Moscow Festival Ballet – connecting the nations through the arts

One of the most reputable colleges in the Chicago area, North Central College, performs not only an educational role in our community, but also helps citizens grow culturally. Fine and Performing Arts department keeps bringing more and more musicians, performers and dancers to Naperville from all over the world and provides high level leisure to its residents. This time, Moscow Festival Ballet pleased the audience with an excellent performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Cinderella which took place at Pfeiffer Hall on Friday, May 2.

I am familiar with the music of Sergei Prokofiev and particularly with some parts of Cinderella; however, I never saw this ballet performed live. Ironically, I had to come all the way from Russia to America to see this ballet that is produced by a Russian composer and performed by Russian dancers. For many years Russian ballet was considered to be the best in the world; this time, Moscow Festival Ballet proved it again.

It was their first visit to Naperville. The auditorium was full and I could see and feel that the audience enjoyed and appreciated the performance. During the intermission I spoke with a few people who drove to Naperville for an hour or even longer to see famous Russian ballet dancers. Doesn’t it show that we all are one big international family that loves and appreciates ballet, music and art in general? Art in any form doesn’t have borders and unites people in spite of anything.

The most interesting thing about ballet is that the ballet dancers don’t talk and express their emotions and feelings nonverbally using the elegant language of dance. The Moscow Festival Ballet performers sharpened their skills to a high level of professionalism and mastership.

They are adaptable to any stage and give perfect performances independently from conditions and the size of the stage. The audience at the Pfeiffer Hall didn’t even realize that the stage was not the easiest one; it was a little bit too small. However, the performance was still excellent and the dancers did their job really well. This is called professionalism.

This ballet company was founded in 1989 by legendary ballet dancer Sergei Radchenko. Radchenko was a leading ballet dancer of Bolshoi Ballet and danced with another world-known ballet dancer Maya Plisetskaya. They performed together in "Carmen Suite", Rodion Shchedrin's ballet based on George Bizet's operatic music.

By creating Moscow Festival Ballet, Radchenko combined “the highest classical elements of the great Bolshoi and Kirov Ballet companies in an independent new company within the framework of Russian classic ballet”. He put all his knowledge, soul and experience in this company and hired the most brilliant ballet dancers.

Since then, Moscow Festival Ballet has shared the rich traditions of the Russian classical ballet school with the ballet lovers of many countries such as Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Turkey, Greece, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong.

This time, the company is touring in the United States. It’s not their first visit to this country. The first tour took place in 1997 and since then it became a good tradition. During these years, these talented dancers have performed in many American towns and were always greeted with great respect and appreciation. This particular four-month tour started in January and is almost over.

The performance of the Moscow Festival Ballet in Naperville showed again that ballet is a great art where the language of music and the language of dance merge into a beautiful and unique combination. It doesn’t need words. Elegance, spirit, mastership and passion which are part of any ballet company and especially of the legendary ballet performers from Russia speak for themselves.

This time, as many times before, international language of dance and music united people together and successfully demonstrated that ballet is the highest form of art that doesn’t know borders. I left this performance with peace and appeasement in my heart and will keep the sounds of this music and the scenes from this performance in my soul forever.

Natalia Dagenhart Copyright