St Petersburg Ballet Theatre's Giselle

Andrew Guild, Producer of Russia's St Petersburg Ballet Theatre, announced today that the forthcoming New Zealand tour by the renowned international ballet company has been cancelled.

"Regrettably, it's a fact of life that presenting high quality major international performing groups is an expensive and high risk business.

There's a lot of entertainment in the marketplace at present - tours by the Royal Shakespeare Company; the Royal New Zealand Ballet and others. The volume of productions seems to have quite simply affected our ticket sales and made our required targets just too difficult to achieve.

Rather than have the company play to houses that were not completely sold-out - as they usually are for the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre - I'd rather take the tour off and perhaps re-schedule for another time." said Mr Guild.

Guild, who has been working with major Russian ballet companies for close to 40 years and who has toured internationally with Baryishnikov, Nureyev and Fonteyn, and who presented the 2000 New Zealand sell-out tour by the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre confessed his disappointment in the tour cancellation.

"The St Petersburg Ballet Theatre recently completed two phenomenally successful tours of South Africa and had planned this four week tour prior to opening in Paris this October. It disappoints me that New Zealand audiences will not have the opportunity to see the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre company this year - but that's how it can go in our business. Next time around, it could well be the opposite."

Those ballet patrons who have already purchased tickets can obtain a full refund of the ticket price (including service fees) from the point of purchase.