Gayane
Encyclopedia
Gayane is a four-act ballet
with music by Aram Khachaturian
. Originally composed in 1942, to a libretto by Konstantin Derzhavin and choreographed by his wife Nina Aleksandrovna Anisimova, the score was revised in 1952, and in 1957, with a new plot. The stage design was by Natan Altman (scenery) and Tatyana Bruni (costumes).
The first production was on 3 December 1942, staged by the Kirov Ballet while in Perm
(Russia) for the duration of the Second World War and was broadcast on the radio.
Khachaturian's original Gayane was the story of a young Armenian
woman whose patriotic convictions conflict with her personal feelings on discovering her husband's treason. In later years, the plot was modified several times, the resultant story emphasising romance at the expense of nationalist zeal.
n setting. The central character is a young woman named Gayane, who works in a kolkhoz
in a mountainous district near the national border.
Act 1: In the kolkhoz, farmers are busy reaping cotton. Among them are heroine Gayane, her father Ovanes, brother Armen and younger sister Nune. They are all models of hard work with the only exception of Gayaneh's husband Giko, a lazy drunkard. She admonishes Giko for his misconduct, and this escalates into a quarrel. Then arrives Kazhakov, commander of the Soviet frontier guard, and a dance of welcome begins. Seeing Gayane present a bouquet to Kazhakov, Giko violently snatches the bouquet from her and ignoring everybody's reproach, disappears.
Act 2: Gayane's home. Everyone is consoling Gayaneh who is deploring her husband's misconduct. The singing voices of carpet weavers is heard. As Giko returns, all go out. Gayane sings her child Ripsime to sleep. Three smugglers come to see Giko. They conspire to share the public money they have embezzled, to set fire to the cotton warehouse and to flee abroad. Overhearing their conspiracy, Gayane admonishes her husband, but he thrusts her into another room and locks her up.
Act 3: Kurd
's settlement in a mountainous area near the kolkhoz. Many people are there, including Gayane's brother Armen, a Kurdish girl Aishe, and a Kurdish young man Izmail who loves her. Then appear Giko and the three smugglers, who ask Armen their way. Wondering what they are after, he sends some Kurdish youths to fetch Kazhakov. Noticing this, Giko and his gang try to kill Armen, but Kazhakov arrives just in time, and arrests the three smugglers. However Giko escapes, and sets fire to the cotton warehouse. Trying to flee in the confusion of the moment, Giko is found by Gayane, who has managed to break out of the room in which she was imprisoned. Giko threatens Gayane that he will drop their child Ripsime from a cliff. As Gayane does not yield, Giko stabs her with a dagger. Hearing her shriek, Kazhakov rushes in and arrests Giko, who will be bought to justice. Kazhakov tends Gayane devotedly, and she recovers. Love grows between the two.
Act 4: The kolkhoz a year later. It is the day of the dedication ceremony of the reconstructed warehouse and the weddings of three couples - Gayane and Kazhakov, Armen and Aishe, Karen and Nune. Folk dances rich in local color are performed one after another, and the ballet ends amid blessings by all.
(during the World War II
evacuation), on the small stage of the Perm state theatre. But despite these limitations, the effect was profound; in effect, the message was that the company still lived on, despite the very hard times. Anisimova invited different dancers to participate in her ballet, dancers who happened to be in the city at that time: there was a sense of camaraderie and combined effort which suited the positive feeling of the ballet itself.
The principal dancers were: Natalia Dudinskaya
(Gayane), Nikolai Zubkovsky (Karen), Konstantin Sergeyev (Armen), Tatanya Vecheslova (Nune), and Boris Shavrov (Giko). The conductor was Pavel Feldt
.
The composition, the music, the dancing — all together created something which, regardless of the weaknesses in the libretto, expressed the triumph of dancing and its many different possibilities.
; re-release outside the USSR is infrequent. At the time, it was understood that the simple libretto was a necessary backdrop for the dancing, which was splendidly staged and choreographed by Anisimova, who danced in the original production. Choreographically, Anisimova thought in character dancing
terms; she knew much classical dance.
