News

TALENT CAN’T BE TAUGHT

The International Press Center has hosted a meeting that started with showing of a fragment from the documentary “The Dancer”, directed by Alexander Gentelev. The main character in the movie and the guest of the meeting was Valery Panov, a ballet dancer, choreographer, Merited Artist of the RSFSR, Laureate of the RSFSR State Prize, founder and artistic director of the “Theatre - Ballet Panov Ashdod” (Israel). He emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1974, when he was a soloist of the Mariinsky theatre. Over the years Valery Panov has performed and staged many productions in the major theatres of the world.

“My career in the West began in West Berlin”, Valery Panov said. “That was the most amazing time of my life. I produced the Russian plays that I had not even dreamt of staging in Russia: “Cinderella”, “The Idiot”, “War and Peace”. With these plays I traveled around the world and won numerous awards”.

Valery Panov was the Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet in France, Director of Ballet of the Oper der Stadt Bonn, but in 1998 he returned to Israel and founded his own “Theatre - Ballet Panov Ashdod”.

He performed until the age of 52 (today he’s 78), was a leading dancer in the classical ballet. And he remains an avid admirer of the classical ballet: “Classics always wins. You can't live without Bach, and jazz also came from the classical music. If you dance classics, you will be able to dance everything. But classical ballet is an imperial art.”

Valery Panov was born in Vitebsk. The journalists were interested to know what feelings the artist had in his hometown. “I was taken to the meeting by car past the amazing beauty of the fields (during the festival Panov lives in the countryside). These were the fields where I was running as a boy. I was touched by the awesome beauty of the birches. Love to Vitebsk is in my blood. Even through many decades everything connected with my native city is very exciting and touching.”

One of the productions by “Theatre - Ballet Panov Ashdod” “Homage to Chagall” was presented at the Gala Concert of masters of arts of Israel.

N. Aprelskaya