About Watch Russia
Russia exports not only oil, gas, and wheat but also Russian ballet, our national treasure. We tell the story of how ballet, invented and brought to us by the French, became one of the pillars of Russianness and how the global myth of Russian ballet was built.
After Peter the Great, our compatriots rushed after civilized Europe by all means possible, more often through a window than a door, more haphazardly and randomly than scientifically or systematically. At least, this is how the history of Russian ballet looks.
In 1738, Jean-Baptiste Landé, a dance teacher hired at St. Petersburg educational institutions, submitted to Empress Anna Ioannovna a project for a permanent dance school at court. Nowadays it is called the Vaganova Ballet Academy. Not having made a successful career, the Frenchman was looking for a reliable refuge in a rich but culturally isolated province, as Russia was on the cultural map of Europe. Studies began at the Winter Palace, with no planned curriculum or regular graduations as we understand them today. Yet, in 1764, Austrian ballet master Franz Hilferding, serving in St. Petersburg, considered it feasible to take one of his students, Timofey Bublikov, back to Vienna. Apparently, he was the first Russian ballet dancer ever to receive an international engagement.
From that time on, Russian talents occasionally shone in Europe. Paris, the capital of ballet civilization, saw performances by Elena Andreyanova, Marfa Muravyeva, and Maria Surovshchikova-Petipa. Meanwhile, Russia itself remained a provincial outpost waiting impatiently for new Parisian ballet productions from Zéphire et Flore to Sylphide, from Giselle to Coppélia. They enthusiastically welcomed visiting superstar ballerinas ranging from Marie Taglioni to Pierina Legnani. As a rule, these stars reached Moscow and St. Petersburg toward the end of their careers, seeking a second youth. Or they followed the path of dance-master Landé, as did Marius Petipa, for example.
Petipa, the main French figure in Russian ballet, belonged to a big artistic clan, remaining overshadowed in his native France by his older brother Lucien. Additionally, he faced international legal prosecution when he abducted young Doña Villegarcía from her family home in Madrid. He found a second home and posthumous glory in Russia. Over half a century, he effectively transformed the imperial troupe into an author’s theatre. Marius Petipa was the first person to deliberately build up the myth of great Russian ballet, through the myth about himself. His late memoirs are literally auto-mythology: researchers have proven that they contain numerous fabrications and deliberate distortions. But what pride and grandeur there is in the narration, the ideal biography of an ideal artist-courtier!
Until the beginning of the 20th century, Russian ballet built by Petipa was unknown worldwide. When Sergei Diaghilev showcased modern Russian art and music in Europe during the mid-1900s, Russian opera proved too costly to transport. So, he took a gamble and brought contemporary Russian ballet to Paris. Until then, Imperial Ballet performances had been restricted exclusively to St. Petersburg and Moscow, allowing only private out-of-season tours. Stationary companies did not generally tour internationally until halfway through the 20th century, each serving its local audience. Ballet, despite being lighthearted, was difficult to mobilize. Diaghilev made it international, mobile, and fashionable. This marked the turning point, the moment when the myth of Grand Russian Ballet emerged.
From 1909 to 1910, when Diaghilev’s enterprise was still known as Les Saisons Russes, oriental themes dominated: eastern influences, Polovtsian-Tatar brutality, Firebird as Shemakhan Tsaritsa. Soon enough, the wellspring of titles ran dry. There remained choreographer Michel Fokine, artists Alexandre Benois and Léon Bakst, along with stage stars such as Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, and Vaslav Nijinsky. Composers, who considered ballet a dubious craft, needed to be found. The most important composer turned up in St. Petersburg: 30-year-old Igor Stravinsky. Then Diaghilev, renaming his company Les Ballets Russes, started inventing the phenomenon called Russian ballet. The further it went, the less russe was left in Les Ballets Russes. Ideas and plots might refer to a distant homeland: Le Sacre du Printemps, L’Histoire d’un Clown, Les Noces, but their realization came from European collaborators. Toward the end of the company’s existence, even the plots became universal: Romeo and Juliette, Apollon Musagète, Prodigal Son. All subsequent company choreographers originated from the former Russian Empire: Poles Nijinsky and Nijinska, Muscovite Massine, Georgian Balanchivadze abbreviated as Balanchine. Yet, in the 20-year Diaghilev adventure, despite the word “ballets” being in the name, the central figure was neither the choreographer nor the dancer but rather the painter or composer.
