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"A Hero of Our Time" proved to be an unquestionable success for Yuri Possokhov (choreography), Kirill Serebrennikov (director and designer), Ilya Demutsky (music), and, of course for all the Bolshoi cast. The ballet combines tradition and innovation, and thus connects with modern audiences. It was a wonderful performance yesterday evening and it will be another one today!

The World Premiere of "A Hero of Our Time" that took place at the Bolshoi last summer brought the house down. It was an extremely successful end of the 239th season for the great Russian ballet company.

An innovative ballet adaptation of Mikhail Lermontov’s 1840 novel has staged 3 stories in the book — Bela, Taman, and Princess Mary. The role of Pechorin, the so-called superfluous man and one of the great Byronic characters in Russian literature, was shared between three different dancers: Igor Tsvirko, Artem Ovcharenko and Ruslan Skvortsov at the premiere of July 22, 2015 and two more Pechorins of Mikhail Lobukhin and Denis Rodkin joined this week. Artem danced his part with another Bolshoi principal, Ekaterina Shipulina in the most mistic and romantic story — Taman, which combined a very organic collaboration between a choreographer, Yuri Possokhov, a theater director, Kirill Serebrennikov, and a young composer, Ilya Demutsky.

Yuri Possokhov: "Our version is in line with the book. For me, it is a timeless story and Pechorin is a character that is popular in any time. He is an unconventional man, very smart, very sophisticated but at the same time he has his negative sides too. There is a huge gap between him and everybody else. Pechorin despises society but as a result society sees him as an out-of-the-ordinary man, women fall in love with him, men admire him. Something that is negative is always liked more than the positive. In my understanding, this is what the hero of our time is."

Photo © 2015 Ekaterina Vladimirova — Ekaterina Shipulina as Undine and Artem Ovcharenko as Pechorin in dress rehearsal, July 19, 2015.
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debut A Hero of Our Time