A scene from the Mariinsky's production of Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake (left). The "father" of Russian dance Marius Petipa (right). (Large jpgs - 38/24K)
So you have come to St Petersburg for Easter, for the history, architecture and, of course, the Russian ballet. But where did Russian ballet come from?
Like the city of St Petersburg, ballet in Russia was created by foreigners and yet it is most definitely "Russian".
In the 17th century ballet was introduced into Russia by the second Romanov ruler Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich (1629-1676, reigned from 1645) for his wedding festivities.
Peter the Great (1672-1725, reigned from 1682) took a personal interest in dancing at his court by bringing in Western dances and taking part in them himself. With the help of his prisoners from the Swedish wars -- the Swedish officers -- he taught his courtiers.
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.
The formal beginning of Russian ballet can be traced back to a letter written in 1737 to the Empress Anne (1693-1740, reigned from 1730) by the teacher of gymnastics at the Imperial Cadet School. The letter states:
"I humbly ask Your Majesty that I shall be given twelve children -- six males and six females -- to create ballets and theater dances using twelve persons of comic and serious character. These pupils, by the end of the first year ,will dance with cadets; in two years they will execute different dances; in three years they will not be less than the best of foreign dancers. "
The request by Frenchman Jean Batiste Lande (died 1748 in St Petersburg) was granted on May 15, 1738 and the first Russian school of dancing was given two rooms in the Old Winter Palace. Imperial patronage always ensured that ballet in Russia remained a vigorous art form. Successive tsars invited foreign ballet masters to develop the art. The history of the Russian ballet consists of the gradual absorption of this foreign knowledge by the Russians themselves until the art became indigenous.
For example, in 1765 Catherine the Great brought the Italian dancer-composer-choreographer Domenico Angiolini (1731-1803) to St Petersburg. Angiolini composed the first heroic Russian ballet Semira in 1772. He was one of the first choreographers to move away from ballet as a divertissement, a mere history in costume, to a psychological drama.
Charles-Louis Didelot (1767-1837) was the "father of the Russian ballet." He was invited to St Petersburg by Paul I. Didelot said that "ballet is an action explained by a dance" and from this premise created a plasticity of movement free from the conventionalities of baroque ballet, using effective changes of scenery, and combining the dance of soloists and the corps de ballet which prompted the developments of ensemble dance in the Romantic period.
In 1828 Didelot created the Prisoner of the Caucasus from the poem by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) thereby laying one of the first foundations of Russian ballet; the choreographic illustration of national literature. Throughout the 19th century, however, Russian posters advertising ballet performances, still gave star billing to foreign dancers. Moreover, the music for ballets was also composed by foreigners.
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 (1766-1819) became the first native ballet master when appointed director of the Imperial School in 1794.
He composed ballets in the Sentimentalist style, dramatizing the lives of humble people, praising virtue and condemning vice.
The distinct style of a Kirov dancer can be traced back to the 1840s when three foreign dancers (Christian Johansson, Jules Perrot - the founder of Romantic ballet - and Marius Petipa) came to St Petersburg. Both as dancers and ballet masters, they each of them had their own style which would be absorbed into the Russian classical technique.
Christian Johansson (1817-1903), a Dane, inculcated a strict pure technique that formed the basis of the Russian classical style for both men and women (he was the teacher of Anna Pavlova and Vatslav Nijinsky.)
But by the late 19th century ballet in Russia was a stagnant form where the virtuoso demonstration of classical technique had become an end in itself while the narrative was enlivened only by character dances.
It was Frenchman, Marius Petipa (1818-1910), who decisively refashioned this failing art form, structuring the haphazard tradition he had inherited, making a virtue of what would later be seen as its weakness - the deliberate lack of dramatic unity.
His most important and characteristic work produced a choreographic symphonizm that can still be seen in Raimonda and The Sleeping Beauty, the peak of the Russian classical style.
It was the lack of quality symphonic music that had hitherto prevented a complete unification with the increasing complexities of ballet movement. It was Petipa who introduced the strict proportions between mime and dance, and established the ensembles of the corps de ballet and the precise rules for the order of dancing in a pas de deux.
A performance at the Mariinsky or Mussorgsky is the summation of these many and varied influences, but there is nevertheless something very "Russian" about it.
A scene from the Mariinsky's production of Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake (left). The "father" of Russian dance Marius Petipa (right). (Large jpgs - 38/24K)