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San Diego awaits impatiently for Seven Beauties ballet

1 October 2014 16:55 (UTC+04:00)
San Diego awaits impatiently for Seven Beauties ballet

By Nigar Orujova

One of the most famous ballets of Azerbaijan, "Seven Beauties" by the prominent Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev will be staged in San Diego, California.

San Diegans will closely get in touch with Azerbaijani culture in the Civic Theater on October 11.

Co-organized by the Azerbaijani Culture and Tourism Ministry and the General Consulate in Los Angeles, the premiere by Grossmont Symphony Orchestra led by music director Randall Tweed will be performed by the San Diego Ballet.

"Seven Beauties" ballet was first composed by Gara Garayev in 1952. It is based on motifs of Nizami Ganjavi's "Seven beauties" poem, written in 1197.

The ballet tells the story of a young prince who draws inspiration and wisdom from his seven international princesses.

The premier of the ballet in San Diego is a long-awaited event. San Diego Ballet artistic director Javier Velasco's full-length ballet is also inspired by Azerbaijani poet Nizami Ganjavi's poem.

To conduct a research into the piece, Velasco spent four days in June in the Azerbaijani city of Baku, where he pieced together fragments of a past ballet and score of "Seven Beauties", the San Diego Union-Tribune website reported.

He also absorbed the Azerbaijani culture that surprised him with its secularism and multiculturalism.

"It's a fascinating country ... a crossroads of everything," he said, the UT San Diego reported.

Velasco said the poem about a prince and his seven wives at first challenged his own sensibilities about equal rights, but after visiting Azerbaijan, he realized the poem is an allegory.

"It's not about a guy and seven women, it's about a country trying to get better by looking outward and learning from other societies," he said.

Velasco said his primary goal of staging the ballet is to introduce the poem to American audience and celebrate the metropolitan culture of Azerbaijan.

"When I was there, I told an official, it's so interesting how multiculturalism is tolerated here' and he said, 'We don't tolerate it, we exalt it.'"

All tickets for the show are free but must be reserved in advance.

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