A debut by Anastasia Petushkova

Scene from the ballet

Fate – destiny personified in Carmen-Suite through a dancer dressed in black – calls the shots in the life of Carmen, the ballet’s female protagonist. Apropos, the actual story of the production also felt the influence of divine providence.

In the 1960s it was all but impossible to be granted permission to invite a foreign choreographer to work in the USSR. Maya Plisetskaya, however, who dreamed of dancing Cuban choreographer Alberto Alonso’s Carmen was allowed to do so: people at the Ministry of Culture of the USSR believed in the opportunity to strengthen the Soviet-Cuban pact of friendship through ballet. Following its premiere the ballet about the freedom-loving Spanish girl was almost banned due to its “total eroticism”... Regardless of all the peripeteia of the struggle against the stagnating Soviet authorities, destiny was clearly to prove kind to Alonso, Shchedrin and Plisetskaya’s creation. Carmen-Suite with Maya Mikhailovna Plisetskaya enjoyed unfailing success at the Bolshoi Theatre, and it has been staged at numerous theatres throughout the world; today it is one of the most famous ballets created in the Soviet era.
On 18 September the role of Fate in Carmen-Suite will be performed by Anastasia Petushkova for the first time.

The same evening will see recent graduate of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet Nelli Smirnova make her Mariinsky-II debut as a Tobacco Worker.