Carmen Suite is a one-act ballet created in 1967 by Cuban choreographer Alberto Alonso with the music of Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin (Georges Bizet’s opera transcription for orchestra) for his wife, prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Theatre Maya Plisetskaya.

Ballet was not born easily. In the 1960s, Maya Plisetskaya was already quite officially considered prima ballerina assoluta of the Bolshoi Theatre. She wanted to dance not only classics, but also something new, staged especially for her. In the USSR, Plisetskaya could not find a choreographer capable to stage Prospero Merime's novella Carmen, and a composer ready to compete with Georges Bizet, the author of the opera Carmen. During a tour of the Cuban National Ballet in Moscow, Plisetskaya realized who would stage Carmen for her – choreographer Alberto Alonso. Everything was solved with the music, too. Maya Plisetskaya turned to her husband Rodion Shchedrin for help, and he, initially skeptical, plunged into work, creating an arrangement of the opera score for a new, unusual composition in twenty days: strings and 47 percussion items.

On April 20, 1967, Carmen Suite was first shown on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre. The scenery for the performance, the main idea of which the choreographer formulated with the succinct phrase "Carmen's whole life is a bullfight," was created by the famous theatre designer, Plisetskaya's cousin Boris Messerer, the chief designer of the Moscow Art Theatre at that time. Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducted the premiere.

The performance caused contradictory responses. The Soviet ballet audience had never seen anything brighter and more erotic. One of the few spectators who unconditionally accepted the new performance was Dmitry Shostakovich, as he reported to the Ministry of Culture. The ballet Carmen Suite was revived on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre in 2005 for the 80th anniversary of Maya Plisetskaya.

Divertissement is a ballet gala concert, with dramaturgy of contrasts, a change of impressions and images, it’s a kind of bright cascade of choreographic masterpieces from different eras - with the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Sergei Prokofiev, Caesar Pugni and Riccardo Drigo, Boris Asafyev, Valery Gavrilin, Alexander Tsfasman, Moritz Moshkovsky and others. The names of choreographers are also impressive: Vasily Vainonen and Asaf Messerer, Leonid Lavrovsky and Agrippina Vaganova, John Neumeier, Vladimir Vasiliev, etc. The ballet festival is presented to us by a wonderful production team, the NOVAT Ballet Company and Orchestra, students of the Novosibirsk Choreographic College, and, of course, masters of visual stage effects – set design, lighting, costumes.

What is a divertissement? In French “divertissement” and in Italian “divertimento” means "entertainment". So, they call it a series (a certain sequence) of concert numbers: if a divertissement is inside a plot performance, then, as a rule, it is not part of the plot development.

Divertissements became especially popular in the 17-18th centuries – sometimes the dance became a separate act within the performance, and sometimes with the help of it, the plot of the production was explained to the audience during the intermission.

In classical ballet, divertissement has not disappeared – it is included in productions as bright numbers for soloists, sometimes it is presented by so-called characteristic dances. One of the most famous divertissements on the modern theatre stage is the second act of The Nutcracker, when Marie and the Prince get to the fabulous city of Confiturenburg, where various folk dances are performed for them – Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and the dance of shepherds. But today divertissement is not only part of the performance. He has earned the rights of an autonomous concert spectacle.

The program includes:
• S. Chernetsky. "Suvorovtsy" (choreography by V. Varkovitsky)
• "Pavlova and Cecchetti", miniature with the music of P. Tchaikovsky (choreography by J. Neumeier)
• B. Asafyev. Basque dance from the ballet "The Flame of Paris" (choreography by V. Vainonen)
• S. Prokofiev. The balcony scene from the ballet "Romeo and Juliet" (choreography by L. Lavrovsky)
• "The Football Player", miniature with the music of A. Tsfasman (choreography by A. Messerer)
• M. Moshkovsky. Waltz (choreography by V. Vainonen)
• V. Gavrilin. Tarantella from the ballet "Anyuta" (choreography by V. Vasiliev)
• C. Pugni, R. Drigo. Pas de deux of Diana and Actaeon from the ballet "Esmeralda" (choreography by A. Vaganova)

* The program and the cast are subject to change