CULTURE
First Azerbaijani national ballet – The Maiden Tower
Baku, March 12, AZERTAC
The Maiden Tower (Giz Galasi), the first ballet ever to be produced in Azerbaijan and the Muslim East was based on motives of the eponymous poem by a prominent playwright Jafar Jabbarli.
This is a dramatic piece created by famous Azerbaijani composer Afrasiyab Badalbayli, which went down in the golden fund of Azerbaijani choreography forever as a vivid artistic phenomenon.
The premiere took place on 18 April 1940 at the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, and a new version of the ballet was unveiled on October 24, 1999.
The work was composed on basis of national dance music, mugham and classical ballet.
The storyline of the ballet is based on a legend about the Maiden Tower, Baku's most-distinguished landmark, which dates back to at least the 12th century.
Gamar Almaszade - a brilliant dancer of the Leningrad school, who performed the lead role in the Maiden Tower at the age of 25, became the first Azerbaijani ballet dancer.
The emergence and development of Azerbaijani ballet began at this time. The Gulshan ballet by Soltan Hajibayov staged in 1950. Ballets such as “Seven Beauties” (1952) by Gara Garayev and “Along the Thundering Ways” (1958) by Fikrat Amirov; “Nizami” (1947) and “1001 Nights” (1979) by Niyazi, “Chitra” (1971) and “The Legend of Love” (1961) by Arif Malikov, “Shadows of Gobustan” by Faraj Garayev (1969) and others made Azerbaijani music famous all over the world.
Among the great dances that have performed on the opera house stage are: Gamar Almaszade, Leyla Vakilova, Alaskar Abdullayev, Rafiqa Akhundova, Magsud Mammadov, Vladimir Pletnev, Chimnaz Babayeva, Medina Aliyeva, Tatyana Sukhorukova, Zaur Fatullayev and others.