THE REVIVED SHADOWS OF QOBUSTAN

Qobustan. Grey colours, sky, rocks and earth. On the rocks there are mysterious shapes and silhouettes. These are ancient drawings. They depict hunting and ritual scenes. It is dark. The action is opened by the "stony" sounds of the "gavaldas". Rocks of fantastic shape are vaguely outlined against the background of the night sky. Looking more closely, you realize that the rocks are like the petrified bodies of giants connected in a large mosaic group. Soon it starts to move. It is a group of primitive people, struggling with the cold. People stretch out their hands to the fire, which crackles merrily in the hearth. Fire is warmth and life. People are aware of their dependence on fire and take care of it...

This is how the ballet "Shadows of Qobustan" looked in front of the guests of the World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue held in Baku on 31 May.

Under the open sky of Qobustan, the guests witnessed an extraordinary and unprecedented ballet written by Honoured Artist Professor Farac Qarayev in 1969. But in Qobustan, among the rocks and evening shadows, it was shown for the first time. The ballet was staged by renowned British choreographer Maxine Braham.

The unconventional approach to this one-act choreographic poem was met with great interest by the guests and was followed by thunderous applause. "Bravo!" - shouted the authoritative audience, which had gathered in Baku to discuss the dialogue between cultures. The idea of the ballet is to show how the chaos of the subconscious is overcome in a primitive ancestor by the public consciousness in communion with nature and the struggle for its conquest by man. There is no ethnography in music. Anxious, deaf and ringing percussion instruments, the virtuoso passages of wind instruments, the fragile beauty of the melodies and the extensive polyphony of the score are all associated with the images of "audible nature" and are subordinate to the task of "the birth of man". Formed throughout the whole piece in emotional brightness and national certainty, it triumphs in the final "Yalli".

Before viewing the ballet, the forum participants were introduced to the Qobustan National Historical-Artistic Reserve. It was emphasized that Qobustan is one of the oldest places of human habitation of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods on the territory of Azerbaijan. The famous gavaldas ("tambourine stone"), which is a kind of "musical instrument" used by primitive people, was very interesting for the guests.

The Qobustan National Historical-Artistic Reserve was included on the World Heritage List of UNESCO and became the winner of the "Museum of the Year in Europe" competition in 2013.