Excerpts from Gayane are performed by dance companies and dance schools, especially the wedding in the second act: wonderful duets and variation
s for Gayane and Kasakov, her lover. The choreography was unusual for its time — classical and folk dance combined, especially the stylized use of arms and hands from the folkloric Armenian culture that is the ballet's background.
The collective farm's ethnic diversity is the backdrop for each part of the music (adagio arrangements, lively Armenian and Caucasian
tunes) and for the compelling tale of love between the social classes. For concert performance, composer Khachaturian arranged three orchestral music suite
s drawn from the score; the Sabre Dance
, from the ballet's final act, is the most famous musical piece from Gayane.
The premiere cast included Natalia Dudinskaya
and Konstantin Sergeyev, then leading figures in Leningrad ballet. Nina Anisimova danced the part of an Armenian girl who is an image and symbol of Socialist labour: she works hard; she knows how to produce the most from the fields; but she also knows how to enjoy life, spending her free time dancing and laughing.
The suite of dances in the second act reflects the nationalities of the Soviet Union; at the time, Armenia already was a mixed-race nation. For that, Anisimova created the famous Sabre Dance that, when performed as a musical extract, became many dance companies' showpiece.
The style of movement in the dance is unusual and unexpected for character dance — unusual bends of the body, inventive positions of the arms, not from the classical moves, the overall structure of the body is not balletic, but, most of all, in keeping with Aram Khachaturian
's music, the choreography is temperamental, like Alexandrovna Anisimova herself.
When critics analysed Gayane, they saw that, in strict ballet terms, it is incompletely successful as a whole, because of its naïve libretto, and because of its overtly sociological story emphasis, yet, choreographers, critics, and historians persuaded the Kirov Theatre to profitably stage excerpts of the ballet.
The variation of Gayane, the variation of Giko, and the character dances of the people were effectively done and subsequently danced as concert pieces. After its premiere in Perm, Anisimova twice restaged Gayane for the Kirov; after revising it, the 1952 version stands as the definitive version of Gayane.
In the end, at the Kirov, Alexandrovna Anisimova did something important onstage — she proved that character dancing endures and should be included in the world of classical ballet. The dance in Gayane did not follow the Petipa
tradition, for example, Swan Lake
, wherein the audience is treated to national dance in discrete divertissements of "dances of le salon", in Petipa's words; in contrast, the dance in Gayane, by force of character, is felt throughout the ballet; it is a natural part of the people and of their history. In time, the ballet helped choreographers understand the importance of choreographic art in Russia — combining character dance with classical and mime traditions. Gayane is an excellent example of character dance and ballet combined; its artistic value to twentieth-century Soviet choreography is significant.
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
with music by Aram Khachaturian
Aram Khachaturian
Aram Ilyich Khachaturian was a prominent Soviet composer. Khachaturian's works were often influenced by classical Russian music and Armenian folk music...
. Originally composed in 1942, to a libretto by Konstantin Derzhavin and choreographed by his wife Nina Aleksandrovna Anisimova, the score was revised in 1952, and in 1957, with a new plot. The stage design was by Natan Altman (scenery) and Tatyana Bruni (costumes).
The first production was on 3 December 1942, staged by the Kirov Ballet while in Perm
Perm
Perm is a city and the administrative center of Perm Krai, Russia, located on the banks of the Kama River, in the European part of Russia near the Ural Mountains. From 1940 to 1957 it was named Molotov ....
(Russia) for the duration of the Second World War and was broadcast on the radio.
Khachaturian's original Gayane was the story of a young Armenian
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
woman whose patriotic convictions conflict with her personal feelings on discovering her husband's treason. In later years, the plot was modified several times, the resultant story emphasising romance at the expense of nationalist zeal.
Plot
Many elements of interethnic love, betrayal and friendship interact in an ArmeniaArmenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
n setting. The central character is a young woman named Gayane, who works in a kolkhoz
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
in a mountainous district near the national border.
Act 1: In the kolkhoz, farmers are busy reaping cotton. Among them are heroine Gayane, her father Ovanes, brother Armen and younger sister Nune. They are all models of hard work with the only exception of Gayaneh's husband Giko, a lazy drunkard. She admonishes Giko for his misconduct, and this escalates into a quarrel. Then arrives Kazhakov, commander of the Soviet frontier guard, and a dance of welcome begins. Seeing Gayane present a bouquet to Kazhakov, Giko violently snatches the bouquet from her and ignoring everybody's reproach, disappears.
