The article is dedicated to the great choreographer Nikolai Boyarchikov, who left this world in March 2020. With his departure, an entire epoch in the Russian choreographic art, which was consecrated by his name, came to an end. A unique choreographer, a unique personality, he embodied the most subtle spiritual movements of a person in the form of sharp dramatic collisions. Boyarchikov transformed the Perm ballet, the Maly Opera ballet, and performances. By muffling the sensuous beginning of the dance, it highlighted the intellectual nature of movement and plasticity. Boyarchikov, who studied under such giants as Lopukhov and Belsky and continued their line of succession. The article analyzes the creative path of the choreographer, as well as determines his leading place in the domestic choreographic art.

The importance of mythological and folk stories in the art culture cannot be overestimated – they “feed” the creativity of various authors and form the basis of numerous works in different arts. An important feature of the existence of such eternal stories in culture is their conformity to the era in which they are embodied. While preserving the main motives, the stories are transformed depending on the aesthetic, stylistic, philosophical and ideological features of a particular period. One example of such modifications is the story about Undine, implemented in many works of different eras and demonstrating compliance with the most important constants of time in each of them.

This article attempts to analyze the story about Undine and the peculiarities of its interpretation in the ballet of Hans Werner Henze and Frederick Ashton in the context of figurative and stylistic trends of the 19th– 20th centuries. The attention is paid to semantic accents in drama, the analysis of special expressive means by which the archetypal image of the sea maiden is embodied in the fabric of the ballet, and the comparison of ways of displaying it in the music of the romantic age and modern times. 

The article is a report on the current state of the digitalization and accessibility of materials of the N. G. Sergeyev collection at Harvard Library. The number of accessible units, what percentage they form of the total, the page count of the accessible units, and of the total, are given for the main body of the collection, (MS Thr 245), and for several categories of the materials, like choreographic notations, piano reductions, répétiteurs, orchestral scores. The dynamics of the process is determined and some worrying characteristics are noted. The factors preventing the ballet community from gaining information about the actual state and progress of the digitalization of the Collection are named.

In recent decades, the Russian Federation has been actively reviving and developing the Cossacks, as a special sub-ethnic group, with its own unique history, traditions and culture. Dance is an integral part of the Cossack culture, it has its own characteristics that are belong to different Cossack communities inhabiting various territories of our country. Over time, the traditional Cossack dances acquired life on the concert and theatrical stage, also the traditions of their professional performance were determined. The study of historically formed traditional dances of the Cossacks with the peculiarities of their stage forms, the allocation of their inherent choreographic vocabulary and the basic methods of performance are important for maintaining the dance culture of the Cossacks. The fertile material for the practical development of the article were dances, which are part of the modern repertoire of the largest Russian folk dance ensembles. The concert programs of these groups most fully reflect the diversity of the dance culture of the Russian Cossacks. Based on the data obtained, the characteristic features of the dances of several large Cossack communities are described.

The creative work of Frederick Ashton has a great significance for English ballet: he is the author of the national ballet repertoire, the style and the school. Moreover, he is a co-founder of the ballet company. Russian audience got acquainted with Ashton’s works less than ten years ago. Therefore, this phenomenon still hasn’t been theoretically comprehended. In the article the author proposes to discover featured English publications and makes a review of the Russian publications devoted to Frederick Ashton. The Geraldine Moris’ monograph “Frederick Ashton’s ballets: style, performance, choreography” is subjected to detailed analysis as the most relevant one, which is supposed to reflect the vision of a given topic by the industry leading experts. 

The article is dedicated to the history of pas de deux from the ballet Le Corsaire Act II. Marius Petipa is often called its author. However, from the programs of the Mariinsky Theatre and periodical publications, it was possible to find out that the prototype of this pas de deux (pas d’action, performed by three artists) first appeared in the St. Petersburg production on January 11, 1915. It was choreographed by Samuil Andrianov. From the season 1922– 1923, the authorship of this number for Medora, Konrad and the nameless slave was attributed to Alexander Chekrygin. Since the early 1930s, a duet version of his choreography appeared. When in 1941 the production of Le Corsaire fell out of the repertoire of the Kirov Theatre, the number began to be performed as a concert pas de deux.

