Unknown authorUnknown author — Archive Fund of "AzerTaj" Agency - Azerbaijan State Film and Photo DocumentsArchive · Public domain
Maiden Tower is a three-act ballet with prologue and epilogue, with music and libretto by Afrasiyab Badalbeyli, premiered on 18 April 1940 at the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater. The article identifies it as the first Azerbaijani ballet and the first ballet produced in the Muslim Eastern countries, built around the Baku legend of a khan's daughter imprisoned in a tower to keep her from her lover.
What is danced
The article gives almost no technical detail about what is actually danced: it states only the formal structure (three acts, a prologue and an epilogue) and a plot summary. There is no mention of named variations, pas de deux, mime scenes, character dance, or any specific step vocabulary in either the 1940 original or the 1999 revised version. A cast is named for the revival (Madina Aliyeva and Gulaghasi Mirzoyev 'danced the main parts') but no description of how the roles were danced accompanies it.
Context
The premiere in 1940 falls within the Soviet project of establishing national opera and ballet companies in each republic, staffed and trained through the imperial/Soviet ballet pedagogical lineage but built on local legend and, per the record, local choreographers and composer. The article's framing of the work as 'the first ballet in the Muslim Eastern countries' situates it as a landmark of that Soviet cultural-institution-building effort rather than as an outgrowth of an existing local ballet tradition.
Staging history
A revised version was staged on 24 October 1999, with a new libretto by Yulana Alikishizade that removed what the article calls the Soviet propaganda of the earlier version, and a revised score by Farhad Badalbeyli. In this version the ending was reworked to give the princess Gulyanag agency she lacked in 1940: rather than simply being imprisoned, she stalls her forced marriage by demanding the khan build her a tower first. Madina Aliyeva and Gulaghasi Mirzoyev danced the leads in the revival, with members of the Azerbaijan State Song and Dance Ensemble performing under Afag Malikova.
How to watch it
The article does not describe staging or choreography, so there is nothing here to guide attention to specific steps or technique. What can be watched for, based on the plot alone, is the divergence between the two textual versions at the same climactic moment — the heroine mistaking her lover's footsteps for the khan's and leaping to her death — and how a production signals, dramatically, whether she is fleeing (1940) or has already outwitted her captor (1999).
Credits
- composer: Afrasiab Badalbeyli