Christmas Ballet Gala in the Kremlin Palace

On December 15th 2015 the State Kremlin Palace will host a Christmas gala concert of stars of world ballet titled ‘Christmas Ballet Gala.’ The project will become an annual Christmas festival of ballet, a place to meet world famous dancers, a multi-faceted mirror which reflects the creative interests and trends of the modern world ballet art.

The Artistic Director of the project, the People's Artist of Russia, Andris Liepa, says that his childhood memories made him organize the project: “I love the Kremlin Palace very much, despite the fact that the stage is very complicated. I have been working on this stage since I was 9 years old. That is, in 1971 I first played on this stage. I mean, my whole life is connected with the creative Kremlin Palace. I remember my youth and I remember my childhood, when first my father, Maris Liepa, then I and Ilse participated in the festival ‘Russian Winter’, if you remember it. And I was always very pleased that there were a lot of guests, there were a lot of ballet fans who came for some special events which were organized at the Bolshoi Theatre and the Kremlin Palace, and there were some unusual events associated with the festival… Such events in our country before New Year are often restricted to performances of ‘The Nutcracker’, which is staged for a month, starting in mid-December to mid-January, all the major theaters show 'The Nutcracker' and earn quite well from it. The spectators are happy because children are coming.”

The creative elite of ballet will participate in the Gala-concert: Vladimir Malakhov, Ilze Liepa and Farukh Ruzimatov, Yevgenia Obraztsova, Daniil Simkin, Yekaterina Krysnoca, Nina Kaptsova, Maria Semenyachenko, Mikhail Lobukhin, Semen Chudin, Andrei Merkuryev, Denis Rodkin, Artemy Belyakov, Maria Eichwald, Alexander Zaytsev, Beatrice Knop, Anna Tsygankova, Josef Warga, Tatyana Melnik, Ksander Paris, Angelina Vorontsova and Viktor Lebedev.

The program of the Gala concert will include masterpieces of classic choreography by Marius Petipa, George Balanchine, Maurice Bejart, as well as original contemporary staging by Hans van Manen, Uwe Scholtz, Marco Goecke, Nacho Duato, Christopher Wheeldon and Jiri Bubenicek.

Several premieres will be Christmas presents for the audience. The special guest of the evening is a British musician, a participant of the legendary group The Cure, Roger O’Donnell. He will play a composition written by him ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’, to which choreographer Nikita Dmitriyevsky has staged a dance for soloists of the Bolshoi Theatre. The European premiere of Simkin and the Stage with Ekman’s choreography and The Parallels by the performer and choreographer Andrei Merkuriyev will be presented.