Event description
Sakartvelo National Ballet "Sukhishvili"
"The Eighth Wonder of the World" - this is what the international media called the Sukhishvili ensemble.
The ensemble's repertoire includes dances of different nationalities of Sakartvelo (Georgia), as well as theatrical performances, with Georgian folk instruments providing musical accompaniment.
The famous Kartvelian ensemble, the Sukhishvili National Folk Dance Ensemble, was founded in 1945 by Iliko Sukhishvili and Nino Ramishvili.
It was the first professional ensemble in Sakartvel. Before its foundation, folk dance as such did not exist, and thanks to the Sukhishvili family, the art of folk dance developed.
As early as 1948, the ensemble successfully toured Europe. At that time, it was called "the eighth wonder of the world". Today, the famous company is led by the third generation of a dynasty of choreographers.
Originally, the company was made up of 35 people; today, 100 dancers go on tour.
The ballet's current directors are trying to make the concert programme more contemporary. However, the ensemble's main repertoire is still the famous courtship dance, one of the symbols of Sakartvellian culture.
During its history, the National Ballet of Sakhartveld has undertaken more than 300 international tours, visited five continents and 88 countries, and performed some 25,000 concerts to an audience of around 90 million people worldwide.
Sukhishvili's four-week tour of Broadway has been hailed as the "best performance of the season". The National Ballet of Sakhkivel became the only dance company to set a world record on Milan's famous La Scala stage. The concert caused a sensation: the theatre curtain was lowered 14 times, breaking Enrico Caruso's record of 11 curtain drops.