3:00 pm | 2 hrs 20 mins | $12/$10 members/$6 children
Leap into the New Year on a comic high note with The Bolshoi Ballet in a gorgeously costumed H.D. film, direct from the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, of a live performance of The Golden Age, a light-hearted look at Soviet life in the 1920’s with an original score by Dmitri Shostakovich on Sunday, January 8, 3:00 pm at Rosendale Theatre, Rosendale, NY. Dance artists Nina Kaptsova, Ruslan Skvortsov, Mikhail Lobukhin, and Ekaterina Krysanova have the principal roles and the production is rounded out by the 120 strong corps of the Bolshoi Ballet. Running time is 140 minutes. Choreographed by Yuri Grigorovich, this The Golden Age made its premiere in 1982, with a plot that pits Communist youth against gangster elements in an unidentified Russian seaport in the 1920’s. The plot seems simple but there is a great deal of complexity – not the least of which is connected with the fact that the original 1930 ballet of the same title with a commissioned score by Dmitri Shostakovich was strongly criticized by Soviet authorities on both political and artistic grounds. Shostakovich incorporates ”Tea for Two” and Western social dance tunes for its cabaret scenes. ”The Golden Age” is a restaurant in where ballroom dancers entertain during the N.E.P. (New Economic Policy) era when private enterprise was temporarily reintroduced into the Soviet Union. This enables the new version’s authors to look back at history through a filtered perspective. Dance Film Sundays, a series which started in June 2010 under the auspices of the Rosendale Theatre Collective, are held on the 2nd Sunday of every month at Rosendale Theatre.