State Ballet of Georgia Warms Up for Tbilisi Ballet Festival
The second annual Tbilisi Ballet Festival is scheduled to begin on June 23. It will include a series of performances by the State Ballet of Georgia and international dancers, and will close on July 1 with a gala performance.
From the Hague, Nederlands Dans Theater 2 (NDT 2) will be participating in the festival for the second year in a row. NDT 2 is a company comprised of dancers between the ages of 17 and 23, created in 1978 to support the Nederlands Dans Theater 1 by preparing young talent. The company is known for its creative performances and introducing work by young choreographers. At the 2018 Tbilisi Ballet Festival, NDT 2 will bring to life choreography by renowned artists Sol Leon, Paul Lightfoot, Marco Goecke and Hans van Manen in the ballets Sad Case, Subtle Dust, Wir sagen uns Dunkles, Midnight Raga, and Short Cut.
A new addition to the festival is SpellBound Contemporary Ballet from Rome, Italy, who will perform Formami and Rossini Ouvertures choreographed by company founder and artistic director Mauro Astolfi. SpellBound is known for its extravagant movement work, pushing the dancers’ bodies to the very limits of the motions they can express.
The festival will be rounded out by Tbilisi’s own State Ballet of Georgia, opening the festival with the premiere of Orawa and a performance of Petite Ceeremonie, both choreographed by Medhi Walerski, formerly of NDT. Georgia’s most famous ballet dancer and one of the greatest ballerinas of all time, the international superstar Nina Ananiashvili, will make a rare appearance dancing the lead in Romeo and Juliet alongside Marcelo Gomes with the State Ballet troupe. The State Ballet will also close the festival, with a gala performance of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty.
The soloists for the festival will be Nutsa Chekurashvili, Nino Samadashvili, Ekaterine Surmava, and Ruika Yokoyama of The Ballet Company of the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theater, Amandine Albisson and Jeremy-loup Quer of the Paris Opera, and Marcelo Gomes, formerly of the American Ballet Theater.
All performances of the festival will be hosted by the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet State Theater.
The Tbilisi Ballet Festival began last year as an initiative by Ananiashvili, the State Ballet’s artistic director, to bring select foreign dance companies and international soloists to Georgia while also showcasing some of the State Ballet of Georgia’s most engaging work of the year.
Click here for the detailed program of the Festival.
By Samantha Guthrie
Photo: State Ballet of Georgia
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