Date: 17.05.2018

On 28 February 2018, the ninth exposition of the Readers Museum of the Russian State Art Library (RSAL), “The Bolshoi Ballet in the Library,” opened.

As the main exposition of 2018, it introduces the history of the creative union between the largest Russian library in the field of art and the Bolshoi Ballet and displays rarities from its collections.

There are exhibits of rare editions: a book published in 1700 in France «Choreography or the Art of Creating Dance»; the fourth volume of studies of the history of dance by Sergey Khudekov, which somehow survived the flames of the revolution 100 years ago; and Yuri Slonimsky’s «Ballet Dramaturgy», which miraculously survived the blockade of Leningrad. Here you can see a programme that is unusual for today’s theatre-goers for the 1897 ballet «Thetis and Peleus», which was staged in Peterhof; a ticket to the Mariinsky Theatre from 1900; and friendly caricatures performed by the illustrious dancer Nikolai Legat in 1902.

The exposition presents rare photographs, many with autographs of such ballerinas as Anna Pavlova, Marina Semyonova, and Viktorina Kriger, and books with autographs of famous artists.

The exposition reveals interesting details about the creative union of the library with important personages of ballet. Over the years, its collections have assisted researchers of the ballet arts Yuri Slonimsky and Vera Krasovskaya, ballet masters Leonid Jakobson and Alexey Chichinadze, and the ballerinas Marina Semyonova and Maya Plisetskaya. Today, they are used by dancers Vladimir Vasiliev and Boris Akimov, and choreographers Yuri Grigorovich and Maris Liepa. Sketches by such famous costume designers as Sergey Barkhin, Viktor Volsky, and Boris Messerer are also shown in RSAL’s Readers Museum.

According to tradition, RSAL has issued a set of postcards of photographs from RSAL’s collections that tell about the history of Russian ballet.

The exhibition “The Bolshoi Ballet in the Library” will continue until the end of 2018.