Choreography by Yuri Grigorovich

The score of Aram Khachaturian's Spartacus which he finished in 1954 has never been performed in the original version. Leonid Jacobson, the choreographer of the celebrated Leningrad premiere of 1956 in the Kirov Theatre, had already shortened, changed and altered the score and the dramaturgy and commissioned the composer to compose a range of new numbers or change existing ones according to the needs of the choreography.

Today Spartacus is generally known in the version of Yuri Grigorovich, who, in his effort to push back the pantomime and return the dance to the fore also made deep changes to the score. The success of Grigorovich's choreography, first played at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1968, is in no small part down to the spectacular battle scenes and the two virtuoso leading male roles, here embodied through Irek Mukhamedov (Dancer of the Year 1992 chosen by Dance and Dancers and Independent On Sunday, the Gino Tani Dance Award 1992 in Italy, Nijinsky Medal 1998, OBE in the New Years Honours List 2000) and Aleksandr Vetrov.

"When Yuri Grigorovich created his 1968 version of Spartacus the ballet was exuberantly in tune with official revolutionary poetics: a monumental work, whose story of an ardent slave pitted against a corrupt imperial power was cast in slabs of choreographic granite. Even in 1986 when I first saw the ballet, the dancers performed it as if they lived and died by it. … Irek Mukhamedov performed Spartacus with a jaw dropping power that was as visionary as it was muscular." -- The Guardian