Prominent Russians: Marius Petipa

March 11, 1818 - July 14, 1910

“I can state that I created a ballet company of which everyone said: ‘St. Petersburg has the greatest ballet in all Europe.’” - Marius Petipa

Lord of the dance

Marius Petipa (born Victor Marius Alphonse Petipa) was the inventor of modern classical ballet. During the latter half of the 19th century Petipa elevated Russian ballet to international acclaim and recognition; the Frenchman who came to be known as “the father of Russian ballet,” left a legacy that continues to this day. He greatly expanded the role of male dancers and we have him to thank for the leaping, twirling, breathtaking men's choreography we now see in ballets.

His renown is undisputed and his work lives not only in the pages of dance history but in the ballet repertoire of most current Companies.

Petipa rose to fame in St. Petersburg, where he produced more than 60 major ballets and numerous shorter ones over his almost 60-year career. In total, he also reworked over 20 old pieces and arranged the dancing in over 35 operas. His fantasy was absolutely amazing, fueling such all time European classics as “Don Quixote,” “The Pharaoh’s Daughter,” “The Corsair,” “The Bayadere” and “Giselle.” Still, Petipa owed his biggest triumphs to his majestic staging of Russian ballets set to music by Tchaikovsky.

Nitpicking and demanding, the ever-tasteful perfectionist Petipa seemed to some an absolutely unbearable person; but it was under his watch that the Mariinsky Ballet (Russia’s Imperial Theater) made a quantum leap forward to become one of the very best in Europe and the world.

Over the course of his career in St. Petersburg as chief ballet master of Russia’s Imperial Theater he raised technical standards for dancing and set new ones for choreographing evening-length ballets.

Childhood

Petipa was born in Marseilles into the family of a dancer and an actress. From the age of six Marius was educated in Brussels. His early years were spent touring Europe with his parents, Jean Antoine Petipa, the eminent French dancer, choreographer and teacher, and Victorine (born Grasseau), an actress and drama teacher.

Even though it was not immediately his passion, Marius began dancing at the age of seven, mostly because of his parent’s desire to see him enter their field. When still a child, he starred in one of his father’s productions and thus began his career as a dancer and later, a choreographer. Petipa's older brother by three years, Lucien, became a dancer and ballet master at the Paris Opera.

Marius perfected his craft in Brussels at the Grand College and the Conservatoire, where he studied music. In 1825 he took up ballet lessons. Although the family might have enjoyed a great deal of success in France, the Belgian Revolution forced them to move, first to Bordeaux in 1834 and then to Nantes, where they remained for a few years and where Marius became a principal dancer in 1838.

Bright beginnings

In 1839 Marius and his father embarked on a tour of America. They returned to France less than a year later and Marius began more intensive training with Auguste Vestris, a French superstar so popular in London that Parliament would adjourn to attend his performances. While never being a danseur noble, Marius acquired flair and versatility through lessons in the Spanish style and his studies with Auguste Vestris.

His career as a dancer began to truly blossom and he partnered with some of the greatest ballerinas of the period such as Carlotta Grisi. His partnering with Grisi in “La Péri” was spoken of for generations, particularly one partnered catch that Gautier deemed would become “... as famous as the Niagara Falls.”

It was also during this period that Petipa began to dabble in choreography, although he was not entirely successful. He moved to Spain where he was employed at the King’s Theater and his abilities as a choreographer and dancer were recognized fully. Unfortunately, his stay in Spain was cut short after he engaged in an illicit affair. In 1846 he began a love liason with the wife of the Marquis de Chateaubriand, a prominent member of the French Embassy. Learning of the relationship the Marquis challenged Petipa to a duel. Petipa quickly left Spain, never to return.

A warm welcome in St.Petersburg

On 24 May 1847 Petipa departed for St. Petersburg at the suggestion of ballet master Titus. He left promptly, not knowing that he would go on to forever change the face of classical ballet in Russia as well as the rest of the world. He was offered a contract for one year as a principal dancer, replacing another Frenchman (Emile Gredlu) who was leaving the Imperial Ballet. By 1871 he had risen to the position of principal ballet master and he remained at the Mariinsky until 1907, before retiring at the age of 89.

Petipa was fortunate to be working in St. Petersburg, a city that welcomed and generously supported the French, Italian and Danish dance masters and performers who laid the foundation Petipa built upon. Petipa brought the French and Italian traditions to Russia and gave increased importance to dance over pantomime. He was talented at pleasing audiences and dealing with the bureaucracy of the Imperial Theater while still maintaining artistic integrity in his works. Although he made one ballet for Moscow’s Bolshoi, the Mariinsky was his home base.

