"Bolt" was born on April 8, 1931 at Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theatre (later renamed after S. Kirov). This ballet followed Dmitry Shostakovich’s “first born” ballet " The Golden Age " which had appeared on the same stage in 1930. Straight after it was premiered, Shostakovich’s second piece was withdrawn from the repertoire, and the balletmaster Fedor Lopukhov came in for a lot of severe criticism on the part of the press, in fact, it was obstruction. Critics were particularly damning about the modern " industrial " ballet finding serious discrepancies between its music and staging, libretto and choreography. Nevertheless they favourably noted that the music was melodious and extremely rich in tunes (Shostakovich borrowed many of the motifs from music hall and variety theatre) and brilliantly orchestrated. Small wonder, it was difficult even for the talented and inventive Lopukhov to show human relationships of the factory workers by means of dancing.

Actually, the libretto is based on a real fact that took place at the factory “Krasny Oktyabr”. Victor Smirnov, a librettist-layman and the then director of the Moscow Art Theatre, borrowed the story from life when he was visiting the factory club. A hooligan and loafer Lyonka Gulba (in Russian “Gulba” means ‘idler’), seeking revenge for his having been sacked, talks a teenager into putting a bolt into the machine-tool to spoil it. The suspicion is on Boris, foreman of the factory best team. But fortunately, the teenager can’t put up with the injustice and reveals Gulba’s treacherous plans. The hooligan is unmasked and isolated. The suspect Boris is acquitted and reunites with his beloved Olga, factory komsomol leader. At the factory club the story comes to its “ happy end ” and there the participants dance final ‘divertissement’.

The premiere was danced by Lopukhov’s “blue-eyed girl” a virtuoso dancer Olga Mungalova and Boris Shavrov, a versatile dancer and actor. Probably, the main heroes of the ballet bear the names of the first performers. Leonid Leontiev, the unforgettable Petrushka (Punch) of Leningrad stage, danced the role of Lyonka Gulba. Konstantin Sergeev, the future leading actor of Kirov Ballet, did the supporting part of ‘Uzbek’. Tatiana Bruni’s sets and costumes were extremely witty and grotesque. The three-act piece was saturated with characters drawn in a satirical way. Among them there were Workers, Drunkards and ‘Budyonovtsy’ (Revolutionary leader Budyonny’s soldiers), the Bureaucrat, the Opportunist, Komsomol Members and Clergymen. The authors tried to transfer the spirit of the industrialisation epoch; therefore they put into dancing even spinning machines in operation as well as gymnastic and military exercises. However, the principle of naturalism was taken by critics as a parody, as uttermost misunderstanding of the socialist reality. The newspaper headlines speak for themselves - "A Phony Bolt", "The Bolt" and Chatty Formalists "(The Russian headline is based on a pun). Not a single article attributed “ The Bolt " to a satirical genre. The creators were accused of being too indulgent with the negative characters while the positive ones looked schematic and unimpressive. The announced performances of "Bolt" were urgently replaced with " Don Quixote ". Fyodor Lopukhov had to quit. Later he created a ballet troupe at the Maly Opera Theatre where in April 1935, where he was to mount the third and the last of Shostakovich’s ballets " The Bright Stream".

Decades later Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducted Stockholm Philarmony Orchestra playing "Bolt". This unique C D recording was issued in 1995. Some pieces of the ballet score were sometimes included into concert programs and the sketches of the sets and costumes were displayed at exhibitions and published in albums.

Once "Bolt" appeared in Yury Grigorovich’s portfolio. In April, 1987, the Bolshoi theatre circular paper “ Soviet Actor " informed its readers that the team was rehearsing the crowd scenes of the ballet and the production had been included in the plan of 1998. The article had a photo of Irek Muhamedov and the troupe rehearsing. The ballet can also be found in the album " Yury Grigorovich" issued in 1987. The theatre old-timers recollect that Grigorovich made up choreography for 40 minutes of the ballet music. But for some reasons the work was never premiered.

Now "Bolt" is to be born again. Alexei Ratmansky has made up his mind to give it a second life shortly after his " Bright Stream" enjoyed so much success. To reanimate the well-forgotten ballet Ratmansky edited the Soviet epoch libretto, invited as co-authors two well-established Petersburgers Semyon Pastukh (stage designer) and Gleb Filshtinsky (light designer). The Conductor-Co-Producer Pavel Sorokin is working on the new version of the ballet score, because eight pieces of "Bolt" music had already been used by Ratmansky when reviving " The Bright Stream ". Yet the cast hasn’t been finally decided on, Maria Allash, Ekaterina Shipulina, Anastasia Yatsenko, Vladimir Neporozhny, Alexandr Volchkov, Dmitri Belogolovtsev, Denis Savin and Ruslan Skvortsov were invited to start rehearsing.

The ballet will be premiered on the New Stage on the 25th, 26th of February and 7th and 8th of March.