Kazakhstan Ballet Performs At New York’s Lincoln Center

Central Asia came to New York this week, when the Astana Ballet performed at Lincoln Center in Manhattan on Wednesday. Through elegance, beauty, grace and sophisticated imagery, Kazakhstan’s and Central Asia’s leading ballet company won over the New York audience.

Dozens of people lined up before Alice Tully Hall to be among those to enjoy what was a ballet extravaganza and a sold-out performance. A ballet lover from the Big Apple, Chris Johnson was among those lucky that managed to get a complimentary ticket for the Astana Ballet’s gala.

“I love ballet and it is very interesting for me to see the choreography of the Kazakh ballet school, to feel the peculiarities of the national color – so today I’m here, and happy that I managed to get an entrance ticket,” she told Kazinform prior to the show.

Fifteen dances were staged, including six choreographic miniatures in Kazakhstan’s national dance style, six fragments from neoclassical and contemporary ballet, as well as three scenes from the The Nutcracker.

The organizers of the event honored the theater by including some of the best performances from the theater’s repertoire in the lineup. One such performance was a rendition of Ricardo Amarante’s Love Fear Loss, a ballet set to the songs of Edith Piaf and inspired by the life story of a famous French singer. Another was from A Fuego Lento, which tells the story of nascent feelings of emotional heat, burning emotions and the force of first love.

Wednesday’s performance also featured a Heritage of the Great Steppe, a collection of miniature scenes and moments from Kazakhstan’s culture meant to give a symbolic start to a series of cultural events in the U.S. that celebrates the 20th anniversary of Astana, the current capital of Kazakhstan.

“The task that the troupe of the theater has to tackle is not an easy one – to attract the attention of the public to our culture, to present the best of the national and modern ballet art of Kazakhstan,” said Valery Kuzembaev, the director of the theater.

Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was on a three-day visit to the United States, was among the attendees at Lincoln Center.

The New York performance of the Astana Ballet is kick-starting the ballet’s U.S. tour, which is part of a larger project known as “Modern Kazakhstan Culture in the Global World,” launched by Nazarbayev last year.

In addition to the ballet, the organizers of the program included a photo exhibition dubbed “Kazakhstan through the Eyes of Photographers of the World,” with works that show Central Asia’s largest country.

“We exhibited about 50 photos displaying Astana, EXPO-2017, the nature of Kazakhstan, as well as the traditions and culture of Kazakhstanis,” said Sabit Abdykalykov, an organizer of the exhibition, who referred to the 2017 world’s fair, better known as an “expo.”

“There were no empty seats in the concert hall. As far as we saw, the gala left no one indifferent. Each act has evoked the delight of spectators and a storm of applause.”

Launched in 2012, the Astana Ballet has visited Moscow, St. Petersburg, Beijing, Paris, Vienna, Seoul, Budapest, Baku, Minsk, New York, Tokyo, Warsaw, and Brussels. It first performed in New York in 2015.