Moidodyr to music by Efrem Podgaits has been waiting for a long time for its premiere. As early as in 1989 a choreographer Gennady Malkhasyants and a composer Efrem Podgaits had an idea of creating  ​​a ballet on Korney Chukovskiy's poem. 19 years later Podgaits' score won a contest for the best music piece for children, held by the Bolshoi Theatre but the choreographer Malkhasyants had already passed away, and the project was suspended. Only in 2012, the Bolshoi's administration returned to this idea and invited Yury Smekalov to produce the ballet. Smekalov described his first full-lenght ballet Moidodyr as a"youth thriller." Dropping out the subtexts of Chukovskiy’s tale, he focused on the plot, where he found many things that can scare a child: for example, an appearance of the living basin in a bedroom. As compared with the tale, the ballet includes a lot of new characters, there are Raindrops kids, Stocking, Anna Akhmatova, - Smekalov has given to each of them their own plastic movement. Writing the libretto choreographer coworked with leading Russian psychologists, and invited designer Andrei Sevbo familiar with the design of children's ballets. 

Moidodyr attracts the eye with its rave of colour and diversity of dances. The lines of Chukovsky’s poem are sung and read from the stage. Moidodyr was the first Yury Smekalov’s experience of the large form production, his first ballet for children produced in collaboration with the composer. The protagonist of the ballet is a wayward and naughty boy Piggy-wiggy who does not obey his parents and refuses to take a bath.  A Wizard (Chukovsky) comes to the rescue of Mama and Papa and at night animates all the objects in the kid’s bedroom. But it’s not the fear that changes Piggy-wiggy, but the love to the Wizard’s niece Fresh as Daisy.