Ekaterina Krysanova, Semyon Chudin, Maria Alexandrova and Vladislav Lantratov of the Bolshoi Ballet with students of London Russian Ballet School present Romantic Revolution at the London Palladium on 18th September 2017.
700 children from Lambeth, Brent, South West and West London who have never visited a theatre to see ballet will join the audience at the London Palladium for free while leading Bolshoi principals will present a programme including Don Quixote with LRBS students. A new work will be premièred which has been specially created for Alexandrova and Lantratov.
LRBS, based in Clapham, is a vocational school and charity which teaches ballet to and educates young people from widely diverse backgrounds. Its Artistic Director, Evgeny Goremykin, danced with the Bolshoi Ballet for over twenty years and founded the school on the principles of his own ballet education. Students train with former artists of the great theatres and ballet schools of Russia, where tradition and knowledge are passed from one generation to the next.
LRBS regularly performs for more than 3,000 children each year in local underprivileged schools accompanied by young musicians in their school halls.
Dame Gillian Lynne said, "the London Russian Ballet School is an inspirational, tough and practical ballet school. It is extremely good and inspired by the addition of the Bolshoi's impeccable standards. Russian ballet training has always been extremely effective and important and these children are very lucky to be able to be part of the beautiful art that ballet incorporates and also to have the chance to develop, lead and inspire the talent within their souls.
"I am in a unique position to talk about Russian Ballet training given that I was lucky enough to work with Vera Volkova during the war who also trained Margot Fonteyn. Dance has no barriers, it is a universal and powerful art which will always endure and should be accessible to all.
"This year, over 700 children have been invited to the London Palladium in September to see the LRBS pupils perform with leading principal artists from the Bolshoi Ballet, something they would otherwise never have been able to do. It will give them a chance to experience the extreme discipline of this teaching which will lead to their enjoyment of the beauty of ballet and the enriching of their souls which this kind of training will produce."