Prerequisites for the Further Development of a New Type of Theatrical Art - Ballet.
When the Kyrgyz professional theater was born, there was no question for it — to accept or not to accept realism. From the very beginning of the formation of the Kyrgyz theater, a fruitful line of realism developed within it. Its main features— the depiction of life in its constant movement, folk character and partisanship, patriotism and humanism, national specificity — became fundamental both for the birth of national performances and for the embodiment of works of Soviet dramaturgy, Russian and world classics on the Kyrgyz stage.
Thanks to productions in Kyrgyz dramatic, opera, and ballet theaters of works of Soviet dramaturgy, Russian and world classics, the successes that characterize the overall state of contemporary professional Kyrgyz art became possible.
This fully applies to the Kyrgyz ballet theater. Already after the production of "Anar," to consolidate and further develop the realistic principles on which the first Kyrgyz ballet was born, the theater staged "Coppélia," "Laurencia," and "The Magic Flute." The appeal to these ballets was driven not just by the need to stage another premiere. For the young theater, there was a necessity for rapid mastery of professional skills. In this sense, the ballets that the Kyrgyz theater turned to represented a school for training future professional artists. In these performances, there were individual successfully solved parts, but overall they did not possess particular merits.
Between the production of "The Magic Flute" and the next performance — "Raymonda" by A. Glazunov (1947) — four years passed. At first glance, it seems that during those years the theater weakened its work on forming the ballet repertoire. But this was far from the case. During this period, all students of the Leningrad Choreographic School, who returned due to the war to Frunze (while continuing their studies at the Frunze School), worked in the theater's collective. Performing in the then still few ballet and opera performances, young artists of the Kyrgyz ballet created the prerequisites for the further development of a new type of theatrical art, which at that time was ballet.
In "Raymonda," the audience truly felt the growing professionalism of the young artists for the first time.
The ballet by A. K. Glazunov has a rich stage history. However, the mystical plot of the old libretto (by L. Pashkova and M. Petipa) could not satisfy the modern viewer. A new version was created by the choreographers of the Kyrgyz ballet theater V. Kozlov and conductor V. Chernov. First of all, they changed the plot framework. In the old libretto, the Arab leader Abderakhman tries to seize Raymonda, who has captivated his imagination, by force. In the new version, Abderakhman is endowed with nobility, and this wins the girl's heart, while her fiancé, the Hungarian knight Stefan, is depicted as treacherous, heartless, and cruel.
The authors of the libretto sharpened the characteristics of the heroes and eliminated redundancies. This, of course, had a beneficial effect on the performance of the Kyrgyz theater. However, "Raymonda" is a classical ballet with many difficult variations that require refined technique. Taking on its realization, director V. Kozlov decided to prepare the ballet troupe for mastering the classical style, for which Glazunov's ballet represented a grateful material. And it must be said that the ballet company successfully coped with this task.
Mastery of complex forms of classical dance was particularly vividly manifested in such scenes of the performance as Raymonda's variations, the grand adagio of Raymonda and Stefan, the fantastic waltz, and the adagio of Raymonda and Abderakhman.
A significant place in the performance was occupied not only by classical but also by genre, domestic, and character dances, among which the czardas, the girls' and pages' romanesque, and the Saracen dance (the latter was especially impressive when performed by K. Mademilova, S. Masyutova, and III. Gafarov) were particularly successful.
However, despite all the positive qualities of the performance, it could not yet be called perfect. The high level characterized individual scenes and dances, but not the entire performance. Moreover, the "absence of a core active dance from the first to the last act created a divertissement in the ballet, and individual numbers were mechanically connected to each other."
Nevertheless, if we evaluate the production of the ballet "Raymonda" from the perspective of experience accumulation, it "played a significant role in the development of classical principles of the Kyrgyz ballet troupe." It should be added that considerable efforts were required to work on the corps de ballet technique — this was necessary to smooth out the contrast between the performance skills of solo and mass dances. And it can be said that each new production strengthened the creative positions of the corps de ballet.
Dance - as an Organic Component of Kyrgyz Opera