A Modern Spectator’s Laboratory: Perm’s residents taken on a fascinating tour of the world of Russian ballet

25 july 2023

As part of its final premiere of the 2022-2023 season featuring Alexander Glazunov's ballet Raymonda, Perm’s Opera and Ballet Theater held yet another session of its Modern Spectator's Laboratory. The lab’s participants were introduced to the secrets of the profession of a costume designer and some of the unique traits of Russian ballet music. The educational Modern Spectator’s Lab project is being implemented within the framework of SIBUR's Formula for Good Deeds social investment program.

On July 12, Perm’s viewers were introduced to the canonic version of the Glazunov-Petipa ballet, put on stage in 2011 at Milan’s La Scala by a St. Petersburg choreographer Sergei Vikharev. On July 15, Bogdan Korolek, Assistant Head of the Ural Opera’s ballet company, gave a lecture on how, by the 1890s, thanks to the prodding from Pyotr Tchaikovsky, ballet had become the most important art form for many Russian composers, and how, following Tchaikovsky's demise, Raymonda’s Alexander Glazunov, emerged as the ballet music "ambassador". Costume designer Tatiana Noginova, a many-time winner of the Golden Mask award, talked to her audiences about some of the challenges she had to deal with with being a part of the ballet realm and presented her unique collection of costumes designed specifically for the ballet’s premiere.

Bogdan Korolek, a lecturer at the Modern Spectator’s Laboratory:

Our colleagues at the Perm Opera Theater do an important and challenging job of enveloping every premiere in a cloud of various ideas and meanings. Over the years, these clouds have helped produce a new kind of audience that is a complex and truth-seeking audience, no longer ready to accept simple answers, exactly the very modern spectators as if taken from the title of The Laboratory. It is mostly thanks to this kind of audience that the Perm Theater has become capable of putting out such daring and challenging productions. Granted, the Laboratory’s broadcasts and recordings are much more than simple add-ons to premieres as they are gradually morphing into some kind of opera and ballet university.

The 1898 Raymonda ballet has been hailed as one of the seminal pieces of classical ballet of the 19th century. This production, put on stage to music written by the then 33-year-old Alexander Glazunov, is widely considered the unsurpassed achievement of Marius Petipa's choreography. The release of the new version of the classic show marks the 125th anniversary of the ballet's world premiere and Perm’s 300th anniversary. The Modern Spectator's Laboratory project helps expose a lot of what is hidden in a particular work of art to assist the audience in appreciating the entirety of its context and aesthetics.

Tatiana Demakova, spectator:

This was the first time I attended a lecture by Bogdan Korolek. I had expected it to last an hour, or an hour and a half at most. But then I realized that I was prepared to keep listening to him even longer than for two hours. I was pleasantly surprised by the huge number of attendees. Bogdan Korolek is a one-of-a-kind storyteller. It was very educational, very interesting, he is really knowledgeable about this topic and has this amazing ability to share his knowledge with the listeners lovingly! I will be looking forward to more interesting lectures from the Laboratory.

Tatiana Litvinova, spectator:

Many thanks to my favorite Perm Opera and Ballet Theater for such a unique new project as the Modern Spectator's Laboratory. For us, ballet aficionados, this imbues each work of art with more profound and more interesting truths and meanings!

Critics are noting that the addition of Raymonda to the theater’s repertoire is a testimony to the company's lofty goals and aspirations. The show seems to be ushering in an era of plot-free ballets where dance and music become one and come to the forefront.