Act 2: Gayane's home. Everyone is consoling Gayaneh who is deploring her husband's misconduct. The singing voices of carpet weavers is heard. As Giko returns, all go out. Gayane sings her child Ripsime to sleep. Three smugglers come to see Giko. They conspire to share the public money they have embezzled, to set fire to the cotton warehouse and to flee abroad. Overhearing their conspiracy, Gayane admonishes her husband, but he thrusts her into another room and locks her up.
Act 3: Kurd
Kürd
Kürd or Kyurd or Kyurt may refer to:*Kürd Eldarbəyli, Azerbaijan*Kürd Mahrızlı, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Goychay, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Jalilabad, Azerbaijan*Kürd, Qabala, Azerbaijan*Qurdbayram, Azerbaijan...
's settlement in a mountainous area near the kolkhoz. Many people are there, including Gayane's brother Armen, a Kurdish girl Aishe, and a Kurdish young man Izmail who loves her. Then appear Giko and the three smugglers, who ask Armen their way. Wondering what they are after, he sends some Kurdish youths to fetch Kazhakov. Noticing this, Giko and his gang try to kill Armen, but Kazhakov arrives just in time, and arrests the three smugglers. However Giko escapes, and sets fire to the cotton warehouse. Trying to flee in the confusion of the moment, Giko is found by Gayane, who has managed to break out of the room in which she was imprisoned. Giko threatens Gayane that he will drop their child Ripsime from a cliff. As Gayane does not yield, Giko stabs her with a dagger. Hearing her shriek, Kazhakov rushes in and arrests Giko, who will be bought to justice. Kazhakov tends Gayane devotedly, and she recovers. Love grows between the two.
Act 4: The kolkhoz a year later. It is the day of the dedication ceremony of the reconstructed warehouse and the weddings of three couples - Gayane and Kazhakov, Armen and Aishe, Karen and Nune. Folk dances rich in local color are performed one after another, and the ballet ends amid blessings by all.
Origin
The ballet, based on an earlier ballet composed in 1939 by Khachaturian called Happiness, was created when the Kirov ballet was in PermPerm
Perm is a city and the administrative center of Perm Krai, Russia, located on the banks of the Kama River, in the European part of Russia near the Ural Mountains. From 1940 to 1957 it was named Molotov ....
(during the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
evacuation), on the small stage of the Perm state theatre. But despite these limitations, the effect was profound; in effect, the message was that the company still lived on, despite the very hard times. Anisimova invited different dancers to participate in her ballet, dancers who happened to be in the city at that time: there was a sense of camaraderie and combined effort which suited the positive feeling of the ballet itself.
The principal dancers were: Natalia Dudinskaya
Natalia Dudinskaya
Natalia Mikhailovna Dudinskaya was a Russian prima ballerina who dominated the Kirov Ballet in the 1930s and 1940s.Dudinskaya's mother was Natalia Tagliori, a ballerina coached by Enrico Cecchetti. Trained by Agrippina Vaganova, Dudinskaya matriculated from her school in 1931. She danced all the...
(Gayane), Nikolai Zubkovsky (Karen), Konstantin Sergeyev (Armen), Tatanya Vecheslova (Nune), and Boris Shavrov (Giko). The conductor was Pavel Feldt
Pavel Feldt
Pavel Emilyevich Feldt was a Russian conductor and composer. Working for the Kirov Theater he conducted several ballet premieres including Shostakovich's The Limpid Stream and Khachaturian's Gayane....
.
The composition, the music, the dancing — all together created something which, regardless of the weaknesses in the libretto, expressed the triumph of dancing and its many different possibilities.
Analysis
The ballet Gayane was modestly successful when danced before Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
; re-release outside the USSR is infrequent. At the time, it was understood that the simple libretto was a necessary backdrop for the dancing, which was splendidly staged and choreographed by Anisimova, who danced in the original production. Choreographically, Anisimova thought in character dancing
Character dance
Character Dance is a specific subdivision of Classical Dance. It is the stylised representation of a traditional folk or national dance,mostly from a European country, and uses movements and music which have been adapted for the theatre....
terms; she knew much classical dance.
