International Сonference Ballet in Musical Theatre: History and Present Time. An Interview with the Conference Curator Irina P. Susidko

Abstract

November 21-25, 2022, the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music hosted a large-scale conference focusing on ballet. The conference took place as part of the strategic academic leadership program Priority 2030 and was effective in meeting its aims and objectives. One of them concerns the consolidation of academic efforts in the most sought-after research avenues. The conference was organized by the Center for Musical Theater Studies established in the Academy earlier this year. For the first time in history the conference was hosted by a consortium of conservatories and research institutes. Among them are the Gnessins Russian Academy of Music, the Moscow State Academy of Choreography, Zhiganov Kazan State Conservatoire, Vaganova Ballet Academy, Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg State Conservatory, Russian Institute of Art History, and the State Institute for Art Studies.

Each of the five universities and two research institutes made their contribution to the conference agenda. In total, the conference brought together 200 speakers from eleven countries, including Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Hungary, Greece, Kazakhstan, Serbia, US, Uzbekistan, Switzerland, and Japan. The conference run across six venues in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kazan and discussed a range of issues in ballet history and state of the art. The key among them are ballet as a synthetic art form; music–gesture–dance: coordination and dialogue; history of ballet; sources, reconstruction of scores and stage plays; choreographers and composers; ballet music in a composer’s oeuvre; compositional poetics in music and dance; conductor and ballet scores; plots, libretto and their literary sources; theatre design and scenography in ballet; dancing in opera; national schools of choreography: similarities and differences; ethnic choreography; music and ballet training; 20^th century choreographic experiments; ballet in culture and society (reception and critique).

The issue of Contemporary Musicology you are holding features an interview given to Veronika Kalistratova by the Conference curator Prof. Irina P. Susidko, Doctor of Art Studies, Head of the Center for Musical Theater Studies at the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music.

Keywords: ballet, conference, consortium of conservatories and research institutes, I.P. Susidko

For citation: International Сonference Ballet in Musical Theatre: History and Present Time. An Interview with the Conference Curator Irina P. Susidko [Electronic source]. In: Sovremennye problemy muzykoznaniya / Contemporary Musicology, 2022, no. 4, pp. 4–16. (In Russ.) DOI: 10.56620/2587-9731-2022-4-004-016