The author of the article states that we still do not have a real documented history of ballet theatre in Russia of the 18th century, especially its first half. The genuine facts in the works on the early stages of our ballet theatre are substituted by make-believe stories borrowed by the authors mostly from the apocryphal “Chronicles of the Russian Theatre, Nosov” (1883). The article, using books on the history of the 18th century ballet theatre as an example, shows how the “infection” of various publications occurs with deliberately false information rewritten by the authors of subsequent generations. This vicious practice can only be curbed by the appearance of a documented “History of Ballet Theatre in Eighteenth Century Russia” which was significantly contributed by foreign choreographers and dancers. Therefore, to create it, the efforts of the international scientific community are required.

The article examines the works of Yu. Falik intended for the ballet scene or received a choreographic embodiment. Each of the three works is a concert for brass and percussion “Skomorohi”, a concert for the big symphony orchestra “Til Ulenschpigel”, choreographic tragedy “Orestey” discover features of several musical genres. Their interaction in the above-mentioned opuses, specific content, peculiarities of the composer style and creative intentions of choreographer G. Aleksidze, embodied the ideas of genre renewal characteristic of the Russian ballet of the 1960s. Falik’s works also continued one of the most important artistic trends of the 20th century – ballet’s desire for fusion with other musical genres and arts, and, as a result, the enrichment and complication of its drama design.

The article analyzes artistic practices of postmodernism from the perspective of the theory of generative art. The generative art interpreted as a generated structure with a high degree of autopoiesis acts as a mediator between scientific discourse and artistic culture. Generative structures in the understanding of the natural sciences and the humanities lead to the understanding of the body as an artistic media. Contemporary dance, problematizing the everyday practice of the body, becomes the medium of the philosophy of poststructuralism, which expresses the ideas of generative art. The theory of generative art allows us to consider contemporary dance as part of interdisciplinary research, turning into a joint discourse of choreographers and digital artists. 

The article is devoted to the movie “Queen of Spades” by P. Chardynin (1910). This film was shot on the basis of the libretto of the opera of the same name by P. I. Tchaikovsky. Film researchers traditionally have a low opinion of this film, seeing in it only a distortion of the idea of the story of A. S. Pushkin. The author in the article compares the development of the plot of the film and opera, compares the costumes and scenery used in these works, pays special attention to dances of interlude. The analysis of the film allows us to conclude that the film and opera are united not only by the libretto. This film became a kind of fixation of the production of the opera in the form in which it existed at the Moscow Bolshoi Theater at the beginning of the 20th century. At the end of the article, the author comes to the conclusion that the study of other similar films created on the basis of the opera libretto can provide new information on musical theater productions.

The purpose of the article is to study the history of electric lighting in the Imperial Mariinsky theatre. All stages of this process in the period from 1884 to 1917 are considered. Information is provided about the equipment and participants in the construction of both the electric lighting system and the steam-water heating system of the theater.

The author of this article analyses the four recent productions of the ballet “Giselle”at the Bolshoi theatre (1944, 1987, 1997 and 2019). They were produced by the outstanding choreographers Leonid Lavrovsky, Yury Grigorovich, Vladimir Vassiliev and Alexey Ratmansky. Each tried to renew this old ballet in his own way. Particular attention is paid to Ratmansky. Ratmansky has tried to return to the first libretto of this ballet — the one of 1841 — to restore or recompose the important lost fragments — the games, the fugue etc. In his work he used the choreographic notations of the 19th and the early 20th centuries (notes and graphic sketches by Henri Justamant, Pavel Gerdt, Nikolay Sergeyev, archive documents, iso-, photo- and video materials. Ratmansky’s analysis of “Giselle” is given in the context of his previous reconstructions (“Paquita”, “Swan Lake”, “Sleeping Beauty”).

