Music by Shostakovich
Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky
Originally premiered in Leningrad on April 8, 1931, with choreography by Fyodor Lopukhov , Bolt had exactly one performance Exiled to a ballet gulag for 75 years, it was rescued and reconceived by rising-star Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky in 2006. This Soviet-era ballet is a satire of the worker-state, where an enormous factory with many workers produces just a single light bulb. The only work that seems to take place is the work of looking busy, while the Komsomol brigade charged with upkeep devotes most of its time to leisure activity. A disaffected worker decides to sabotage the factory by throwing a bolt ( of the title) into the machinery. Bolt brings together serious and popular music and dance, and includes Komsomol routines, Red Army marches, circus acrobatics, and vaudeville antics, as it portrays proletarian culture of the early Soviet years.
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