The imperial ballet



Petipa’s youthful creativity earned him a great deal of favor and he was allowed by Arthur Saint-Léon (the Maître de Ballet of St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet) to continue with the full support of the Imperial Ballet and was praised for revitalizing classical ballet. While he continued to be a vital part of the Russian ballet, Petipa’s superiors could not have sensed the depth of his flair for ballet production. Jules Perrot (dancer, ballet master of the Imperial Ballet) was called to St. Petersburg in 1848 at the behest of Fanny Elssler (an Austrian ballerina) to become resident ballet master. The immediate effect of Perrot, a choreographer of international stature, on Petipa’s career was to reaffirm his duties as a dancer. Despite some minor works (his first work in St. Petersburg was “The Star of Grenada” in 1855) Petipa’s muse fell silent for a decade. From performing the ballets of Perrot Petipa learned the value of intensely dramatic mimed scenes and the persuasive intervention of fantastic elements into everyday settings. He was also chosen to assist Perrot in producing new ballets.

This enriched Petipa’s native talents as a superior mime, an expert character dancer and, behind the scenes, a politically astute courtier observing the state of ballet affairs. By the late 1850s Petipa must have known Perrot’s days in St. Petersburg were numbered. He returned modestly to choreography with “A Regency Marriage” (1858), “The Parisian Market” (1859) and “The Blue Dahlia” (1860) all of which were vehicles for Maria Sergeyevna Surovshchikova, whom Petipa had married in 1854. They had three children, one of whom became a well-known dancer, Marie Mariusovna Petipa.

Aging body

Around 1850 Marius still danced despite his aging body and continued to choreograph new works. His body required him to concentrate more on choreography than dancing. For Petipa, who turned 40 in 1858, composition was a logical alternative to dancing. Petipa’s breakthrough as a choreographer came in 1862.

One of the landmark pieces showcasing his choreography was “The Pharaoh’s Daughter” in 1862 based on a novel by Gautier. A ballet choreographed by Marius Petipa to the music of Cesare Pugni was to be ready in six weeks, as the dancer Carolina Rosati’s contract was about to expire. Even though “The Pharaoh's Daughter” has not been in repertory since the beginning of the 20th century (until the Bolshoi's 2000 production), its importance lies in the fact that it was Carolina Rosati's farewell performance to Russia and the occasion for Petipa's appointment as ballet master.

The work catapulted him to fame and after its great success he was named ballet master. He was successful in competing with Saint-Léon, who had replaced Perrot, also by championing Surovshchikova in a public rivalry against Marfa Muravyova (a dancer) whom Saint-Léon favored.

Petipa lightens Mariinsky

Petipa was promoted to take charge of the Mariinsky Company in 1869, the year that also saw the premiere of his “Don Quixote.”

Petipa established himself with his “ballets à grand spectacl,” among which “La Bayadère” (1877) counted most of all. It was hardly a new idea - ballets set in exotic locales had been around since the French Baroque - but Petipa linked the ballets to current events or fashions. “La Bayadère” came in the wake of a widely reported journey of the Prince of Wales to India.

Petipa’s ballet called for massive forces, luxurious productions and predictable choreographic components. In constructing the acts of a ballet he selected from a variety of elements: massed scenes, character dances which provided a sense of local color, classical dances (which normally called for a suspension of the narrative) and dramatic encounters between the principal characters, set either as pure mime or in “pas d’action,” a mixture of mime and dancing.

Lord of the stage

Petipa was meticulous in his preparations, conducting exhaustive research and preparing minute plans for painters and composers. He always considered, however, that choreography should take precedence over everything else. He would come to rehearsals with ideas already prepared and teach the dancers what he had devised. “Without even looking at us he merely showed us the movements and gestures with words spoken in indescribable Russian,” wrote Mathilde Kschessinska (a dancer). Despite his many years in Russia, Petipa spoke little of the language and the dancers had to get used to his peculiar idioms. “You on me, me on you; you on mine, me on your,” meant that you had to move from one corner (“you”) to where he was (“me”). To make his meaning clearer he tapped his chest every time he said “me.” By this means Petipa taught some of the most widely performed and enduring masterpieces ballet has yet known such as “Swan Lake.”

Petipa-Tchaikovsky masterpieces



n 1881, when Ivan Vsevolozhsky (co-librettist with Petipa and costume designer) was appointed Director of the Imperial Theater, his patronage led to the creation of the three great Petipa/Pyotr Tchaikovsky masterpieces: “The Sleeping Beauty,” “The Nutcracker” and “Swan Lake.” Although they were not immediately successful these three ballets have come to be considered by many the greatest ballets of all time, showing classical ballet at its best. They are definitely some of the most popular ballets in the world still today.

