More Russian Dancers Coming

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32354, 21 July 1970, Page 11

More Russian Dancers Coming

The Beriosko Dance Company of Moscow is to be the next Russian folk-dance company to visit Christchurch.

In the course of a New Zealand tour, Berioska—the first Russian folk-dance company to appear at La Scala—will spend a brief season of three days in the Theatre Royal on August 13, 14 and 15.

Nadezhda Sergeyevna Nadezhdina, leader of the company, was formerly a dancer of the Bolshoi, and most of the company’s members are graduates of the Bolshoi Theatre School of Choreography. Love for one’s people, love

for folk creation and a poet’s eye to see it with—these are indispensable for all who work in the field of folk art, says Nadezhda Nadezhdina. That is her art credo; and from it she has

i created a new art in pro- ■■ fessional choreography, based ' on a synthesis of dance folkt lore and the classical dance. Berioska is a company ; which is creative, restless and constantly seeking. There 1 are no routine or hackneyed forms; all the dances in the programmes are unceasingly polished, deepened and renewed. No two concerts are alike. "Everything here is profoundly Russian, national, deep and broad like our land itself, its culture, its life, its history . . . When you see these spell-binding items you feel like crying out. There is the Russian soul, there you smell the breath of Russia’,’’ wrote G. Shirina in “Sovietskaya Byelorussiya.” One of the striking elements in Berioska is the amazing harmony between all elements of the dance, and the sense of proportion in their combination. The relatively small orchestra under the direction of Alexi Ilyin, makes Russian folk melodies sound inspired and majestic, and there is splendid modulation of colours- in the costumes by Lyubov Silicb and the soft moving singing of the dancers." All this might never have come about had it not been for a young girl being delighted by peasant dances, reports the Novosti News Agency.

Nadezhda Nadezhdina and her family often spent their summer holidays on the picturesque banks of the Kama River, near the town of Perm. Sometimes the girl came across traditional festivals when peasant girls in their bright national costumes, moved with a dignified grace in time to broadly flowing song, in a dance that was never seen on stage in town. Years later, as a dancer with the Bolshoi Theatre, she concluded that although the dances in vogue at the time had spirited rhythms and fast tempos, they lacked poetry. So for a festival of folk art in 1948 she choreographed a gentle, graceful dance based on the ones she had seen in the villages. She called it “Berioska” “The Birch Tree.” The dance was the highlight of the festival, and initiated a new direction in Russian dance choreography, while for Nadezhdina -it formed the basis of the company which she has directed ever since.

The repertoire of the company today includes many of the frenetic, lively and exciting dances in the Russian tradition; dances celebrating spring, or carnivals, or weddings. But it is the rich lyricism of the women which gives the show its unique impact