A soaring debut by Valeria Martynyuk

Scene from the ballet Shurale

The idea for the ballet Shurale to music by the Tatar composer Farid Yarullin came about in Kazan in 1940. The premiere of the ballet was to mark ten years of Tatar art in 1941, and for such an event a national ballet company was absolutely vital. The libretto was based on a Tatar legend of a bird-maiden and an evil forest spirit. Leonid Yakobson was invited to produce the choreography. But the premiere never came to pass – war broke out. Yakobson returned to the production in Leningrad after the war. The premiere of the ballet took place at the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre on 28 May 1950. At the time it had a different title – Ali Batyr; under this title it received the Stalin Prize: the awards went to Leonid Yakobson, conductor Pavel Feldt and all three casts including Alla Shelest, Natalia Dudinskaya, Konstantin Sergeyev, Boris Bregvadze, Askold Makarov and Igor Belsky. Following the premiere in Leningrad, the ballet Shurale was staged at the Bolshoi Theatre. In 1980 it was televised under the title A Woodland Tale.

The ballet had not been performed at the Mariinsky Theatre for a quarter of a century, but in 2009 it was carefully restored. It is not for nothing that thiss ballet is known as the “Tatar Swan Lake”: the productions are linked thematically and the role of Syuimbike is similar to that of Odette. The role of Syuimbike is also complex in that here it is important to convey the flavour of national dance.

On 7 January there will be three debuts in the ballet Shurale: Valeria Martynyuk as Syuimbike, Tatiana Tiliguzova as the Fiery Witch and Nikita Lyashchenko as an Evil Spirit.