FIRST LOVE: Shahryar with his beloved first wife. right: GROUP POSER: The performers with the dignitaries at Katara Drama Theatre.  Photos by Ray Toh

By Umer Nangiana

Even the most gruesome acts got lost in their dance moves. The king killed his beloved wife, one after another, and life moved on. So powerful in their dancing momentum, the king and his courtesans killed the ‘feel bad’ factor along with the charming souls. Absorbed in the dazzling beauty of their moves, even the audience shifted from the king’s one love affair to the other until Scheherazade emerged.

And this spell of the flickering bodies on stage, dancing through one of the most famous fables of Arabian Nights, lasted till the curtains fell. Featuring pieces composed by acclaimed Azerbaijani composer Fikret Amirov, the Donetsk National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre of Ukraine enthralled the Doha audience with their fairytale One Thousand and One Nights.

Mixed with the classical form, the Oriental ballet twirls performed by the Ukrainian artists set in a colourful milieu that was out of this world.

“This was an oriental story so they performed it in oriental fashion. They are professionals trained in multiple forms of dances,” Valeri Popov, the Assistant Choreographer of the group, told Community.

The story for the theatre is taken from the famous One Thousand and One Nights fairytale. From costumes, choreography and music to lights, everything was in perfect synchronisation throughout the powerful 80-minute performance.

Scenes changed and characters kept coming in and out; the flow never seized for even a moment. Popov said 35 members of the theatre group participated in the show. The performance was originally longer, about 180 minutes with a 15-minute break, but it was cut short to suite the taste of the Qatari audience.

Narrating what was happening in the moves of the dancers, the choreographer explained it in a synopsis. The protagonist, the ruler (known as Shahryar in the actual tale) catches his beloved wife cheating on him as he returns from the battlefield. Heartbroken and enraged, the king kills her, subsequently losing faith in all women.

In revenge, the ruler decides to marry many but kill them on the first night.  

In the ballet group’s modification of the fairytale, the king soon falls in love with another girl only to kill her, too. The killing spree stops when he finally meets Scheherazade, the daughter of his deputy. The clever girl evades death by telling the king a tale every night for one thousand nights until one night he gets convinced that she truly loves him and regains his faith — leading to a happy ending!

On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, but does not end it. The king, curious to know about how the story ends, is thus forced to postpone her execution in order to hear the conclusion. The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins a new one, and the king, eager to hear the conclusion, postpones her execution once again. And so it goes on for 1,001 nights.

“During the performance, we saw those different stories or tales that Scheherazade tells the king. At one time, he decides to test her character and fakes that he is going out to fight only to find that she remains faithful to her,” said Popov, explaining the variation in the story adopted for One Thousand and One Nights nights. Scheherazade essays the main role in the fairytales related to Arabian Nights.

One Thousand and One Nights is originally a collection of West and South Asian stories and folklores compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. In English, they are known as the Arabian Nights.

The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, South Asia and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian folklore and literature.

Many tales were originally folk stories from the Caliphate era, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hazar Afsan (a thousand tales).

In One Thousand and One Nights, Scheherazade, the lead character, narrates a set of tales to Sultan Shahryar over many nights. Many such tales are frame stories, such as the Tale of Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman being a collection of adventures. It is a ‘story within a story’ technique which can be traced back to earlier Persian and Indian storytelling traditions.

For the theatrical presentation, the Ukrainian theatre group chose to tell the tale through ballet dance. They mixed oriental style with the classical form to make the famous Arabian Nights’ tale look more authentic.

The common thread in all the editions of the tales is the initial story of Shahryar and his wife Scheherazade and the framing device incorporated throughout the tales themselves. The stories proceed from one original tale to some framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. They have been adapted for screen and stage multiple times in different parts of the world, carrying a decent following.

Popov, who himself was controlling lights in place of their regular lighting engineer who failed to show up for the last show in Doha, said that his group comes from a national theatre established in 1941 in Ukraine.

“The Theater has stable troupes, only the dancers have been changing over time,” said the choreographer adding that the group has performed all over the world including some major venues in Lebanon, Syria, Oman and United States in different shows.

Their most famous has been Swan Lake, he said. In the US, they liked the Nutcracker particularly in the days before Christmas. The Chinese audience appreciated the Swan Lake the most.

However, the group performed a special ballet performance in Norway, said Papov. The national theatre currently has 71 dancers who are trained by professionals in different dance forms at the theatre.

The Doha audience’s response was very positive to their first ever performance here and they were considering returning in October, said Papov. “In Doha, the audience was throughout supportive and the Katara Drama Theatre hall was a beautiful venue.