State Academic Folk Dance Ensemble Faizi Gaskarov

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

State Academic Folk Dance Ensemble Faizi Gaskarov is a professional folk dance company based in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia. It began in 1936–1938 from students of the Bashkir Theater School and amateur performers at the United Theaters of the Bashkir ASSR, and in 1938 was reorganized as the Bashkir Song, Dance and Music Ensemble under the Bashkir State Philharmonic. On 11 March 1939, Faizi Adgamovich Gaskarov, a student of Igor Moiseev, became the artistic director and shaped the group's future; this date is regarded as the ensemble’s birthday. In 1940 Gaskarov joined the Bashkir State Folk Dance Ensemble, and the troupe first toured Bashkortostan that summer. Early 1941 saw him study in Moscow at the Decade of Bashkir Literature and Art. The ensemble gained all-Union fame after the Moscow decade in 1955. In 1988 the group was named after Faizi Gaskarov. In 1991 it separated from the Philharmonic and became a legal entity under its current name. In 1994 it toured abroad to the USA and Turkey. In December 1996 the Russian Ministry of Culture awarded it the title Academic, and in 2007 it opened its own venue. The ensemble performs classical pieces, folk tunes, hymns, operatic arias and popular music, and has been active since 11 March 1939.