When The Bright Stream premiered at the Bolshoi in 1935, the ballet—which is set on a collective farm and features such characters as a man in a dog suit and a parade of vegetables—was denounced in Pravda as frivolous and ironic. Its composer, Dmitri Shostakovich, lost much of his work, and its librettist, Adrian Piotrovsky, was shot.When the young choreographer Alexei Ratmansky brought his revival of The Bright Stream to New York in 2005, it made him the talk of the town. A program note explain
Marina Harss’ terrific biography, "The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky’s Life in Ballet," delivers a thorough take on the man and his prodigious output.