Igor Moiseyev Ballet

Background

Igor Moiseyev (1906-2007) was a Soviet balletmaster, dancer and pedagogue. He began to study ballet under teacher and dancer Vera Mosolova [ru] in 1918, and showed such promise that Mosolova recommended him to study at the Bolshoi Ballet within 3 months.^{[8]: 103, 106} He entered the school in 1920, where he studied under Alexander Alexeyevich Gorsky and Kasyan Goleizovsky, both of whom felt that ballet was stagnating and were interested in the avant-garde.^{[8]: 103, 107–109} In the 1920s, Moiseyev performed at the Bolshoi Ballet as a dancer; in the 1930s, he began to choreograph ballets.^[8]: 109 He aspired to be a ballet choreographer at the Bolshoi, however, he found little success there, so he turned to folk dance.^[8]: 6

Beginnings

In 1936, Igor Moiseyev was made dance director of the new Theater of Folk Art in Moscow, and helped organized a folk dance festival.^[9][6] The next year, on 10 February, the Moiseyev Ballet came into existence, with just 35 dancers.^[2] They gave their first performance on 29 August 1937, at the Hermitage Theatre in Moscow.^[10]: 84 According to Moiseyev, the dance troupe had early difficulties: politician Alexander Poskrebyshev promised to dissolve the ensemble, however, the ensemble had Stalin's patronage. Therefore, neither Poskrebyshev nor any other politician dared to dissolve it.^[11] Reportely, Stalin enjoyed the Moiseyev Ballet so much that they were constantly invited to his banquets and parties. At the time, the Moiseyev Ballet had its headquarters in a small building on Leontyev Alley [ru]. When Igor Moiseyev asked for a larger building to house the studio, Stalin ordered politician Aleksandr Shcherbakov to organize headquarters for the dance company. Thus, they began to occupy the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall [ru], a building that was previously meant to be Vsevolod Meyerhold's new theater.^[12]

Although the company was dedicated to folk dance, not all the choreographed dances were based on genuine folk dances; for instance, the 1937 folk dance "Bulba" is not a true Belarusian folk dance, but rather invented by Moiseyev.^[8]: 6

The first foreign performance of the Moiseyev Ballet occurred in 1945, in Finland.^[12] It began to tour around the world in 1955. As of 2019, it has toured in over 100 countries,^[8]: 3 including the USA, France,^[13] Israel,^[14] the UK,^[15] Japan,^[12] and China.^[16]

In 1958, they began to tour in the United States, as part of the Lacy-Zarubin Agreement.^[17] Impresario Sol Hurok invited the Moiseyev Ballet to perform at the old Metropolitan Opera House, marking the first time a major Soviet dance group had ever performed in the United States. They also appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.^[3][18]

JDL incident

In September 1986, tear gas was thrown at a Moiseyev Ballet performance at the Metropolitan Opera House, forcing the evacuation of 4,000 people and injuring 30. An anonymous caller purporting to be the chairman of the Jewish Defense League, Chaim Ben Yosef, claimed responsibility, saying it was a protest on the behalf of Soviet Jews. However, the actual chairman at the time, Irv Rubin, denied the JDL's responsibility. Ben Yosef also denied making such a call and denied the JDL's responsibility.^[19][20] In 1987, Ben Yosef and two others were arrested in relation to a series of bombings in New York, including the tear gas attack at the Moiseyev performance.^[21]