The article is dealing with the current “quarantined” state of the sphere of art in general and the field of dance in particular. The greatest vulnerability is noted in the conditions of isolation of dance as a form of art that requires not only metaphysical, but also physical contact of performers. On the example of dance projects of the creative association called MAD Company, the basic principles of the art strategies of the “quarantine era” are analyzed. The conclusion is made about the uniqueness of the current situation, which has powerful potential - both in the field of technology development, primarily in the media, and in the axiosphere of the architectonics of modern culture. As relevant value orientations, “Humanism 2.0”, mindfulness and “New Sincerity” are considered.

The article analyzes the formation of musical cognitive science, the emergence of various algorithmic systems of musical composition, as well as the formalization of the composer process as a whole. The “Cognitive Revolution” that took place in the 1956–70s served as the basis for a radical change in the scientific paradigm formed as a result of the desire to explain thought processes through the “rules for the transformation of mental representations”. The axioms of cognitivism are predetermined by interdisciplinary factors, since the paradigms of thinking are universal. In the so-called cognitive musicology, the goal is to understand not only the music itself but also the process of its cognition.

This paper develops the statements set out in the author’s previous work (see Vaganova Ballet Academy Bulletin, 2020, no. 2). The concept of programness of lyric music is clarified; it is proved that the voice in music acts as a character. Programness is considered from the point of view of the situation in which the persona is located. Various means by which the program of a musical work can be implemented are analyzed, including: designation through genre; conventional signs; onomatopoeia; leitmotif and quotation; musical metaphor and metonymy.

The article tells about some aspects of the creative work of Serbian composerpercussionist Nebojsa Zivkovic. On the example of his work “Quintet for five soloist” innovatory methods of playing on the marimba used by composer are considered. The article gives a common point of view on the specific of creation music especially for percussions compared with the other composers. Historical view is also used in the paper. Methods of research include historical, analytic and comparative ones.

Using the parameters of cultural and theatrical analysis, the staging of P. Tchaikovsky’s opera “Iolanta”, performed by director A. Zholdak in the Mikhailovsky’s Theater (St. Petersburg) in the 2018-2019 season, is interpreted. Its conceptual ideological principles, aesthetic paradigms and peculiarities of narrative organization are defined. It is proved that the declared ideas of symbolism do not have their adequate realization in the stage narrative, which involves the presentation of two stories: Iolanta’s blindness and the insight as well as the story of P. Tchaikovsky’s creation of the eponymous opera. The double narrative leads to the complication of the characters’ system, the primary dramaturgy and the script restructuring. As a result, there is an artistically contradictory buildup that provokes a conflict of its interpretation both by the audience and by professional critics.

The article deals with the transformation of the timbre of classical guitar in the music of Russian composers. Based on the analysis of works for solo guitar and as part of an ensemble of composers of our country, examples of experiments with guitar timbre are identified. The transformation of the guitar sound used in the music of postwar avant-garde. The works of A. Volkonsky, E. Denisov, and I. Stravinsky are considered. It is established that the techniques of instrumental playing on the classical guitar are expanded due to non-traditional sound production. The use of non-musical sounds is the brightest of modern means of expression and becomes the next stage in the development of the guitar lexicon.

The article is a scientific review of the book “Salvatore Sciarrino and others...” of Lavrova. The author analyzes the main ideas of the monograph, and also assesses the validity of scientific conclusions. The main methods of analysis and the basis for combining the personalities of composers in the framework of the monograph are revealed. The conclusion of the article is that all four composers, whose work is in the analytical focus, are the followers of the ideas of composers of the Second Avant-garde Luciano Berio, Luigi Nono and Giacinto Schelsi.