Sukhishvili National Ballet of Georgia puts on two sold-out performances in Kyiv
The renowned Sukhishvili dance group, which has been the crown jewel of the Georgian national school of dance for the past 63 years, began its program in Kyiv in a synchronic and passionate manner. From the moment the performers appeared on stage, the spectators felt that frescoes and old paintings were coming to life as a fanciful mosaic of folk dances from various regions of Georgia unfolded before their eyes. The dance numbers changed quickly: one minute, the spectators were transported to the scene of a wedding party with a toastmaster “announcing” toasts by dancing dashingly with a bottle of wine balanced on his head, a bride with the grace of a deer, and a grave-looking bridegroom, and in the next moment, the wedding guests were performing a dance with kerchiefs. Every new number played out a whole range of feelings: passion, spirit, lyricism and, at times, bellicosity.
The men’s dances were so complex and masterful that they took the audience’s breath away, like when the dancers were performing their finest steps: rotations, jumps, and feats of swordsmanship. Some numbers featured dancers flying several meters above the stage and then landing on their toes or knees. To acquire this filigreed technique the performers have to rehearse every day and do regular training. While some tricks are very showy, others are simply dangerous, and the performers can injure themselves or their fellow dancers.
The notion of a corps-de-ballet and soloists is practically non-existent in the Sukhishvili dance group because all the dancers are real pros. The dancers performed in soft boots, but in order to perform pirouettes, they had to bandage their feet tightly and wrap sticky tape around them in order to create improvised points that enabled them to dance extremely complicated variations on tiptoe.
The character of the Georgian dances was conveyed through live music that was performed by eight virtuoso musicians, who not only accompanied the dancers, but also created a dialogue revealing the essence of each dance number.
The group’s chief choreographer is Iliko Sukhishvili, the grandson of the legendary founders of the National Ballet of Georgia. He believes that preserving traditions is only one of the ensemble’s main tasks. Some of these traditions were featured in the first part of the show. The audience particularly liked the love duel called kartuli, during which a male performer, dancing daintily, was inviting a beauty to dance with, as well as the martial dance known as khevsuruli, which featured dancing warriors pretending to engage in combat by twirling on the stage and fighting with sabers. Another audience favorite was the Ossetian dance simde, during which skilled horsemen wearing Circassian national coats flirted with the girls.
In the second part of the concert the performers presented new numbers that have been staged in the last five years. The audience enjoyed the dueling dance, featuring two women wearing Circassian coats, who performed extremely complicated steps with their male partners. “Our group is on a permanent quest,” Sukhishvili said. “We prepared a program that audiences can see in one go, so we shortened the time between individual dance numbers and the pauses. There is a more dynamic feel to the show. The dance numbers have been constructed in such a way as to create a feeling of improvisation.”
Sukhishvili’s ensemble is well-known and loved in Kyiv. The multi-age audience frequently applauded the Georgian performers whose two-hour performance flew by in a flash.
