The founder of Russia's premier ballet school -- Jean Baptiste Lande.

From foot to foot

Behind the classical facade of a long, elegant building in the heart of St Petersburg there is a special school, as steeped in tradition and history as Eton, Harvard or Harrow. For here, tucked away behind the Pushkin Drama Theater on Ulitsa Rossi, children from all over Russia and the world are taken and turned into instruments of artistic and creative perfection. Chris Graeme reports

What the students of that school will eventually do, with seeming effortlessness, takes eight years of hard and demanding training, a training which has developed here over the course of 250 years. They will become classical ballet dancers.

The entrance requirements to the world's most famous ballet school -- the Vaganova Academy -- are rigidly strict, schedules are extremely demanding and each year, from the 3,000 students who apply, only 60 will be accepted and 30 will make the grade. Even then, out of these 30, only a handful will end up dancing on the stage of the prestigious Mariinsky Theater for the Kirov Ballet.

Russian children enter the academy at 10 years old, some after attending a year-long preparation course at a special nightschool.

Head of history and choreography Marina Ilyichova said, "All pupils begin their day getting up in the dormitories at 8 am in readiness for their first morning class at 10.20 am which lasts one hour and 30 minutes.

This includes ballet lessons and Mariinsky repertoire, then later follow character dancing, acting or duets by midday and regular national curriculum lessons in the afternoon. If there is a recital in the evening, the child may not reach bed before midnight," she explained.

"They have to learn math, English, geography, history and theory of dance and choreography throughout their eight year course. The sixth, seventh and eighth years are called courses where the advanced students take on theater studies, aesthetics, philosophy, history of music and history of costume," she added.

The Vaganova Academy grew out of the Imperial Ballet School which was founded by an imperial decree in 1738 from the Empress Anna Ioannovna to French ballet master Jean Baptiste Lande.

Marina Vivienne, historian and curator of the academy's own museum, said, "Ballet appeared much later in Russia than in the rest of Europe where it was basically a mixture of folk dance and ballroom etiquette.

"It all started when Peter the Great ordered the teaching of ballroom dancing everywhere in his drive to Westernize Russia," she added.

The museum which she oversees is a curious but comprehensive room of ghostly memorabilia -- a ballet Hall of Fame.

Here are displayed some of Rudolf Nureyev's glittering costumes while in another corner are Vatislav Nijinsky's faded pink tights which he wore at the start of the century.

It is Agrippina Vaganova (left) for whom the Vaganova Academy is named. A graduate of the Imperial Ballet School, as it was originally known, she had by the 1920s become a ballet pioneer who would change the face of ballet instruction in Russia. Earlier ballet masters had largely been foreign. It was the celebrated French ballet master Charles Didelot (right) who, on his arrival at the school in 1801, turned Russian-style classical ballet into a serious international force.

The walls are lined with photographs and portraits of the famous dancers who have graduated from this legendary academy of dance.

Anna Pavlova, Matilda Kshesinskaya, Tamara Karsavina and Natalia Dudinskaya all studied here.

Twelve girls and 12 boys initially began to study French and Italian dance under the tutorage of foreign teachers invited to Russia from Italy and Austria.

But it was not until celebrated French ballet master Charles Didelot arrived in 1801 that Russian-style classical ballet took on a pre-eminence of its own. He quickly took over the direction of the ballet and the school where he taught for 20 years and thanks to his efforts Russian ballet was taken seriously both here and abroad.

Later in 1847 came Marius Petipa, also a Frenchman, who, together with Lev Ivanov, further developed Russian classical ballet and integrated it so superbly with the music of the great Russian composers Tchaikovsky and Glazunov and composers Pugni and Minkus.

The entire second half of the 18th century can be called the Petipa era in ballet -- he created 46 ballets and a number of dances for the opera. He was followed by Mikhail Fokine who graduated from the Imperial Ballet School in 1898 and taught at the school from 1904-1916. He further reformed Russian ballet teaching that natural movement was of fundamental importance to ballet form.

Today the Imperial Ballet School is called the Vaganova Academy, after a pioneering woman who radically changed the way ballet was taught in Russia.

Agrippina Vaganova, herself a one-time pupil of the Imperial Ballet School had come from a poor family. Her father was an usher at the Mariinsky. Nevertheless, she made it to the Mariinsky's famous stage and though never a particularly gifted dancer, she knew what qualities were needed to make one.

She landed herself a position at the school and by the 1920s her analytical mind had worked out a scientific and methodological approach to dance which actually took the human anatomy into consideration.

Former pupil of Agrippina Vaganova, Vera Krasovskaya, said of her teacher, "she was wonderful, her pupils adored her but were afraid of her. She was terribly strict. There were eight of us in her class and she knew all of her pupils personally. she totally changed the manner of dancing."

Galina Mezentseeva, one-time Kirov prima ballerina who passed through the school in the 1960s recalls, "it was so strict and hard work but we loved it. If you left the room you had to tip-toe out backwards bowing to the teacher.

"It was an honor to train there although some aspects of discipline are somewhat relaxed today, particularly in attire and attention in the classes."

"I had a wonderful time because I loved what I was doing, it came naturally and through the discipline I gained inner strength," she added.

The ballet school still retains Vaganova's basic principles of classical dance but in other ways has had to change. Like many other artistic institutions in Russia the state is no longer prepared to hand-out such generous subsidies and grants as under the old regime.

Vaganova Academy Director Leonid Nadirov, who has seen many changes over the past 10 years he has been running this school, said, "After perestroika things got worse, government funding got less and in the last few years it was even less. Now thankfully, President Yeltsin has decreed us special status as an art institution and, as such, we receive more money, but it can never be enough."

Although the school has always had a history of taking in foreign students in limited numbers from the former Eastern bloc countries and even from the United States, the need for money and the relaxation in political freedoms has generated a larger influx of fee-paying students from what was seen as the former capitalist countries.

"From 1960 foreigners came here and the first American was Anna Maria Holmes who joined the Boston Ballet. We've always had foreigners and today they can enter the academy from 17 until 19 for a fee of $8,000 for the 10 month academic year," said Nadirov.

But does this mean a sacrifice in the overall high standards demanded of the pupils? Nadirov, for one disagrees. "All foreign students coming here must have had at least six years solid training in ballet in their native country as well as good passes in their secondary education. This is in addition to our own stringent auditions and entrance examinations."

Marina Vivienne agrees. "If these foreign children had no talent then by the very nature of ballet which is so visual, it would show in future auditions and on stage. This in return would reflect badly on us."

"What is important is that we are passing down 250 years of unbroken Russian classical ballet intact for future generations -- foot to foot.