The 100-year anniversary of the great ballet dancer has been celebrated in Tbilisi.
The other day in Tbilisi, the 100-year anniversary of the great ballet dancer, Vakhtang Chabukiani, was celebrated. Admirers of his work came to his house-museum. "Many books were written about him, but we are happy to have seen this genius with our own eyes. There is nobody to compare with him - Vakhtang Chabukiani was incomparable," said Shalva Davitashvili, director of the house-museum.
The head of the international creative association Son of the Sun and Maria Callas, Avtandil Danelia, said UNESCO has declared 2010 the year of Vakhtang Chabukiani. "There are good dancers, there are very good dancers and there is Vakhtang Chabukiani – everyone who saw him said that they saw a true miracle," Danelia said.
The participants in the gathering said Vakhtang Chabukiani was the beginning of the school of male ballet. Before him, the main figure in ballet was the prima ballerina, while the male dancer's function amounted to nothing more than supporting his partner. But Vakhtang Chabukiani’s dancing of Othello created a true revolution in ballet. In the middle of last century, the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theater was the real cultural center of Georgia and of the entire Caucasus. In many respects this was due to Vakhtang Chabukiani. The destiny of the great dancer can be considered to be the irony of fate and of the communist regime. In the mid-1970s, when the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theater burned down, the KGB of the Georgian SSR, having not found the guilty, almost accused Chabukiani himself, who was at that time the director of the theater.
For 2010, within of the bounds of the program "Chabukiani and his constellation," 32 activities have been planned. A fund, which with public money will erect a monument for Chabukiani, is being created. Moreover, it is being planned to publish a compilation of documents and archival materials, and with the assistance of the Tbilisi mayor's office there will soon be issued a commemorative medal and award named after the great Georgian dancer.
George Kalatozishvili in Tbilisi, exclusively for VC
