Askold Makarov, artistic director of the St Petersburg State Academic Ballet, outside the Mariinsky Theater.
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Tucked away through a shabby, jaded courtyard off Ulitsa Mayakovskaya is one of St Petersburg's most precious gems.
For here is the prestigious St Petersburg State Academic Ballet Theater -- housed in a yellow, crumbling building that has seen better times.
Within these walls, some of today's finest dancers are being trained under the fatherly eye of theater director Askold Makarov, in his time one of the most talented dancers at the Kirov (Mariinsky) Ballet.
His superb classic ballet troupe -- one of the finest in the world -- was founded in 1966. Since then it has toured not only throughout the major cities in the former Soviet Union but also in more than 50 countries worldwide, including the United States, Japan, France and Malta.
Makarov has been its artistic director since the death of former artistic director and noted Soviet choreographer Leonid Jacobson in 1976.
Jacobson was the mastermind behind the idea of creating short, one-act ballets called "Choreographic Miniatures" using ideas taken from famous artists such as Marc Chagall, Alexander Blok and Auguste Rodin.
A tall and imposing man, Makarov found fame at the Kirov from 1943 onwards when he took lead roles in "Swan Lake," "La Bayadere," "The Red Poppy" and "The Spring Tale."
Today, as he sits confidently behind his large mahogany desk at 15 Mayakovskaya Ulitsa, he has good reason to feel proud. He is grooming former pupils from the famous Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet for the heights and has been the godfather to such young talents as Natalia Bashkirtsva, Andrei Ivanov, Emyl Faskhutdinov, Yelena Chokina and Viktor Yefimov.
The troupe has a busy summer planned, with gala performances at the Alexandrinsky and Mariinsky Theaters and the Hermitage Theater until the end of June and throughout July.
Dancers on pointe -- a scene from the ballet "Shurale."The line-up includes such famous classics from ballet's silver century as "Spartak," "Chopiniana," "Shche-herazade," "Swan Lake," "Shurale" and "Giselle."
"I have known and danced with them all: Nureyev, Barishnikov, Moiseyeva, Makarova, Mezentseva and Osipenko," said Makarov, as he sat elegantly in his armchair and lit up cigarette -- an action which in itself seemed to be a classical pose.
"Of course things have changed now since the collapse of communism -- in some ways for the better and in others for the worse," he added.
"Now we can perform what we like, not just the repertoire of classics which were allowed by the Party. I'm very interested in some of the modern dance choreographers which sprang up in the 1920s but which were forbidden here, -- Diaghilev, Nijinsky and Nijinskaya -- and now we can tour even more than we were allowed before and have greater freedom," he said.
On the other hand, it's not so easy now to get adequate funding to run the troupe, and extensive tours are necessary to make ends meet. The ballet dancers have an exhaustive schedule most days: an hour or two of exercises and tuition under the master in the morning, followed by four hour-long rehearsals in the afternoon before taking the stage for the evening's performance.
It's a gruelling regime, but then all the dancers were well prepared from an early age at the Academy of Russian Ballet or Vaganova School.
Throughout June and July the St Petersburg State Ballet Academy will perform what is perhaps the greatest of all Russian dance classics -- Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake."
A ballet in four acts, with choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, the story line is taken from a fairytale. Prince Siegfried is expected to marry but meets and falls in love with the Swan Queen Odette -- the victim of an evil magician who turns her into a swan by day, while by night she is a beautiful maiden. The tale ends in tragedy when the helpless lovers realize the only way of breaking the evil spell is death. Rather than live without each other, the pair throw themselves off a cliff into a lake below to be united in eternity.
Ironically, when the ballet was first performed at the Bolshoy Theater in 1877 it was a flop. Much of the music was then considered unsuitable for dancing and the choreography and scenery were poor.
It was not until innovative choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov cut the original into bits and added their own inspiration that the ballet became a hit in 1895 when it was performed at the Mariinsky Theater.
Wednesday, June 28 sees a production of "Giselle," which was shown for the first time in Moscow in 1843, two years after it was written in Paris.
The ballet tells the romantic tragedy of a vivacious village girl who loves and is sure to be loved. She receives the unwanted romantic attentions of Hilarion, the local forester who has a rival for her love -- Albert.
Albert is no simple peasant, as Giselle believes, but a prince pretending to be an ordinary man. He seduces Giselle, although he is betrothed to another. When Giselle finds out she has been betrayed she dies of a broken heart.
Albert, feeling guilty, goes off to the forest where he is haunted by the ghosts of maidens who have died from broken hearts at the hands of their cruel lovers.
These spirits seek revenge on Giselle's behalf and set about to trap and kill Albert. But Giselle's love is too pure: she forgives him, and he is spared and left weeping on her grave.
"Chopiniana" was choreographed for the Russian Imperial Ballet (Mariinsky) by Mikhail Fokine in 1908 and it is considered the last of the "white ballets" (ballets such as "Giselle" and "Swan Lake" in which the dancers were dressed in white in at least one act.) This ballet, known in the West as "Les Sylphides," was considered very abstract in its time and today is seen as the genesis of modern dance.
"Chopiniana" was Mikhail Fokine's attempt to hark back to early ballet from the 1830s before choreographers such as Marius Petipa introduced technical innovations.
The result is abstract romanticism which centers on a young man and a group of ladies whose loose and fluid movements were influenced on the one hand by early ballet prints from the 1830s, and mixed on the other hand with Petipa's technical achievements.
The result is an almost cynical romanticism which has so much technical work that it is, in parts, like a mechanical ballet which seems almost computer-animated.
"Chopiniana" takes something from early ballet, filters it though classical ballet and the resulting cocktail is modernism.
Alexander Benois' original costumes for this ballet, which you see today, caused a scandal at the time. As a result, the famous dancer who wore them, Nijinsky, was fired from the Mariinsky.