ALEXANDER BOGATYROV (Александр Богатырёв) – Unknown variation

[Marcial_Fernandez]

Almost all variations, male and female, in the ballet classical repertoire are known to me, but this particular one, although the music sounds familiar, is evading me.
It is danced by the famous Alexander Bogatyrov at the First International Competition in Moscow, 1969. He was 20 years old and won a bronze medal. 
Does anyone recognize this variation... What ballet is from, who is the composer and the choreographer?
I tried several music recognition Apps but each one of them failed to identify it because of the intrusive voice of the narrator almost all over the variation, who only speaks of the dancer but makes no mention of what he is dancing. Your help on this issue will be much appreciated. 

I just posted the video clip on YouTube. This is the link:
 

 

[LinMM]

Intriguing! I seem to recognise the choreography more than the music 🤔

Otherwise it could come from a Russian Ballet which is rarely seen outside of Russia. 

[Amelia]

Oh, of blessed memory, danseur noble Alexander Bogatyrev who left us so early.

This was a variation from “Paquita" by the choreographer Leonid Lavrovsky. Music was written by the Italian composer Riccardo Drigo for Nikolai Legat in the ballet “The Stream”.  In the XX century Lavrovsky included it in “Paquita".

This information came from a most reliable source.

Edited December 8, 2022 by Amelia
Added the first line.

[Marcial_Fernandez]

Amelia, your information is most valuable to me. You have no idea how much time I had spent trying to identify this music, but all my efforts have been in vain. 
Does this variation still exist in "Paquita"? I have the full length ballet by the Paris Opera, which includes the famous Divertimento, and we all have (YouTube) this Divertimento that was added by Minkus when the ballet was brought from Paris to Russia. So I am assuming that the variation was included by Lavrovsky (1905-1967) in the Divertimento and then removed at a later date. And yes, it's a pitty that the great Bogatyrov (Александр Богатырёв) dies when he was only 40.

Do you know if a recorded (music or video) of this variation can be found anywhere? I would love to have it.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

[Sim]

One of the many reasons I love this forum...no matter what question one may have, 99% of the time there is someone who can answer it.  I learn so much from reading here.  Thanks to all!

[Marcial_Fernandez]

Sim, you are absolutely correct. This is only my second day in this forum, but from what I have seen in 48 hours or so, what you can find in here, you cannot find it anywhere else. That's a fact.

 

[Marcial_Fernandez]

Can anyone reading this post help me find an audio recording of this variation identified by Amelia 4 replies above, please?

[Marcial_Fernandez]

This is what I am looking for, an audio recording based on the information provided by Amelia:

"This was a variation from “Paquita" by the choreographer Leonid Lavrovsky. Music was written by the Italian composer Riccardo Drigo for Nikolai Legat in the ballet “The Stream”.  In the XX century Lavrovsky included it in “Paquita".·

Edited December 8, 2022 by Marcial_Fernandez

[Vendimia]

Hi! Un-lurking myself just to help a bit here. Probably someone more knowledgeable than me will have a good version of this music and variation, but I think you can find it by searching "Vaganova School 2008 The Stream" on YouTube - it's the male variation. 

[Sim]

Welcome to the forum Marcial and Vendimia! 

 

[Marcial_Fernandez]

Sim, thank you for your message. I have been in the ballet world for 60 years now! This is a great forum.

 

[Amelia]

The link below is for the exсerpts from Grand pas classique in “Paquita" restored at Bolshoi by the choreographer Yuri Burlaka and recorded in 2010. In Russia, the male dancers, like ballerinas, often choose a variation themselves, so different dancers do different versions.

Nikolai Tsiskaridze chose Lavrovsky’s version for his main variation!

Angelina Vorontsova was dancing Mary’s variation from P.L.Hertel’s “Trilby” with choreography by Marius Petipa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xMG9d9LaA8

 

 

 

[Marcial_Fernandez]

Amelia, it is so amazing what you have showed me. Your knowledge is extraordinary, particularly all those details that are unknown to the general ballet audience. I have been a ballet lover and researcher for several decades, but this is something that was out of my world. The first time I paid attention to that variation was when Bogatyrov danced it in the Moscow Competition in 1969. I never thought of it again until now, when a friend brought it again, but neither of us could identify the composer or the choreographer. I have sent emails to the Bolshoi Ballet and to the Moscow International Ballet Competition. In each case I addressed my emails to the "Info"and to the "Press" but no one responded. I even provided them with the same clip I brought to this forum. Total silence, that's what I got from Russia. Either they don't know about it, which I doubt, or they have no time for this type of questions.

So do you know what happened to the original ballet "The Stream" by Riccardo Drigo? I guess it didn't survive, with the exception of that variation. Nor did I find any reference in the Drigo's catalogue or any other source.

Thanks a million for sharing your knowledge with me (with us). 

[Amelia]

Marcial, my knowledge is not extraordinary at all. I personally knew only something about it, so additionally I conferred with a person whom I called 'a most reliable source'.
To answer your new question about “The Stream” I am now looking into the excellent book “Russian Ballet Encyclopaedia” published in Russian in Moscow in 1997. 
“The Stream" originated in 1866 as “La Source” in Opera de Paris with music by Léo Delibes and Ludwig Minkus and choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon. 
Saint-Léon’s version was adapted and presented at Mariinsky by Achille Coppini in 1902. Conductor: Riccardo Drigo. Dancers: Olga Preobrajenskaya, Yulia Sedova, Anna Pavlova, Maria Petipa, Nikolai Legat.
In 1925, this ballet was shown at the graduation performance by Leningrad Choreographic School (now Vaganova Academy). Choreographer Vladimir Ponomarev. Dancers: Marina Semyonova, Alexandr Pushkin.
Now this ballet is mainly remembered for one reason only — for a sensational emergence of the new star Marina Semyonova. Her photo in “The Stream" can be seen in this article:

https://danceinternational.org/our-ballet-soviet-style/
 

[alison]

Ah, I did wonder if it was "La Source".

