Russian ballet

Russian Ballet

There is a mention of Russian dancers at the French court of Louis XIV, when some ‘Muscovites’ came to learn the art, and displeased their teachers by their lack of attention.

In the 17th century, ballet was introduced into Russia by the second Romanov ruler, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (1629 – 1676) at his wedding festivities. Peter the Great (1672 – 1725) took a personal interest in the dancing at his court by bringing in Western dances and taking part in them himself. With the help of his prisoners – Swedish officers captured in The Northern Wars – he taught his courtiers.

The formal beginning of Russian ballet can be traced back to a letter written in 1737 to the Empress Anne (1693 – 1740) by the teacher of dancing at the Cadet School. The request of Jean-Baptiste Lande, a Frenchman, was granted on May 15, 1738, and the first Russian School of Dancing (later the Imperial School) was given two rooms in the Old Winter Palace.

The dissemination of ballet in Russia and its deep-rooted appeal to all Russians, can be traced back to those nobles who, often living so far away from the capital, commanded their own entertainment, setting up ballet troupes often composed of serfs who had been trained at the Imperial School. However, such troupes were expensive to maintain; moreover, from time to time the most talented dancers were either presented or sold to the Imperial theatres. This, and economics, caused these troupes to die out by the early 19th century.

From the mid-18th century, St Petersburg was regularly visited by ballet-masters and dancers from all over Europe. Such imperial patronage always ensured that ballet in Russia remained a vigorous art form.

The Empress Elizabeth (1709 – 1761) called in the Austrian ballet-master Hilverding to “perfect and renew the ballet.” Hilverding brought his entire troupe with him (some of whom later joined the Russian Imperial Ballet), and worked in Russia from 1759 to 1764, presenting some twenty mimed ballets which often included ‘low’ types – peasants, craftsmen – who performed appropriate character dances.

The history of the Russian ballet consists of the gradual absorption of this foreign knowledge by the Russians themselves until the art is indigenous.

In 1765 Catherine the Great (17?? – 17??) invited to her Court the Italian dancer-composer-choreographer Domenico Angiolini. A pupil of Hilverding, Angiolini was a man with a controversial reputation having worked with the reforming opera composer Gluck.

Angiolini composed the first heroic Russian ballet Semira, after the patriotic tragedy by Sumarokov, and his Refuge of Virtue marked the apearance of the first notable Russian male dancer , Timofei Bublikov, a pupil of the Oranienbaum Academy of Dancing founded by the ballet-loving Tsar Peter III (1728 – 1762, reigned from 1761). Angiolini was one of the first choreographers to move away from ballet as a divertissement, a mere story in costume, to a ‘psychological’ drama.

These developments in narrative style and content, however, ended abruptly with the arrival of Charles le Picq who worked in Russia from 1786 to 1798. He was a master of the baroque ballet, rich in decoration and pageantry, but often colourless in choreography. Such didactic ballets as The Initial Governing of Oleg, based on a scenario by Catherine the Great, and lavishly staged at the Hermitage Theatre, are an example of the demands of the Court keeping ballet alive yet limiting the scope for development, for imperial tastes were conservative.

Charles Didelot (1767 – 1837), ‘Father of the Russian Ballet,’ was invited to St Petersburg by the unstable Tsar Paul I, and in the ten years he worked in Russia we can see the true beginnings of the Russian Romantic tradition. Didelot’s choreography
inaugurated the contrasting scenes of dreams and reality, his scenery changes were markedly effective, above all his plasticity of dance freed the ballet of its baroque limitations, often combining the dancing of soloists, coryphees and the corps de ballet into an ensemble movement.

In 1828 Didelot created the Prisoner of the Caucasus, after the poem by Pushkin, thereby laying another foundation of the Russian ballet, the choreographic illustration of national literature. In his turn Pushkin in his poem Eugene Onegin memorialised the Russian ballerina Avdotia Istomina dancing on the newly fashionable pointe.

Throughout the 19th century, however, Russian posters advertising ballet performances still gave star billing to foreign dancers. Moreover, the music for ‘Russian’ ballet was also composed by foreigners, such as the prolific Pugni and Minkus. Similarly, there was foreign rule in the classroom right up to the beginning of the 20th century, a monopoly only briefly interrupted when Ivan Valbergh became the first native ballet-master when appointed director of the Imperial School in 1794. He created some 36 ballets in the sentimental style, dramatising the lives of humble people, and daring to reflect real events on stage: in 1812 his Love for the Fatherland so inflamed the spectators that many went directly from the theatre to the recruiting office to enlist against Napoleon.

The distinct style of the Russian ballet that we see today can be traced back to the mid-19th century when a number of influential foreign dancers came to Russia.

Christian Johansson (1817 – 1903) a Dane, came to St Petersburg in 1841 as a guest artist, and stayed for the rest of his life. As a teacher he inculcated a strict pure technique that formed the basis of the Russian classical style for both men and women (he was the teacher of Agrippina Vaganova, Mathilde Kschessinskaya, Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky).

When Jules Perrot (1810 – 1892), a Frenchman, came to St Petersburg in 1848, his arrival marked the decisive foundation of Romanticism in Russian ballet, incorporating the use of contrasts in character, for example in La Esmeralda where the street scenes give way to a brilliant ball. Some of his best works are still in the repertoire of the Mariinsky Theatre, including Pas de quatre and Giselle.

Lev Ivanov (1834 – 1901) was overshadowed throughout his career by Marius Petipa but his work included the beautiful white scenes in The Nutcracker and a highly innovative reworking of Act II of Swan Lake in which the obstacle to the happiness of Siegfried and Odile is not caused by outer circumstances but from within their psychological circumstances.

Elsewhere in Europe ballet was in decline, and Russia was not immune; the career of Arthur Saint-Leon epitomised this stagnation; he was a man with a faculty for adaptation but little imagination; he is remembered today for Coppelia and The Little Humpbacked Horse, ballets still danced today.

It was Frenchman, Marius Petipa, who decisively refashioned this failing art form, structuring the still haphazard tradition he inherited from Perrot and Saint-Leon. Petipa came to St Petersburg as a dancer in 1847, and only much later in 1869 did he become ballet-master of the Russian Imperial Ballet.

As a choreographer Petipa gave much of his attention to the passages for soloists, tailoring each step to suit their capabilities, and consciously shaping these steps upon the structural forms of the music which he always chose with care, most successfully so with Tchaikovsky. It was Petipa who introduced the strict proportions between mime and dance, established the ensembles of the corps de ballet and the precise rules
for the order of dancing in a pas de deux. His most successful work produced a choreographic symphonism that can still be seen in Raymonda and The Sleeping Beauty, the peak of the Russian classical style.