About Us

It is a great joy for us to host the Bolshoi Theatre Ballet Company at the Monaco Dance Forum. The Bolshoi, which for over two centuries has made a vast contribution to the world history of dance, will present The Taming of the Shrew in Monaco. The Taming of the Shrew which I recently created for the Bolshoi Theatre (the Moscow première was on July 4), is now to be shown on the Grimaldi Forum stage and I am proud that it is with this very ballet that the Year of Russia in Monaco will open.

Our collaboration with the Bolshoi Theatre was a most intriguing story and I hope that the dancers derived as much pleasure from participating in it, as I did. A totally new venture for all of us: it was the first time, after all, that the Bolshoi Theatre had invited a foreign choreographer to create a full-length narrative ballet and it was the first time in twenty years that I had produced a ballet for a company other than for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo.

I would like to thank Sergei Filin whose suggestion it was that I choreograph The Taming of the Shrew and likewise Vladimir Urin who helped us realize the project. In addition to which I am very grateful to Principality of Monaco and, in particular, to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Hanover, for it is to her patronage of the art of dance and to her love of beauty that I owe this extraordinary page in my career as choreographer.

Jean-Christophe Maillot
Chief Choreographer of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo