Astana Opera to premiere ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ ballet

A heartless stepmother, merry dwarfs and a beautiful princess. The legendary and everyone’s favorite fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm will for the first time be presented in the form of ballet to the audience in Nur-Sultan. The Astana Opera is preparing for the premiere of the play Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This ballet, written by Hungarian authors, namely the composer Tibor Kochak in collaboration with the choreographer Gyula Harangozo, brought its creators to worldwide fame. The play has been shown 120 times in the Hungarian State Opera, the Erkel Theater and the Szeged Open Air Festival. The residents and guests of the Kazakh capital can attend the premiere of the fairytale ballet on November 19 and 20. According to the stage directors, special attention in the performance was paid to the acting skills of the theater soloists.

 “The company works very well. Of course, ballet dancers face new tasks, so they work hard. Classical parts are not a problem. They perform them very well. But when they have to play and act, I don’t want to stage it according to the Stanislavski’s method. Everything must be performed in a natural way. Most of all I want to tell the story. It’s very important to me. Of course, as a professional, I make sure that the dancer has his heels up, and his foot and knee stretched out. These are the things that are important in classical ballet. But, the most important thing to me is that their acting is good and they convey the joy of the performance to the audience,” said Gyula Harangozo, the choreographer.

“The stage director of this play requires us to be very melodic and playful. There are certain difficulties here, both from the technical and choreographic point of view. We hope that in combination with music, acting and dancing, we will convey the director's vision. So we are working very hard now. We hope that our viewers will enjoy the upcoming premiere,” said Sultanbek Gumar, the soloist of Astana Opera.

Translation by Assem Zhanmukhanova

Edited by Saule Mukhamejanova