In Russia, almost nothing was seen of Diaghilev’s repertoire; people merely heard loud rumours. Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment Anatoly Lunacharsky initiated negotiations for the troupe to visit the USSR. In 1929, Diaghilev died unexpectedly, while cosmopolitan aesthete Lunacharsky lost his position: the revolutionary fervour dissipated, and the Iron Curtain was brought down. Our Ballets Russes became enemy territory. Companies sprouting like mushrooms in place of Diaghilev’s flooded Europe initially before spreading across both Americas. They lived off past glories, few managing to achieve any original success. Nevertheless, the chain reaction could not be stopped; everyone wanted the same-old Russian ballet. If you couldn’t buy it, you could create your own. Dancers took lessons from Russian émigrés, adopted Russified pseudonyms. To survive, ballet masters sold what was securely stored in muscles, adapting Giselle and Swan Lake to current performer numbers and stage dimensions.
Both branches of Russian ballet, émigré selection and Soviet mutation, met again during the period of the thaw. This marks the second critical juncture for the Russian-ballet myth. Dance became a diplomatic tool. In 1956, the Bolshoi Theatre embarked on its first foreign tour, to London. The following year, Parisians brought ballets directed by their former leader, white emigrant Serge Lifar, and another fugitive, George Balanchine. Our people went to Paris and New York. For the Paris Opera, choreographer Vladimir Bourmeister staged Swan Lake. In 1963, the New York City Ballet Company arrived in the Soviet Union, led by Balanchine, the actual creator of American classical dance, the new Petipa. The overseas ballet he nurtured was genetically linked to the Imperial one and it seemed more convincing, vital, and dance-focused compared to the Stalinist “choreodrama” and thaw-era “choreographic symphonism”, always literary and instructive. Balanchine’s ballets rarely retold anything and never taught any moral lesson, they offered dance experience as a self-contained source of emotion.
Soviet touring programmes necessarily included pre-revolutionary classics, naturally modified, and recent achievements, from The Fountain of Bakhchisarai to Spartacus. The Soviet press did not report on this but Europeans, and especially Americans, viewed our drama-ballets with scepticism. They saw them, not without reason, as distorted echoes of grand royal spectacles. “It was a ‘recitative’ ballet, whereas our eye expects arias,” declared British critic Arnold Haskell. Both the Soviets themselves and Western observers agreed: genuine Russian ballet was the pre-Soviet ballet, miraculously preserved in the early years of Bolshevism. It retained noble titles. Behind Swan Lake, mandatory on foreign tours from the 1960s, loomed a pre-barbaric past, giving it special weight. In Moscow and Leningrad, they understood this very well, though they did not come out with it in public.
During the stagnation period, foreign tours also became a way to earn money. New Soviet choreography nearly disappeared from touring programmes, leaving just swans. Domestic culture, suffering from nostalgia and envy of the West since the time of Peter the Great, accepted the overseas choice as its own. Soviet ballet here identified itself with Swan Lake, loved abroad.
When winds changed direction once again, the country began recovering its losses with Ostap Bender-like flair. Immediately after Balanchine’s death in 1983, Georgians staged their fellow countryman’s ballets, without official approval from The George Balanchine Trust. The trick was repeated in Sverdlovsk and Perm. Back then, it was called “setting from cassette”, meaning copying dances directly from pirated VHS recordings. In 1989, licensed Balanchine productions appeared at the Kirov (Mariinsky) Theatre, and Leningrad brazenly travelled to New York with them, like bringing coal to Newcastle. (similarly, the Bolshoi Theatre decided to surprise the British with a Shakespeare-inspired ballet: Romeo and Juliet with Galina Ulanova in 1956.) Strangely enough, Americans greeted Russian Balanchine with enthusiasm, here’s how they supposedly appreciated their native son’s interpretation.
After regime change in Russia, specialists in restoring Diaghilev’s repertoire emerged. The newly revived Firebirds and Scheherazades resembled the originals just as much as the rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Saviour matched its pre-Revolution prototype. Only in the 2000s did foreign guardians of the Diaghilev heritage officially collaborate with Russia: Nijinsky’s authentic Le Sacre du Printemps, Bronislava Nijinska’s true Les Noces and Leonid Massine’s La Boutique Fantasque were performed for the first time. Russian Ballets now arrive as elite imports.
Russian theatres, both large and small, and the specially formed National Imperial State Ballets with ensembles of ten dancers, continue taking abroad Golden Classics adapted hundreds of times over a hundred years. The new Russian creations were met with a lukewarm reception abroad. Foreign audiences continue adoring Russian stars: domestic ballet schools face tough challenges globally yet regularly produce exceptional, precious artists. Within the country, those on both sides of the proscenium remain fervent believers in the old myths, those hold our youth and strength, like Koschei’s needle hidden inside an egg itself inside a duck. An economy based on these myths remains strong. If it seems futile to argue against this situation, let us compose new live and humanistic ballets instead. Russians know how to do this and, although the East and West have not yet embraced them, we ourselves must not overlook them.