A bright new generation of choreographers from the Ural mountains is taking over the Russian ballet. The premiere of ‘Perrault’s Fairy Tales’ a collective production featuring a cast of Russia’s best young talent, will travel from Ekaterinburg to St. Petersburg this Autumn.

This season ‘Perrault’s Fairy Tales’ promises to be the cream on the top of the Diaghilev Festival of the arts in St Petersburg, the inaugural project of a new team at the Ural Ballet, which over the past decade under former director Vyacheslav Samodurov (b. 1974), was transformed from a faceless provincial company into a leader in its field. Maxim Petrov (b. 1993), who has recently replaced Samodurov, together with playwright Bogdan Korolyok (b. 1993), have created a ballet to which the word ´project´ applied more often to contemporary art, is indeed well suited. ‘Perrault's Fairy Tales’ brings together four traditional stories: ‘Puss in Boots’, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘Bluebeard’ and ‘Tom Thumb’. Korolyok commissioned three composers to create new scores: Nastasya Khrushcheva (b. 1987), (who had already been collaborating with the Ural ballet under Petrov), one of her former students at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire Alexei Bolovlyonkov, and Muscovite Dmitry Mazurov (b. 1987) - an exciting debut for both young composers on the big stage. Such a varied assemblage of fairy tales and composers required a diverse assemblage of choreographers and what is the first major commission of their fledgling careers, Alexander Merkushev (b. 1991) and Konstantin Khlebnikov were given the opportunity to work on the production together with Ural ballet´s in-house choreographer. The set designs and costumes were created by Yuliana Laikova (b. 1988), also a debutante in the realm of ballet, and lighting designer Konstantin Binkin (b. 1992) brought a touch of dramatic panache to the whole ensemble, a professional who already has extensive experience in such choreographic works.

This millennial collective lures the audience into a mysterious dark forest knitted by the needles of a magical Mushroom Fairy. This sweet grandmother, speaking in the language of old pantomime, resembles neither the Lilac Fairy shining in classical ballet perfection, nor the mythological Moiras. She seems to be able to put away her knitting at any moment and offer everybody tea with home-made raspberry jam. The resulting story does not reference the usual gothic castles, but cozy log cabins, holidays in a village, with scary stories told at night in a young pioneer camp.

Since the premiere in its hometown of Ekaterinburg six months ago ‘Perrault’s Fairy Tales’ has found quick success both there and then following a recent tour to Nizhny Novgorod which was attended by many connoisseurs of ballet who had travelled there from Moscow to see it. But even before this they had received an invitation to take part in the famous Diaghilev Festival in St Petersburg a city where Maxim Petrov feels at home – he was trained at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, has danced in the Mariinsky Theatre and in his first year as a dancer was invited by Vyacheslav Samodurov, also a native of the St. Petersburg Ballet, to choreograph a piece for the experimental project Dance-Platform.

At just thirty-one years of age choreographer Maxim Petrov already has an impressive and diverse track record including productions at the Mariinsky Theatre, ‘Piano Concerto’ to music by Shostakovich at the Samara Opera and Ballet Theatre, the third movement of the ballet ‘Terezin. Quartet’ at the Nizhny Novgorod Opera Theatre and ‘Russian Deadlocks – II’, for which in 2021 he was awarded the Golden Mask as choreographer of the year. Even before his appointment as director of the Ural ballet, he had already produced numerous works for it, such as ‘Three Quiet Pieces’ in the L.A.D. project, and even did a directing stint at the opera. In his performances, Petrov creates his own unique relationship with classical ballet tempering it with freer and more contemporary forms. His choreography typically vibrates between pointe and half-fingers, quotations and his own personal findings, formulas and other images which are not yet very clear.

Young Russian choreographer Konstantin Khlebnikov has an exceptionally idiosyncratic and unusual language, his choreography resembling an oriental carpet, its pattern woven from many different threads, perfectly matched in colour and length. Khlebnikov's ‘Puss in Boots’ is as colourful and eccentric as the stage characters which he himself performs as a dancer: the widow Marcelina in ‘Vain Precaution’, Signor Capuletti in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and the sorceress Madge in ‘La Sylphide’.

Alexander Merkushev a choreographer also in his early thirties, who worked with Petrov on ‘Bluebeard, has only two years of choreographic experience and a clutch of miniatures in his professional portfolio. They are distinguished by high dynamism and energy, changes of movement and directions, non-standard co-ordination of ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ when the dancers’ arms, bodies and heads work independently from their legs.

Tea with jam from the Mushroom Fairy in ‘Perrault’s Fairy Tales’ is a necessary comforter because Perrault's fairy tales are gloomy, sarcastic and in places frightening. When inviting the audience to the performance, the theatre emphasises it is not geared towards children, yet in many ways the production does seek the attention of the broadest possible audience, both populist and more elitist as well as ultimately children – these are of course in the end fairy tales – and their parents and ‘Perrault’s Fairy Tales’ does not shy away from philosophical generalisations. Their foundation is the much-loved classical ballet in Russia, complicated by a 21st century worldview and an ambitious task to find new methods of expression for a traditional and conservative art form. In this, the Ural Ballet’s signature attitude is immediately recognisable, formed over a decade and upheld by a bright young team of choreographers who bring renewed hope for a productive and exciting future for the Russian ballet.