The big-league Russian theater label, The Mariinsky Company, is making a historic return to London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in a tour that marks fifty years since the first tour to the British capital.

It was back in June 1961 when the Mariinsky, the then-Leningrad State Kirov Ballet, went on tour to London for the first time. The trip was organized by the British impresario Victor Hochhauser, whose career began at the Royal Albert Hall in the mid 1940s. Since then, the theater has performed in London on numerous occasions with the support of Hochhauser’s company.

The forthcoming tour has been described as the “unsurpassed ensemble of soloists and the corps de ballet of the Mariinsky Theater, captivating the soul with their beauty,” with Ulyana Lopatkina and Diana Vishneva in the limelight as well as American Ballet Theater principal dancer David Hallberg as a guest star.

The Mariinsky Company will be in London from 25 July to 13 August and this time around it will put the spotlight on such world-known masterpieces as Swan Lake, La Bayadère, and Don Quixote, as well as ballets by Michel Fokine – Chopiniana, Schéhérazade and The Firebird; George Balanchine's Scotch Symphony and Ballet Imperial and Jerome Robbins' In the Night.

One of the highlights of the tour will be one of the Mariinsky Theater’s latest productions – Rodion Shchedrin’s ballet Anna Karenina with choreography by Alexey Ratmansky.

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