Dramatic leaps and political falls: Russian Hamlet ballet in 1991

Two centuries-old traditions of Russian culture – Russian Hamletism and the artistic genre of ballet – come together in a Hamlet ballet produced in Moscow in 1991, the year that officially marks the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The ballet, Hamlet, Reflections on the theme Hamlet, choreographed by Svetlana Voskresenskaja to music by Dmitrij Shostakovich and with Vladimir Malakhov in the title role, was created specifically for the small screen shortly before, and televised shortly after, the August attempted coup that failed thanks to the riotous uprising of the citizenry of Moscow. This essay discusses ways in which the production, within its specific political and consumer context, creates a dialogue between the two traditions in which the one assists the other in interrogating crisis and change both on the destabilizing political map of the late Soviet world and within the equally disturbed geography of the ballet’s own cultural space.