Talk: “Famous Russians on pointe shoes: adapting classics for ballet and opera” by Ilya Demutsky

• Talk

• Event Date: Friday, February 15, 2019
• Time: 4:00 pm (CST)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

Part of the Lorado Taft Lectureship on Art/College of Fine and Applied Arts

During this public masterclass-lecture, Demutsky will describe the process of creating ballets based on famous Russians, fictional and real, such as Optimistic Tragedy (for San Francisco Ballet), Hero of Our Times (Bolshoi, Moscow), Nureyev (Bolshoi, Moscow, 2017), and Anna Karenina (Joffrey, Chicago, 2019), opera Black Square, (University of Illinois, 2017, Tretyakov’s Gallery, Moscow, 2018).

This lecture will be presented in conjunction with the opening of Demutsky’s full-length ballet Anna Karenina at Joffrey Ballet in Chicago on February 13, 2019. Anna Karenina, a joint production between the Joffrey Ballet and the Australian Ballet, is momentous on many levels—from the scale of the production to the interpretation of Leo Tolstoy’s seminal work of fiction.

Ilya Demutsky's body of work includes more than 150 compositions for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensemble, piano, and voice, as well as electronic and film music. Demutsky’s music for the full-length ballet, A Hero of Our Time, at the legendary Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow has won him the most coveted Russian theatre award, the Golden Mask. The much anticipated full length ballet Nureyev at Bolshoi in December 2017 won four Prix Benois 2018 awards, including the best composer work in ballet. For his score of the Cannes Festival Award-winning film The Student directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, Ilya Demutsky won the title of “European Composer of 2016” bestowed by the European Film Academy.

Demutsky has strong ties to the University of Illinois community. The first act of his new opera Black Square was workshopped at Lyric Theatre @ Illinois, cosponsored by REEEC, and opened on December 13, 2017. It later had its world premiere at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery in November 2018, alongside the original eponymous painting by Kazimir Malevich as a part of the set.

This event is sponsored by the Lorado Taft Lectureship on Art/College of Fine and Applied Arts, Lyric Theatre @ Illinois, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (REEEC).