“Zorba the Greek”
Tartar State Academic Ballet
Jalil Opera and Ballet Tartar State Academic Theatre
Kazan, Russia
November 2025 (video)
by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2026 by Ilona Landgraf
“A man needs a little madness or never dares to cut his ropes and be free,” urged Zorba the buttoned-up aristocrat Basil, in Michael Cacoyannis’s 1964 film Zorba the Greek. The film is based on Nikos Kazantzakis’s 1946 novel Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas, won three Academy Awards, and featured Anthony Quinn as Zorba and Alan Bates as Basil. Zorba, an earthy and boisterous peasant, had this kind of madness and, on their venture to Crete, instilled it in Basil as well.
In addition to the film, the novel inspired a musical, radio play, telemovie, and ballet, which was choreographed by Lorca Massine (Léonide Massine’s son), includes music by Mikis Theodorakis, and premiered at the Arena di Verona in 1988. Vladimir Vasiliev and Gheorghe Iancu danced the leading roles.
In 2024, an updated version of the ballet premiered for the first time in Russia at the 37th Rudolf Nureyev International Classical Ballet Festival in Kazan and was revived at the 2025 festival. On both occasions, the Bolshoi Ballet’s Igor Tsvirko made a guest appearance in the title role. I had the chance to watch a recording of his latest performance on Russia-Culture TV.
Massine changed the name of Basil to John and condensed the story to focus on his friendship with Zorba and the tragic romances of both men at a Greek location. He dropped their enterprise to exploit a fallow lignite mine, shenanigans with some monks, and the “splendiferous crash” of a timber transport contraption designed to deliver wood to support the shaft. Instead, Massine’s John (Oleg Ivenko) burst onto the scene, his white pants and shirt and happy-go-lucky jumps identifying him as an outsider at first sight. 
Though soft-shelled and naive, he appeared to be boastful and disgruntled but also impressed the locals. John’s tours en l’air looked out of place amidst daily physical labor. But he was willing to adapt, and the Greek folk dance steps looked decreasingly artificial on him. Perhaps because he was different, the young widow Marina (Kristina Andreeva-Zakharova), coveted by many, especially the locals’ leader, Manolios (Anton Polodyuk), fell in love with him.
Zorba’s (Igor Tsvirko) every step, by contrast, embraced life from deep within. Dancing was his lifeline in bad times and an outlet for exuberant joy in good times. He loved women but also cynically utilized his charms. He 
couldn’t stop fondling the cabaret girls who suddenly turned up like a dispatch of Scheherazade’s harem. Life had taught him a pragmatic sort of wisdom that grounded him. Often, his spread-out arms asked, “What’s up?” or expressed an encouraging “Come on, buddy, do like me!” A clever mediator, he helped John navigate the locals’ rejection, yet he couldn’t prevent them from assassinating Marina since tradition forbade love affairs with outsiders. Thanks to Zorba, John overcame his grief and restored his optimism. Later, when Zorba’s wife—the elderly Madame Hortense (Alexandra Elagina), a lonely, former French cabaret dancer whom Zorba was coaxed to marry—died, it was John who lifted Zorba’s spirits.
Although the locals sometimes broke into a dance as joyful as a well in spring, their movements often reminded me of the work-hardened Cretans of Cacoyannis’s film when they cultivated their barren, stony land. The gestures of Massine’s Greek were straightforward and firm, their bodies proud and tense like high voltage wires. The men (wearing brown pants, white shirts, and suspenders) stepped gravely in line, stomped their feet, and hopped. The women (wearing simple, floor-length sundresses with wide skirts in muted brown, turquoise, and blue and matching headbands) walked gravely like sculptures, one arm held back, the other stretched forward. They often bent one knee sideways, their arms plowing the air as if grabbing onto the power of the earth. Arching their chests upward, they seemed to open their souls to heaven.
Marina was one of them, but her deep blue, subtly shiny dress indicated her depth. Caution and the pressure of traditions kept her sensuality under tight wraps, but her long, expressive arms betrayed her yearning. Every fiber of her body opposed Manolios, but she responded immediately to John’s interested glance. Gradually, her trust in him grew, and the moment she threw her widow’s veil away and changed into a mulberry red dress, it was clear that she had decided on John. The locals, above all Manolios, repeatedly separated them, their arms severing their embraces like a knife or battering ram. Manolios’s wrath was cold and calculating and thus especially dangerous. Marina couldn’t escape the folk who encircled her. She jumped only once, but then her head disappeared amidst the crowd. Her execution and the dissonant music that accompanied it were strongly reminiscent of the Chosen One’s sacrifice in Le Sacre du printemps.
Still dreaming of past glamour, Madame Hortense wore fishnets, a rose feather boa, and a purple hat on her red hair. As long as Zorba and John nurtured her fragile dream, she felt vital. Unlike in the film, where Zorba promised “Twenty meters of white satin covered in pearls” that he never delivered, the ballet’s Madam Hortense was presented with an extra-long, double wedding veil, a long pearl necklace, and a red rose that made her feel beautiful and loved. But the candle-holding procession that followed her and Zorba heralded her funeral. Once death approached, many shadow-like women grabbed Madame Hortense’s gauzy dress, leaving her in underwear (in the film, old, withered village women crouched next to Madame Hortense’s deathbed and grabbed everything that wasn’t nailed down the second she died). Sapped of all energy, she sat motionless, tears running down her huge, sad eyes. The only thing she clung to as she dropped dead in Zorba’s arms was his red handkerchief.
