On November 6 and 7, the “Astana Ballet” Theater will hold the premiere of the one-act ballet Zheltorangy turaly anyz (The Legend of Turangy) staged by Kazakhstani choreographer Anvara Sadykova. This ballet raises one of the topics of current interest - the invasion of the human world into the natural world, which has dire consequences: from pollution of the biosphere and destruction of natural ecosystems to climate change and global pandemics.
“As we can see, now this topic is more relevant than ever. Our strive is to find harmony between nature and people. The very image of a turanga with a strong root system speaks of its resilience and power, allowing it to withstand adversity. These qualities are inherent in our people as well: having experienced many difficulties in due time, they become stronger and continue to move forward,” says choreographer Anvara Sadykova.
The libretto for the ballet was written by the famous Kazakh poet Bakhyt Kairbekov. Each picture of the play has a philosophical content, and the images are filled with inner comprehension and outer beauty.
“Music pushed me to the idea of creating a ballet: the inspiration was Kuat Shildebayev's wonderful work Turanga's Sadness. The composer's musical works carry a certain thought and idea, it evokes different emotions. There is sadness, pain, longing in it, but at the same time, it has that light to which we must strive ... We tried to find a certain plastic language of each image, reflecting the depth of sound of Kazakh musical instruments, such as kobyz, the sounds of which are carried through steppe with a breath of wind,” Anvara Sadykova noted.
According to the choreographer, the choreographic text of the ballet is based on classical dance in combination with the richest vocabulary of Kazakh dance. An important component is the manner and style of the national choreography in the transmission of different images of the ballet performance.
“Anvara's choreographic works are distinguished by their modern form, modern sounding of the national Kazakh choreography. The ideas that she takes for herself are very human, so they touch both the viewer and the dancers. On rehearsals, Anvara is a sensitive and attentive person, I would say that she is open to co-creation with artists,” said the leading soloist Dilara Shomayeva.
In the successful perception of ballet, the artistic design of the performance is also of great importance: decorations, costumes, light - all this is created by the masters of the “Astana Ballet” Theater. According to costume designer Natalya Protasova, when creating costumes, she turned to real natural images, adapting images of trees or birds living in turangy groves into ballet costumes.
“A person thinks that everything is permissible for him, but it is not so. And to clearly show this conflict and contrast between the two worlds, I dressed the woodcutters in modern clothes: jeans, T-shirts, boots. Against the background of nature, their images turned out to be rough, like those of real invaders,” noted Natalya Protasova.
The scenery for the performance was designed by Zhandos Omarov: “The majority of the performance design is soft decoration. With her help, we recreated a real turangy grove in late autumn. Each leaf, and there are more than thirty thousand of them, we created from a special fabric, which was soaked in textile paint, boiled, dried and from there we manually cut out what was needed. All this is done to make the scenery three-dimensional and lively. "
One of the tasks that was set before the collective of the Astana Ballet Theater during its creation was to popularize national choreography and create new national ballets. And the theater successfully copes with this: in its repertoire there are three national ballets, the program "Heritage of the Great Steppe", and on November 6 and 7, the public will present a new ballet "Zheltorangy turaly anyz".
The beginning of the performances: November 6, 19:30. November 7 at 18:00.
The premiere will take place with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan.