Kirov Ballet to Dance in Orange County on ’89 Tour

The Kirov Ballet will make the only Southern California stop on its 1989 North American tour at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa next August, Center President Thomas R. Kendrick confirmed Thursday.

Repertory during the Aug. 18-27, 1989, engagement will include Petipa’s “The Sleeping Beauty” and a recent reconstruction of “Le Corsair,” along with a mixed bill of works by choreographers including Roland Petit, Maurice Bejart, and Oleg Vinogradov, director of the Kirov Ballet, Kendrick said.

On July 3, the company will open a three-week run in New York at the Metropolitan Opera House, which is sponsoring the tour, after a month of performances in Canada. The tour will then move to the Kennedy Center in Washington and the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco before reaching the Performing Arts Center in August.

Among the artists heading the touring company will be Altynai Assylmuratova and Faruk Ruzimatov, who appeared as guest stars with American Ballet Theatre in New York in May, and Olga Chenchikova, Tatiana Terekhova, Galina Mezentseva, Lubov Kunakova, Kostantin Zaklinsky and Alexander Lunev.

Irina Kolpakova, 55, will be on the tour as a teacher and ballet master and may dance during the Orange County engagement.

“We are absolutely delighted that the Kirov is coming,” Kendrick said Thursday.

Kendrick said that there will be nine performances at the Center: three of “The Sleeping Beauty,” three of “Le Corsair” and three evenings of mixed repertory that would mostly vary from one another.

Casting will be announced later, Kendrick said.

The Kirov, generally acknowledged as the pre-eminent exponent of Russian classicism, made its last area appearance in May, 1986, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, during the company’s first U.S. visit in 22 years.

The Kirov was founded more than 200 years ago at the Maryinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg (now Leningrad) and adopted its current name in 1935.