As a part of the Art in the Quadrat project, Krasnoyarsk citizens will see the Dmitri Shostakovich’s music ballet Leningrad Symphony for the first time. The premiere will take place on November 20 within the programme of the Modern Choreography Nights.

The ballet is based on the first part of the Seventh Symphony by Shostakovich - the famous work that was performed in the besieged Leningrad on August 9, 1942. It became a symbol of the Soviet people’s heroic resistance to the invasion of the Nazi army. The ballet’s production director, the Artistic Director of the Opera House Sergei Bobrov wrote the libretto under the influence of The Cursed and the Slain novel by Victor Astafiev: no one else described the horror and pain of the war as vividly and dramatically as Viktor Petrovich did.

According to the director’s conception, musicians gather in an orchestra pit raised to the level of the auditorium before the performance starts.  Like their predecessors in Leningrad - the Leningrad Radio Orchestra - they are dressed in different ways: some wear military uniform, some wear suits and ties. On an empty stage, the conductor in a tailcoat with a bow-tie turns on a siren - this is a signal to begin the action. A wave of the wand - and spectators hear radio hiss. The sounds of the symphony are gradually breaking through it. People are dancing - this is how the Peaceful Life piece starts right before the invasion. But suddenly the gentle lapse of life is disturbed: spectators hear a Stalin’s speech, and the battle begins...

The contemporary choreography of the Leningrad Symphony ballet was created by the principal dancers of the Krasnoyarsk theatre’s ballet company Olesya Aldonina, Natalia Bobrova, Demid Zykov.

Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem will be added to Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony as a symbol of deep sadness for the dead. There are no bright colours in this world of sorrow: the St. Petersburg artist Varvara Timofeyeva created the black and white design of the Leningrad Symphony in Krasnoyarsk. Yet despite all the tragedy of what is happening on the stage, the core component of the show is the soul of the people who won the war.