On 8 and 9 December (at 12:00 and 19:00) on the historic stage the audiences will experience Anton Chekhov's short story "Anna on the Neck" in a choreographic interpretation crafted by Vladimir Vasiliev.
The unique biography of Anuta began not on the stage but on television, a rare case of a ballet transitioning from screen to stage. The telefilm’s originator, Leningrad director and screenwriter Alexander Belinsky, who already had television ballets like Galatea, Gigolo and Gigolletta, and Old Tango to his name, found in Anuta a future success and public acclaim.
Struck by the romantic waltz of another Leningrader, Valery Gavrilin, Belinsky was inspired to create a film based on Chekhov's Anna on the Neck. The ballet score, assembled from various compositions by Gavrilin and orchestrated by conductor Stanislav Gorkovenko, perfectly captured the Chekhovian tones: the landscape of a provincial town, the ball's festivity, the mundane bourgeois life, the characters' inner turmoil, and the inevitable bitterness of the finale. Belinsky invited renowned dancer and People's Artist of the USSR, Vladimir Vasiliev, to choreograph the telefilm. Vasiliev also co-directed and portrayed Anuta's father, Pyotr Leontyevich.
The ballet film premiered in 1982 featuring the inimitable ballerina Ekaterina Maximova in the title role. Her natural, delicate, and precise performance, coupled with a nuanced dramatic talent, created a vivid, multi-dimensional character, capturing the hearts of millions. The film caught the attention of the director of Naples' San Carlo Theatre, who proposed Vasiliev transfer the teleballet to the theatrical stage. The world premiere in Italy in 1986 met with thunderous success.
Adapting Anuta from screen to stage required extensive work: new scenes and characters emerged, and additional music was added. Yet, the essence of Anuta as a teleballet remained: mere excellence in choreography was insufficient; artists needed to possess unique dramatic talent and employ the full spectrum of their acting skills.
Following its Italian premiere, Anuta was introduced to the Moscow audience and then began its triumphant procession across Russian and international stages, spanning nearly four decades. Today, more than a dozen Russian cities boast their own Anuta in their repertoire, from Chelyabinsk to Yoshkar-Ola, from Novosibirsk to Voronezh.
"It's remarkable that even today this ballet continues to be in demand, allowing the audience to empathize with the fates of Chekhov's characters. Anuta lives on, acquiring new hues with each generation of performers. It seems important to me that ballet artists have the opportunity to connect with Chekhov and Gavrilin on stage, to feel and convey to the audience the wonderfully subtle sense of goodness and beauty inherent in these authors," notes Vladimir Vasiliev.
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