine

The Russian Mikhail Fokine became a soloist at the Marynsky Theatre in 1904 and three years later created the solo “The Dying Swan”, with music by Camille Saint-Saens for Anna Pavlova. Her first full ballet was “Le Pavillon d’Armide” for the Maryinsky Theatre in 1909. That same year he began choreographing for the Diaghlev Russian Ballets, where he remained until 1918, when he emigrated to the United States.

His work is quite varied, including romanticism, neoclassicism, poetry, sensuality and intensity. Fokine created ballets for almost every major theater in Europe and America and most of them remain in the repertoire of international companies today. Mikhail Fokine died in New York on August 22nd, 1942.