Opera and ballet companies of the Novosibirsk theatre have toured to 30 countries, some of them were visited multiple times: four times in Egypt, four time in Thailand, five times in Italy, 6 times in Japan, 8 times in Portugal, 9 times in Spain and ten times in South Korea.
The theatre went on its first international tour in 1957. In late august the ballet company and the orchestra, 172 people in total, set off to the People’s Republic of China. The first tour of a young company included the following performances: Tchaikovsky’s The Swan Lake, Minkus’ Don Quixote, Adam’s Giselle, Saveliev’s Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, Spadavecchia’s The Shore of Hope. Later on the company traveled to China five more times, while the company’s first foreign performance took place September 1st 1957 in Shanghai at a summer theatre Cultural venue. Thirteen thousand people came to see the Novosibirsk dancers perform The Swan Lake. Looking further forward we need to state that The Swan Lake has always been included in the company’s tour repertoire. Throughout the years this ballet as performed by our company was always received especially warm in different Chinese cities. And in 1957 the Novosibirsk ballet was a top-requested company: Chinese media reported four hundred thousand tickets sold long before the tour.
There were special monitor stations placed around Beijing to control the distribution of tickets. Only the best workers were granted the right to purchase tickets for these performances. The Shanghai Summer Theatre, which was able to host twelve thousand spectators, had to welcome a thousand more people for each tour date.
The company had its first performance in Beijing on 2nd October. Siberian dancers performed every day. They canceled all days-off and gave additional shows, concerts, recitals – instead of forty eight scheduled events, they did eighty six, attended by four hundred forty thousand people. One hundred twenty five thousand people met Siberian performers at their factories. The Swan Lake on 29th October 1957 was attended by the ruler of the People's Republic of China Mao Zedong. One of the performances was given on a warship on Huangpu river.
During that tour the Novosibirsk dancers, tutors, ballet masters gave dance classes, and the musicians gave Chinese students lessons in piano, violin and cello.
Upon the arrival from their first international tour, the Siberian company started cooperation with their Chinese colleagues on Zhang Xiao-Hu’s ballet production Precious Lotus Lantern – the first one in the USSR.
The Soviet-Chinese joint ballet production premiered at the Novosibirsk opera and ballet theatre in 1959.