17.09.2020

A premiere of the ballet Seven Sonatas at the Mariinsky Theatre

On 24 September the historic Mariinsky Theatre will be hosting the long-anticipated premiere of Alexei Ratmansky's ballet Seven Sonatas to music by Domenico Scarlatti. The programme for the evening will also include productions by the choreographer that were revived last season – Pierrot Lunaire to music by Arnold Schoenberg and Concerto DSCH set to Dmitry Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto.

Seven Sonatas – a subtly refined lacework tracery of dance for three couples which reacts sensitively to each and every note of Scarlatti's music – was created in 2009 for American Ballet Theatre. Last season, the Mariinsky Ballet rehearsed this production for the Mariinsky ballet festival due to be held in March, though due to the enforced break in the theatre's on-stage activities this had to be postponed. At that time, the dancers rehearsed the choreographic text with Stella Abrera, one of the first to appear in the ballet. Their work was not brought to a standstill by the closure of international borders: now, as last season, Alexei Ratmansky has been making amendments by video link from New York, thus attending almost every rehearsal. The roles are being rehearsed by Ekaterina Kondaurova and Roman Belyakov, Maria Khoreva and Philipp Stepin and Alina Somova and Roman Malyshev.

The two ballets that are to frame the premiere which the theatre succeeded in showing the public in spring at the opening of the Mariinsky festival are now to be performed with new soloists: Pierrot Lunaire will feature Viktoria Tereshkina and Kimin Kim for the first time, while Concerto DSCH will feature Xander Parish. Varied in their musical material (Schoenberg, Scarlatti and Shostakovich) and contrasting in their emotional colour and atmosphere, the three productions by Ratmansky reveal the recognisable signature of a choreographer for whom movement and refined dance combinations are born directly from the music.

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