Russian Ballet Great To Team With Maine Maestro

It is always a magical moment. That is why it is repeated, why it is tradition.

We take our seat in the theater and await the curtain’s opening. It will reveal the spectacular: beautiful girls, strong men, jumps, turns, speed, romance, a story!

But there is a special moment before the ballet that begins with the sound of violins tuning, hushed suddenly when the Conductor makes his entrance. Applause signals respect for who he is, the awe we have for the artist. He bows to the audience, turns to face the orchestra, raises his baton, and with a flash of authority it comes down as a clap of thunder. The music fills the theater. We are off!

At the Waterville Opera House, May 9th and 10th, that baton will be wielded by Paul Ross, conducting the Augusta Symphony Orchestra, and the downstroke will usher in the famous “Water Music” that composer George Friedrich Handel used to serenade King George I of England on a barge floating ethereally down the Thames in 1717.

After the Handel comes the first of the three ballets: Andrei Bossov’s own choreography to the classic Prokofiev score, Peter and the Wolf. Andrei’s skill as a creator of ballet will be seen again in the final number.

But first, we are treated to the ballet solo, The Dying Swan, perhaps the most beautiful ballet solo of all time. ASO’s cellist and harpist combine to perform the haunting and sonorous melody composed in 1886 that inspired the ballet. Mikhail Fokine created it in 1905 for a young and yet-to-be-known ballerina, Anna Pavlova, in the same hallowed halls where Andrei trained in St. Petersburg. The solo would become Pavlova’s hallmark piece and she performed it all over the world. Andrei himself idealizes Fokine as “the greatest choreographer who ever lived”. Fokine was the innovator who revolutionized ballet, transforming it from dances of fairy tales to dances simply personifying beauty, and we will see his influence in the following number, an original that Andrei himself created and premiered in Russia in 1984, set to the music of Maurice Ravel.

This is Bolero, a ballet with an all-female cast of eight, portraying “The Inner World of the Woman”. It was among the first of Andrei’s original works to be performed in the U.S. The music, created in 1928, was groundbreaking, thoroughly original, the piece itself a long crescendo that builds from gentle subtlety to a churning rhythm and violent climax – an orchestral tour de force.

The music chosen features composers who were ahead of their time: innovators and pioneers. “We decided to begin by selecting our most dynamic and uplifting numbers that already existed in the repertoires of our two organizations” said Bossov Ballet Theatre’s Executive Director Michael Wyly. “We picked composers who started something.”

Jay Violette, longtime member of and spokesman for Augusta Symphony Orchestra is a friend and associate of both artistic directors, ASO’s Paul Ross and BBT’s Andrei Bossov. “Both men are masters at what they do. Why we did not think of putting them together years ago is the only question. This is something that needs to happen in Central Maine. We can’t wait to see and hear the result. Live music is meant to be a part of ballet. Technology has moved in where labor has priced itself out of the market – just as in industry, farming, and everything else. But technology can’t replace the excitement that comes with being in the presence of the artists, themselves.”

Maestro Ross, now in his fifth season as Conductor of the ASO, is also the cellist of the distinguished Portland String Quartet, currently artists-in-residence at LaSalle University after holding that same post many years at Colby College. The quartet has the unique honor of having celebrated its 39th anniversary with the same personnel, an unprecedented achievement.

As a choreographer Andrei established himself early in his 20-year career with Russia’s Kirov Ballet, earning the praise of his former Teacher, Vladimir Vasiliev, internationally renowned danseur and ultimately Artistic Director of Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet through the 1990’s, who said of Andrei in a 1992 letter: “Few choreographers in Russia have created more ballets, or works of greater quality.”

Performances will be at 7:00 PM on Friday and Saturday evenings, May 9th and 10th with a 2 o’clock matinee also on Saturday. Tickets are now on sale at the Waterville Opera House and may be obtained by calling 873-7000. They are priced at $15 for adults and only $5 for children 12 and under in the collaborative’s hopes that the youngest members of our community will develop an ear for the world’s finest music and dance.

Copyright Bossov Ballet 2007