The youth of the Irakli Kemoklidze Day Center visited the Vakhtang Chabukiani Memorial House-Museum as part of an outreach. Integration project. Vakhtang Chabukiani (1910-1992) – was a Georgian dancer, ballet master and teacher, People’s Artist of the USSR, founder of Georgian professional ballet.
Chabukiani is considered a reformer of ballet art. He gave men’s dance its own significance. He created a heroic style of men’s dance. By combining ballet classics with Georgian folk dance, Chabukiani created a unique type of national classical ballet. The role of Othello, performed by Vakhtang Chabukiani, was a particular success, combining live dance and pantomime. The premiere of the play took place on March 12, 1958, at the Grand Theater, during the Decade of Georgian Art and Literature. “Othello” was recognized as a triumph of Georgian art. An enthusiastic Maya Plisetskaya noted: “The Moor embodied by Vakhtang Chabukiani is incomparable. His Othello expresses the greatest simplicity, naivety, and childish naivety combined with wisdom.”
Vakhtang Chabukiani staged his first concert number, “Fire Dance,” at the age of 15, and made his first appearance in heroic dances with the number “Fire Dance with Torches” (to the music of A. Rubinstein’s opera “Ferramorsi”), which he staged and performed for the graduation party of the Leningrad Choreographic School in 1929. In the same year, he was enrolled as a principal at the Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theater, where he performed thirty parts in both classical and modern ballets over ten seasons. Chabukiani’s performance at the New York Concert Hall “Carnegie Hall” made his name a legend. Chabukiani created the films “Masters of Georgian Ballet” (1955) and “Othello” (1961) based on his own scripts. He was a recipient of many orders and medals, and a laureate of all prestigious awards.
The Vakhtang Chabukiani Memorial House-Museum was officially opened on April 29, 2003, at 83/23 Davit Agmashenebeli Ave., Tbilisi. The great Georgian ballet master, dancer and teacher, founder of the Georgian ballet troupe, Vakhtang Mikheil Chabukiani, lived in this apartment from 1947 until his death on April 6, 1992. The renewed exposition of the Vakhtang Chabukiani Memorial House-Museum was symbolically opened on February 27, 2017, on the 107th birthday of Vakhtang Chabukiani.
The young people of the day center viewed the exhibits in the museum with great interest, were filled with impressions by the extraordinary guide of the museum, Nino Gabedava, with stories about the life and work of Vakhtan Chabukiani, video footage of ballet dances performed with great skill by Vakhtang Chabukiani, and fragments from performances. Many thanks to the management and employees of the Vakhtang Chabukiani Memorial House-Museum for their warm hospitality. This was another beautiful, unforgettable, and impressive day in the life of the young people of the Association, Ika-21, Irakli Kemoklidze 18+ Day Center for Persons with Disabilities.