The next two days of the festival will be devoted to the St. Petersburg Small Ballet. Its founders — director Boris Yukhananov, choreographer Andrei Kuznetsov and artist Yuri Kharikov — had formerly been leading figures of the Moscow and Leningrad theatre underground.

Their first performance, Cicadas, which opened in February 1992 at the St. Petersburg Hermitage, was a tremendous success. Critics called it the most beautiful theatrical show of Russia.

They admired its deliberate aesthetics and refined intellectualism, naiked with irony and humour.

The fanciful plot of Cicadas, scheduled on December 8, is based on poems by Mallarme and contemporary Russian poet Tatyana Shcherbina. The music is by Mozart, Brahms, Chopin, Handel, Tchaikovsky, and the contemporary Russian composer Yuri Khanin. And in the choreography the modern synthesis of the different languages of dance has an exquisite flavour reminiscent of turn-of-the century ballet.

The following day the theatre will show its latest production, Three Daydreams, with music by Chopin, Schubert, and Paganini. Yukhananov and Kuznetsov defined its style as "post-romantic ballet — created after the death of the classical ballet, with the hope for its rebirth." Those who saw it say that the choreography here does not go beyond the framework of the traditional school, but looks like an absolute innovation.

The Moscow Tribune 1993