SOVIET POP BALLET

THE Bolshoi and Tchaikovsky theaters are only a stout walk from each other in Moscow, but at first glance their respective products seem to be versts apart. The Bolshoi's stage glitters with the familiar, stylized formulations of the classic ballet; the Tchaikovsky's shivers to the explosive hop-stomp-and-run of the folk dance. Most Westerners have glimpsed some reflections of the Russian classical style; 'few have sampled the exuberant dance language of Russia's full folklore. Next week the U.S. will get its first good look at that language when the Moiseyev Dance Company, first major Soviet dance group ever to appear in the U.S., arrives at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House to start a ten-week tour.

The group, created by Choreographer Igor Moiseyev, 52, onetime soloist and ballet master at the Bolshoi, is only partially concerned with true folk dancing. In the company's history of 160 works are a generous sprinkling of what Moiseyev calls "popular ballets"--works that express contemporary themes in the casual movements of everyday life, a fusion reminiscent of the effect U.S. Choreographer Jerome Robbins achieves in such works as Fancy Free. Even in the straight folk dances Choreographer Moiseyev prunes and shapes his material to gain dramatic continuity and a clearly defined dance line. Says he: "We do not merely photograph. We try to reveal and enrich." He often starts with a folk melody, watches the company improvise while the orchestra plays it, then works out a finished dance movement and has a fully orchestrated score fitted to it. To prepare themselves for their hybrid dance styles, the go members of the company train in a special department of the Bolshoi School of Ballet.

The breezy, peasant-sturdy Moiseyev Dancers will perform at least a dozen works in the U.S. (see color pages). Most of them are characterized by parade-drilled precision in the mass movements and a kind of frenzied kinetic attack that fills the air with flying forms and blurs the stage with color. The group's most popular number is a satire on Russia's favorite sport, entitled Soccer; in a dazzling mixture of mime, dance and spring-legged acrobatics, the work defines the brawling progress of a match, from the opening whistle to a spectacular save at the goal.

Also in the tour repertory: The Partisans, an episode in the lives of a group of World War II guerrilla fighters, in which the black-clad dancers move in startling imitation of galloping horsemen to the music of a Georgian Lezghinka; Spring Dances from the Ukrainian Suite, which opens with a slow, weaving dance evocation of the melancholy a Ukrainian girl feels when her lover leaves for the front, ends with a bravura blaze of tremendous Gopak leaps as the lover returns triumphant to the village. In contrast with scenes more or less mirroring Soviet life, there are evocations of the past such as Khorumi, a heroic dance on themes of war and the hunt, performed in Georgia in the 12th century.

All told, the Moiseyev Dancers will visit eleven cities across the U.S. and Canada. If their experience in London and Paris is any indication, their Russian hoedowns will please the crowds, whet their appetite for the Bolshoi, which is scheduled to arrive in the U.S. in spring 1959.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.