Set designer Viktor Gerasimenko created a Greek town that was by no means as dilapidated as the film’s Cretan mountain village. It lay invisible behind a solid, huge stone wall with three round-arched passages. The square in front of the wall was reserved for the dancers. They were framed by a choir of roughly one-hundred singers who stood on two staircases that connected the square with a catwalk on top of the wall. Imposing Greek statues (resembling the caryatids of Athens’ Erechtheion temple) at the top of the staircases reminded viewers that, however dramatic the goings-on, they would be minuscule compared to history. A huge, changing moon (video design by Dmitry Shamov) indicated the passing of time. At times, galaxies shone in the distance. When the locals blazed with anger, the sky turned burning red.
Theodorakis’s score was imbued with the passion of Greek folk music. It burst with joy, plunged into gloom, and throbbed with agitation. During its first solemn song, the choir, wearing monastic-like garbs, slowly stepped from the wall’s terrace downstairs and remained on the staircase for the entire performance. The two female protagonists, Marina and Madame Hortense, had singer doubles who accompanied the dancers from the terrace, their black caftans and headscarves almost merging with the darkness. Alina Sharipzhanova sang in Greek, and her voice reverberated with Marina’s inner life, whereas Elmira Kallimulina’s melancholic French love chanson encapsulated the alter ego of Madame Hortense.
Although both Zorba and John lost their loved ones, they regained their zest for life. Like the refreshing surge that replaced the mountain scenery in the background, their perspectives had changed. Cheered on by the locals, their arms linked for a final sirtaki (which, by the way, was created during the 1964 filming as a substitute for a dance the injured Anthony Quinn couldn’t perform and afterward became a symbol of Greece).
Midway into the curtain calls, Massine left the stage, surrounded the orchestra pit, and, from the first row of the auditorium, conducted an encore. Again, the high spirits from the sirtaki surged toward the audience, and Tsvirko and Ivenko outdid one another in double and triple saut de basque. As Anthony Quinn’s Zorba would have said, “It couldn’t have been more splendiferous!”
| Links: | Website of the Jalil Opera and Ballet Tartar State Academic Theatre | |
| Interview with Lorca Massine and rehearsals of Zorba the Greek (Television channel Efir, 2024) | ||
| Report about Zorba the Greek (Television channel Efir, 2024) | ||
| Report about Zorba the Greek at the Rudolf Nureyev International Classical Ballet Festival (Television channel Efir, 2024) | ||
| Kristina Andreeva-Zakharova on Zorba the Greek | ||
| The music of Zorba the Greek (Television channel Efir, 2024) | ||
| Photos: | (The photos show different casts from other performances.) | |
| 1. | “Zorba the Greek” by Lorca Massine, Tartar State Academic Ballet 2025 | |
| 2. | Ensemble, “Zorba the Greek” by Lorca Massine, Tartar State Academic Ballet 2025 | |
| 3. | Ensemble, “Zorba the Greek” by Lorca Massine, Tartar State Academic Ballet 2025 | |
| 4. | Wagner Carvalho (John) and ensemble, “Zorba the Greek” by Lorca Massine, Tartar State Academic Ballet 2025 | |
| 5. | Amanda Gomez (Marina) and ensemble, “Zorba the Greek” by Lorca Massine, Tartar State Academic Ballet 2025 | |
| 6. | Amanda Gomez (Marina) and Salavat Bulatov (John), “Zorba the Greek” by Lorca Massine, Tartar State Academic Ballet 2025 | |
| 7. | Kristina Andreeva-Zakharova (Marina) and Wagner Carvalho (John), “Zorba the Greek” by Lorca Massine, Tartar State Academic Ballet 2025 |
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| 8. | Anton Polodyuk (Manolios) and ensemble, “Zorba the Greek” by Lorca Massine, Tartar State Academic Ballet 2025 | |
| 9. | Kristina Andreeva-Zakharova (Marina), “Zorba the Greek” by Lorca Massine, Tartar State Academic Ballet 2025 | |
| 10. | Alexandra Elagina (Madame Hortense), “Zorba the Greek” by Lorca Massine, Tartar State Academic Ballet 2025 | |
| 11. | Salavat Bulatov (John), Lada Starkova (Madame Hortense), Mikhail Timaev (Zorba), and ensemble; “Zorba the Greek” by Lorca Massine, Tartar State Academic Ballet 2025 | |
| 12. | Mikhail Timaev (Zorba), Salavat Bulatov (John), and ensemble; “Zorba the Greek” by Lorca Massine, Tartar State Academic Ballet 2025 | |
| all photos © Tartar State Academic Ballet | ||
| Editing: | Kayla Kauffman |