[Marcial_Fernandez]

Amelia,

I was not thinking of “La Source” for two reasons: 1) the composers were Delibes and Minkus, not Drigo, and 2) I was focused on another translation to “La Source”, which is “The Spring”, but “The Stream” could be just as good.

So if this is the case, the variation in question, composed by Riccardo Drigo, was inserted in the premiere at the Mariinsky in 1902, conducted by no other than Riccardo Drigo himself. So it is easy to imagine that Nikolai Legat requested a variation and Drigo pleased him by adding this variation that he composed for this occasion (or that he had already written and saved with other scores in a “box”, as composers used to do in the XIX century).

Actually, the ballet “La Source” was revived at the Paris Opera in the year 2011 in a new version by Jean-Guillaume Bart, which followed the original music by Delibes and Minkus, arranged by Marc-Olivier Dupin, with libretto by Clément Hervieu-Léger and Jean-Guillaume Bart. In order to simplify the complexity of the story, some characters were eliminated, among them Morgab and Sinjar, and for these changes Bart included music fragments from other works by Delibes.

This revival was filmed in that year 2011 and distributed (DVD and blu-ray) by Naxos just this year 2022, eleven years after it was filmed!
I have this blu-ray set and, of course, the variation by Drigo is not there because it was inserted in the Mariinsky version, now included in "Paquita", at least in the performance that you showed us yesterday danced by Nikolay Tsiskaridze.

Again, thank you very much for all this information.

 

Edited December 9, 2022 by alison
To reduce font size

[LinMM]

Thankyou Amelia also for another clip showing the fabulous Tsiskaridze dancing! 

[Amelia]

I am very glad, Marcial, that your long search for the source of that variation, the composer and the choreographer ended successfully. 

In passing, we once again noticed that some forgotten old ballets continue to inspire choreographers to create new versions. I really want this to continue.

[Marcial_Fernandez]

Amelia, this might be redundant and pedantic on my part, and I apologize for that. I watched last night a performance of "Paquita" that took place on June 19, 2018 at the Bolshoi Theater. However, the dancers were not from the Bolshoi Ballet but the graduates from the Vaganova Academy, who were invited to celebrate in Moscow the 280^th anniversary of the foundation of the Vaganova Academy (1738), with the exception of the two main dancers who were the famous Svetlana Zakharova and Denis Rodkin from the Bolshoi.

 

The music was credited to Édouard Deldevez, Ludwig Minkus and Riccardo Drigo, and the choreography to Yuri Burlaka and Nikolai Tsiskaridze (2017).

 

The variation that originated this post, which was danced in this performance by Denis Rodkin, reads between parentheses: “variation from the ballet ‘La Source’, music by R. Drigo”, which I've learned from you. And this is the same variation that Tsiskaridze danced himself in 2010 when he was still with the Bolshoi. In that 2010 performance that I know also thanks to you, the credits are in Russian, but I could read the information related to Tsiskaridze’s variation: “Music: R. Drigo. Choreography: L. Lavrovsky, N. Tsiskaridze”. So they rightfully credit the original choreography to Leonid Lavrovsky but it was adapted by Tsiskaridze to his own taste or dancing abilities, I think.

 

Dancers and choreographers make changes to the original music and choreographies all the time as they please. The music for this variation was not an exception. The one I brought to the forum, danced by Bogatyrov, responds to the ternary structure, or A-B-A, meaning that there is an initial musical theme followed by a different, central theme, then returning to the original theme. But in this variation danced by both Tsiskaridze and Rodkin, someone arranged the music turning it into an A-B-C structure. The first and second musical themes are identical to the one danced by Bogatyrov, but instead of going back to the initial musical theme, the variation ends with a third theme, which is a mazurka. Which one is the original music, the A-B-A or the A-B-C? We will probably never know.

 

I am sorry, I just didn’t want to keep this new information to myself.

 

Thanks again for everything.

Edited December 10, 2022 by alison
To reduce font size

[Amelia]

 

You are right, Marcial, this mazurka introduced by Tsiskatidze himself extended the variation, full of leaps and tours, by about 20 seconds and added a genteel, courtly feeling to it.

Rodkin dutifully repeated the variation danced by his mentor.

If you intend to do further research on this subject, the Vaganova Academy’s contacts are here:

https://vaganovaacademy.ru/feedback/

and International Department of the Academy:  

https://vaganovaacademy.ru/academy-eng/people-eng/international-department.html

Edited December 11, 2022 by Amelia
added the last link

[Marcial_Fernandez]

Amelia, I think everything I needed was provided by you. Then the version danced by Bogatyrov in 1969 must be the original because Tsiskaridze was born in 1973, four years later.

 

It is great to have those contacts.

 

And I would love to have the Russian Ballet Encyclopedia that you were referring to. Who is the author?

Edited December 11, 2022 by Marcial_Fernandez

[Amelia]

There is no particular author of this encyclopaedia. Dozens of consultants and contributors are listed there and the editorial team of 5. Publisher: Soglasie, Moscow, 1997.

Here are the title and details in Russian:

 

Русский балет. Энциклопедия. Издательство “Согласие”, Москва, 1997.