The Astana Ballet in St Petersburg

On 7 and 8 July the Astana Ballet will be presenting an evening of one-act ballets at the Mariinsky Theatre.

Founded in 2012, the repertoire of the Astana Ballet includes both the world’s classical masterpieces and new productions by contemporary choreographers, varying themes of Turkic eposes and the national musical culture of Kazakhstan. At the previous Stars of the White Nights festival the company presented the ballet Alem. This year the national flavour of the repertoire will be represented with the one-act ballet Zhusan, our guests from Astana inviting audiences on a journey through the vast Kazakh steppe, steeped in myths and legends.
The programme of the second part of the evening includes a recent premiere by the company – the ballet Carmen which audiences first saw at the end of June. In the year since its last performance in St Petersburg the company has performed on tour in Moscow, Paris and Budapest. Its repertoire has expanded to include several works, one of which is a programme that presents the legacy of Anna Pavlova in a production by 1980s-1990s Mariinsky Theatre principal dancer Altynai Asylmuratova. The company is already working on a new project with choreographer Nikita Dmitrievsky, while in St Petersburg the Kazakh ballet will be presenting works choreographed by Mukaram Avakhri. Zhusan and Carmen were designed by Olga Shaishmelashvili, whose works are familiar to audiences in St Petersburg from her costumes for the Boris Eifman Theatre's productions of Rodin, Requiem and Up & Down.