Moscow Festival Ballet to Perform GISELLE at Jorgensen, 3/27

The Moscow Festival Ballet will perform Giselle, the romantic, circa-1840s jewel in the crown of classical ballets, with music by Parisian composer Adolphe Adam, on Thursday, March 27, at 7:30 p.m. at Jorgensen on the UConn campus in Storrs.

The young Moscow Festival Ballet, once again on an energetic U.S. tour, was created by Bolshoi Ballet's legendary principal dancer Sergei Radchenko. Radchenko's vision 25 years ago was to build a new company on Bolshoi and Kirov classical principles and populate it with dancers from across the Russias to perform full-scale ballets.

Moscow Festival Ballet has toured to world acclaim ever since. "The dancers of the Moscow Festival Ballet spoke to the soul through the body..." avowed a critic for the Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., who viewed a performance of Giselle.

The story of the Rhineland peasant girl depicts her love of soon-to-be-betrothed Count Albrécht, who is masquerading as a villager at the festival of the grape harvest. Despite her mother's warning and hope that Giselle will marry the woodsman, Hilarion, Giselle and the count come together as she is crowned Queen of the Vintage. The tale dances through mistaken identities, a hunting party of nobles and the legend of the Wilis - ghosts of young, jilted girls who avenge themselves by engaging young men in dances to the death between midnight and dawn. All of this bears bad fruit for the lovers at the harvest festival.

Moscow Festival Ballet has continued to expand its repertoire. In addition to commissioning new works from within Russia and abroad, the company specializes in 20th century full-length ballets such as Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet, Legend of Love, Stone Flower and The Golden Age. Mr. Radchenko has researched the original choreography and stage productions of several of Marius Petipa's classic ballets, including new productions in the year 2000 of Don Quixote and Paquita, and a recreation of Jules Perrot's and Jean Coralli's Giselle.

The company has toured extensively throughout the United States, beginning with a coast-to-coast tour in 1997 and returning multiple times since the Millennium. The company performed Swan Lake at Jorgensen in 2012.

Jorgensen was named Best College/University Performing Arts Center in the Hartford Advocate Best of Hartford Readers' Poll for 2013 and 2012.

Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts is located at 2132 Hillside Road on the UConn campus in Storrs. Ticket prices are $37, $34 and $32 with some discounts available. For tickets and information, call the Box Office at 860.486.4226, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., or order online at jorgensen.uconn.edu. Convenient, free parking is available across the street in the North Garage.

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