Valentin Yelizariev, AD of the Grand Opera in Minsk

Valentin Yelizariev

The jury at the VII International Ballet Competition in Jackson includes Valentin Yelizariev, artistic director of the Grand Opera in Minsk, Belarus as another of its many firsts. Assisted by Dietmar Seyffert, the German juror, I had the opportunity to learn his impressions of Jackson, to be informed about Belarus and ask something about his own choreography.

Both Seyffert and Japanese juror Kenji Usuii had praised his choreography. What I did not realize was that Yelizariev’s choreography had preceded him in Jackson. When Nina Ananashavili and Andrus Liepa won the 1986 Grand Prix de Jackson, the first year it was awarded, the choreography for Yelizariev had created their contemporary round. A handsome image of the Moscow-trained couple appears in a book of photography commemorating twenty years of his creative career in Minsk.

Yelizariev and Seyffert are long-time friends, having met in Leningrad when both were students at the Vaganova Institute and studying also under Peter Gyusev at the Rimsky-Korsakov Institute at the Leningrad Conservatory.

Bearing the title of Professor, he serves in an honorary capacity to the Minsk Ballet Academy, advising without fee. The government in Belarus subsidizes the students fully "housing, food, clothing and stipends, for 400 students who study nine years to become proficient dancers. At the Conservatory, 40 students study an additional four years to be considered proficient as pedagogues, choreographers, dance historians or critics.

As Artistic Director of the Opera House in Minsk, Valentin Yelizariev has created fifteen full-length ballets and eighty one-act works. He is familiar with what is being produced in the West through videotapes, but this is his first lengthy exposure to ballet here in the United States. Two prior visits were brief, one concerning an inconclusive negotiation to tour his company of 100, including thirty soloists.

A man of obvious intelligence with humor lacing his intense gaze, Yelizariev informed me that, despite their labels as representing Belarus, "Not one of the contestants here using the name of Belarus is dancing material they learned there. The choreography they are dancing in Round Two was created here. Many of them have been in Canada or the United States for over five years. We have talented dancers in Belarus, and there are others in Eastern Europe like them who share a common problem: no funding to permit their appearance."

It took Yelizariev’s quick sketch to place Belarus for me. A land-locked country, it surrounded by Poland to the West, Latvia and Lithuania to the North, Russia to the East and the Ukraine to the south. Once I was able to place it on the Eastern European map, I realized that, for centuries, armies and history had moved across its borders. One of its beloved figures, Anna, is the subject of a full-length Yelizariev ballet. Under the title Passions, the libretto combines a love story, tragedy and the ancient history of Orthodox Christianity arriving in Belarus.

Valentin Yelizariev finds the organization level of the Competition very good, and the competitors at a very good level, but not extraordinary. Yelizariev concluded as a for instance, "A great talent emerges perhaps once in five years. You can help the little talents, the big talents you do not disturb."

This piece is part of Ballet.co's overall Jackson Competition coverage. The competition runs from the 15th to the 30th June 2002 and we plan daily reports to keep you in touch:
Jackson Reports index page