For adults and children

At the end of October, the Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus presented the brightest premiere of autumn: The Little Humpbacked Horse ballet to music by Rodion Shchedrin

The chief choreographer of the Bolshoi Theatre, People’s Artist of Belarus Yuri Troyan, did not react at all like a child to the big premiere: the children’s play The Little Humpbacked Horse. The choreographer not only authored the libretto, rethinking the most famous work by Piotr Yershov, but also treated the musical material carefully. Moreover, preserving the fairy-tale plot, Troyan simultaneously made it completely different: both modern and eternal, and dashing in a ballet manner. This means that the theatre managed to create a performance that will appeal to both children and adults.

A fairy-tale for big and small

An interesting fact: the Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus has taken up the famous fairy-tale with its considerable educational potential for the first time. Although the stage directors could have had their fantasy much earlier because the ballet was inspired by ... Belarus. It is known that the composer Rodion Shchedrin wrote the music for The Little Humpbacked Horse after a trip to the Belarusian wilderness back in late 1950s. There, in nature, far from civilisation, he listened to folk songs, which later acquired new musical meanings in his ballet. Shchedrin himself, thanks to The Little Humpbacked Horse, found his Tsar Maiden: the composer’s acquaintance with Maya Plisetskaya (a young, but by that time already well-known ballerina) took place at the very first rehearsals of the play. Shchedrin later dedicated the score to her.
Over the years, the music has successfully stood the test of time, without losing its enthusiasm and relevance.
There is no point in retelling the plot of Yershov’s fairy-tale as everyone knows it well. In the ballet version, each viewer, as conceived by the directors, will see something of their own: adults will see a story not devoid of topicality while children will see wonderful transformations and a colourful picture.
In addition, especially for the new premiere, costume designer Yekaterina Bulgakova created three hundred (!) sketches. She tried to penetrate into the world of fairy-tales by studying dozens of paintings: from the works of the most famous Russian illustrator Ivan Bilibin to our own Leon Bakst. According to Yekaterina, two worlds coexist in the play: the world of people and fairy-tale creatures, which in the end will help the main characters find their happiness. Therefore, all the fairy-tale characters are invented as only a child can imagine them: in funny outfits, bright as a child’s colouring.
The scenography equals the costume in scale. The scenery in the play is like one big construction. A team of specialists headed by artist Lyubov Sidelnikova is responsible for the dashing grace and wonderful transformations on the stage, “First of all, I was inspired by the music of Rodion Shchedrin. It was necessary to find harmony so that the design of the performance would be combined with the music. Therefore, I tried to create not only folk history. I was looking for some motives in Russian Art Nouveau, drawing ideas from Vrubel’s majolica.”


The author of the libretto, choreographer-director of the play, Yuri Troyan, meanwhile, draws attention to the fact that The Little Humpbacked Horse surprises the audience with its imagery and multi-layered meanings, “At the same time, the main thing for us is to preserve the peace, atmosphere, and spirit of the Russian folk tale. I’ll tell you a secret: the whole story will start from ... the stove. In a Russian fairy-tale, this is perhaps one of the most important symbols, behind which many signs and meanings are hidden.”

Maidens and beauties

The best ballet forces of the theatre joined the exciting adventures of Ivan and his Little Humpbacked Horse with pleasure (and it can be seen!). People’s Artiste of Belarus, prima ballerina Irina Yeromkina (who appears in the title role of the Tsar Maiden in one of the casts) does not hide her feelings, “The repertoire has long lacked such a bright and light ballet, on which not only the audience, but also we, the artists, have a rest with our souls. The play boasts humour and riddles. There is science for adults as well — as in any fairy-tale.”


Another performer of the role of the Tsar Maiden, Honoured Artiste of Belarus Lyudmila Khitrova, already calls The Little Humpbacked Horse a great personal, creative and theatrical success, “The performance turned out to be truly fabulous, magical. And this is what we all sometimes lack so much in life. And it also seems to me that for the first acquaintance of children with such a serious genre as ballet, there is no better production. The plot is as close as possible to the original source, small viewers will easily understand it.”
A long and happy life on stage is predicted for the fresh premiere at the Bolshoi.
And if you add to this the wonderful training of the Belarusian ballet and the skill and inspiration of the soloists, you get that beauty and celebration that the audience applauded in the last October days.

By Yuliana Leonovich
Photos by Aleksey Stolyarov, bolshoibelarus.by