Ulanova considered May 16 to be her second birthday. On that day 77 years ago, after graduating from the Leningrad ballet school, she danced her first solo.
The first part of the concert featured sequences from filmed performances by Ulanova. The second half of the concert was a display of foreign choreographers. If Ulanova's generation was famed for its great dancers, today's ballet world is renowned for its choreographers. Their dedication to the legendary Russian ballerina was absolutely natural.
Vladimir Vasilyev, chairman of the Ulanova Fund, arranged a concert that united the gods of his generation - Bejart, Neumeier, and Kylian - with today's leading choreographers, Mats, Ek, and Forsythe.
Although the original idea was for the choreographers to present something new for the Moscow event, some of them did not. For example, Bejart contributed his thirty-year-old adagio from Romeo and Juliet, which was performed by Bolshoi soloists Svetlana Lunkina and Ruslan Skvortsov.
The Russian ballet in memory of Ulanova was performed by Ulyana Lopatkina, who danced "The Swan" in Mikhail Fokin's choreography. In Stalin's time, Ulanova made "The Swan" a symbol of silent stoicism and self-sacrifice. Lopatkina transformed the three-minute dance into an epopee of loneliness and the collapse of hopes.
