Magic Moments of Music – John Cranko’s ‘Onegin’

John Cranko, born in South Africa in 1927, moved to London as a teenager and quickly became a well-known choreographer after a short career as a dancer. In 1961, the artistic director of the Stuttgart Theatre persuaded him to take over the position of creative leader of the then little-known Stuttgart Ballet. Within a short time, Cranko succeeded in making the ensemble one of the most successful companies in the world. None of his works better exemplify Cranko’s artistry than Onegin. The piece, based on Pushkin's verse novel Eugene Onegin and set to music by Tchaikovsky, premiered at the Stuttgart Ballet in 1965 and remains Cranko's greatest success to this day and is still on the repertoire of many ballet companies. Cranko condenses Pushkin's novel into a theatrically effective distillation by focusing the drama on five characters. At the same time, Cranko demonstrates that pas de deux are not only the dance highlights of a ballet, but should also be the driving force behind the plot. The Russian audience was very sceptical when Cranko announced that he would be performing his Onegin at a guest performance in Moscow in 1971. Cranko had ventured into two sacred works of Russian culture, Pushkin's novel and Tchaikovsky's opera. But the performance in Moscow became Cranko's greatest triumph. He died shortly afterwards, in 1973.