Excerpts from Gayane are performed by dance companies and dance schools, especially the wedding in the second act: wonderful duets and variation
Variation (ballet)
Variation or Classical Variation in ballet is a solo dance. As with an Aria in opera, which allows the singer to demonstrate his or her interpretive skills, the variation in ballet has the same function...
s for Gayane and Kasakov, her lover. The choreography was unusual for its time — classical and folk dance combined, especially the stylized use of arms and hands from the folkloric Armenian culture that is the ballet's background.
The collective farm's ethnic diversity is the backdrop for each part of the music (adagio arrangements, lively Armenian and Caucasian
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
tunes) and for the compelling tale of love between the social classes. For concert performance, composer Khachaturian arranged three orchestral music suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...
s drawn from the score; the Sabre Dance
Sabre Dance
"The Sabre Dance" is a movement in the final act of the ballet Gayane , written by Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian's and completed in 1942. It evokes a whirling war dance in an Armenian dance, where the dancers display their skill with sabres. Its middle section incorporates an Armenian folk...
, from the ballet's final act, is the most famous musical piece from Gayane.
The premiere cast included Natalia Dudinskaya
Natalia Dudinskaya
Natalia Mikhailovna Dudinskaya was a Russian prima ballerina who dominated the Kirov Ballet in the 1930s and 1940s.Dudinskaya's mother was Natalia Tagliori, a ballerina coached by Enrico Cecchetti. Trained by Agrippina Vaganova, Dudinskaya matriculated from her school in 1931. She danced all the...
and Konstantin Sergeyev, then leading figures in Leningrad ballet. Nina Anisimova danced the part of an Armenian girl who is an image and symbol of Socialist labour: she works hard; she knows how to produce the most from the fields; but she also knows how to enjoy life, spending her free time dancing and laughing.
The suite of dances in the second act reflects the nationalities of the Soviet Union; at the time, Armenia already was a mixed-race nation. For that, Anisimova created the famous Sabre Dance that, when performed as a musical extract, became many dance companies' showpiece.
The style of movement in the dance is unusual and unexpected for character dance — unusual bends of the body, inventive positions of the arms, not from the classical moves, the overall structure of the body is not balletic, but, most of all, in keeping with Aram Khachaturian
Aram Khachaturian
Aram Ilyich Khachaturian was a prominent Soviet composer. Khachaturian's works were often influenced by classical Russian music and Armenian folk music...
's music, the choreography is temperamental, like Alexandrovna Anisimova herself.
When critics analysed Gayane, they saw that, in strict ballet terms, it is incompletely successful as a whole, because of its naïve libretto, and because of its overtly sociological story emphasis, yet, choreographers, critics, and historians persuaded the Kirov Theatre to profitably stage excerpts of the ballet.
The variation of Gayane, the variation of Giko, and the character dances of the people were effectively done and subsequently danced as concert pieces. After its premiere in Perm, Anisimova twice restaged Gayane for the Kirov; after revising it, the 1952 version stands as the definitive version of Gayane.
In the end, at the Kirov, Alexandrovna Anisimova did something important onstage — she proved that character dancing endures and should be included in the world of classical ballet. The dance in Gayane did not follow the Petipa
Marius Petipa
Victor Marius Alphonse Petipa was a French ballet dancer, teacher and choreographer. Petipa is considered to be the most influential ballet master and choreographer of ballet that has ever lived....
tradition, for example, Swan Lake
Swan Lake
Swan Lake ballet, op. 20, by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, composed 1875–1876. The scenario, initially in four acts, was fashioned from Russian folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger...
, wherein the audience is treated to national dance in discrete divertissements of "dances of le salon", in Petipa's words; in contrast, the dance in Gayane, by force of character, is felt throughout the ballet; it is a natural part of the people and of their history. In time, the ballet helped choreographers understand the importance of choreographic art in Russia — combining character dance with classical and mime traditions. Gayane is an excellent example of character dance and ballet combined; its artistic value to twentieth-century Soviet choreography is significant.