Batuev’s Ballets “Geser” and “The Son of the Earth” Olga Iu. <...> Kolpetskaia* Krasnoyarsk State Institute of Art 22 Lenin Str., Krasnoyarsk, 660049, Russia Received 07.07.2015, received in revised form 18.09.2015, accepted 14.10.2015 This paper examines examples of professional choreographic art of Buryatia – Zhigzhit Batuev’s ballets “Geser” (1967) and “The Son of the Earth” (1972), created on the basis of national heroic epic (ьliger). <...> Connecting traditional methods of historical musicology with the techniques of literary analysis comprise a comprehensive approach to the study of folk and professional art. <...> Comparison of the folklore source based on realizing shamanic mythology’s plot motifs and images with the text of the libretto helped the researcher to identify the main stages in the dramatic development of ballets and reveal the specifi cs of the interpretation of national heroic and archaic epic in musical stage productions. <...> Keywords: Buryat heroic Epic of King Geser, shaman mythology, Zhigzhit Batuev, Namzhil Baldano. <...> The epos forms people’s knowledge about the historic past, while the main hero embodies the ideal mental representation of a nation about itself. <...> In the times when the Buryats created their the referral own school of composition, to the national heroic Epic of King Geser (hereinafter referred to as “Geser”) was quite reasonable. © Siberian Federal University. <...> All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: colpa69@mail.ru # 184 # The choice is explained by a special role of the epic cycle in the artistic tradition of the nation. <...> The epic cycle addresses the specifi cs of national thought, the character of society relationships, the peculiarities of a national paradigm and aesthetic representations of an ethnos, the distinct system of artistic images (see in detail: Belonosova, 2014). <...> When it appeared in extreme antiquity, the epic tale Ьliger (which is the general term given to tales and popular myths of the Mongols and Buryats) about the warrior Geser even today is an important part of spiritual culture of the nation. “The Hero of a time period” is not only libretto interpretation, ballet, Olga Iu. <...> The hero himself is also a historical or cultural event, as he is prominent and signifi cant for individuals and whole groups, as he may be an incarnation, a frontier, a center <...>