“The Sleeping Beauty” holds a notable place in the history of ballet, not only as a great work in its own right but also as a defining moment in many lives.
“The Sleeping Beauty” was interpreted as a ballet before the Petipa/Tchaikovsky version, but none of the prior versions enjoyed the longevity of popularity of the 1890 Russian version. It was the first successful ballet composed by Tchaikovsky. “The Sleeping Beauty” was also the first ballet seen by a sickly 8-year-old child named Anna Pavlova. After the performance she decided that she wanted to become a ballet dancer.

By 1888 Vsevolozhsky was considering dispensing with Petipa as audiences were not coming to the theaters. However, he decided to give him one more chance and that “The Sleeping Beauty” would be a fine vehicle. The work could display the talents of the many fine Russian soloists who were produced under Petipa's guidance, as well as showcase Petipa's great knowledge of classical dance. He also conceived it as a “no expense spared” production that would recreate the glories of the grand productions of Louis XIV but without the lengthy interpolations by actors and singers as in the 17th century. Although the great Petipa did not at first respond well to the idea of the theater director telling him what to create he gradually warmed to the idea of “The Sleeping Beauty.”

Retirement

In spite of his vast accomplishments, Petipa's final years with the Imperial Ballet were difficult. By the turn of the 20th century new innovations in the art of classical dance began to become apparent. With all of this, Petipa's rocky relationship with the new director of the Imperial Theater, Vladimir Telyakovsky, appointed to the position in 1901, served as a catalyst to the ballet master's end. Telyakovsky made no effort to disguise his dislike of Petipa's work; he felt that the art of classical ballet had become stagnant under Petipa and that other choreographers should have a chance at the helm of the Imperial Ballet. But even at the age of eighty-three, suffering from the constant pain brought on by a severe case of the skin disease, the old Maestro showed no signs of slowing down, much to Telyakovsky's chagrin.

One example of Telyakovsky's efforts in his attempt to “de-throne” Petipa came in 1902 when he invited Aleksandr Gorsky, a former premier danseur, to the Imperial Ballet to stage his own version of Petipa's 1869 ballet “Don Quixote.”

Marius Petipa retired in 1903 after releasing “The Magic Mirror” and was barred from the Imperial Theater that had been his home for fifty-six years.

Petipa wrote his memoirs, which were published in 1906. His highly entertaining remembrances had never before been translated from French into English before their first publication in 1958. Petipa's memoirs reveal many interesting details of his career and the people he worked with, including Tchaikovsky and the young Pavlova, and provide an insight into his character and genius that it is not possible to gain from any other source. Written towards the end of his long life, in a mood of disillusion, when his work was neglected and in decline, he would have been delighted to know that his great ballets such as “Sleeping Beauty,” “Swan Lake” and “La Bayadere” are more popular today than ever before.



Old-timers will never forget this small, hunched but always-elegant old man with a neatly trimmed Van Dyke and a gold-rimmed pince-nez. After all those years of living in St. Petersburg, he never learned to speak good Russian, but he left behind the great Russian school of ballet dancing. His productions are all classics now gracing the programs of the world’s finest theaters, including, of course, the Mariinsky.

Due to ill health Petipa moved to Gurzuf in southern Russia in 1907 where he lived until his death. He died an unhappy man in 1910 at the ripe old age of ninety-two. On 25 October 1917 as the Bolsheviks were grabbing power across Russia, the Imperial Theater (soon for decades it would become The Kirov Theater) was offering a performance of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” fairly tale produced by Marius Petipa.

A selection of ballets choreographed by Petipa in Russia

La Fille du Pharaon, 1862
Floride, 1866
Le Roi Candaule, 1868
Don Quixote, 1869
Trilby, 1870
La Camargo, 1872
Le Papillon, 1874
Les Bandits, 1875
La Bayadère, 1877
The Magic Pills 1886
The Talisman, 1889
The Sleeping Beauty, 1890
Kalkabrino, 1891
Cinderella (music Baron Shell), 1893
Swan Lake (with Ivanov), 1895
Halte de Cavalerie, 1896
Raymonda, 1898
Ruses d’Amour, 1900
Les Saisons, 1900
Les Millions d’Arlequin, 1900
The Magic Mirror (his last ballet), 1903

A Romantic Classic, Subject to Revisions
By ALASTAIR MACAULAY



WASHINGTON — The first six months of 2011 are bringing America a good many different productions of the old Romantic classic “Giselle.” In January there were live simulcasts from the Royal Ballet in London and the Bolshoi in Moscow. By the end of this month, the Alabama Ballet, Richmond Ballet and San Francisco Ballet will all have staged revivals. And coming up we can expect American Ballet Theater’s version and a new production by Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle that will try to restore many details lost since the 19th century.

Amid all this, it’s good to revisit the production by the Mariinsky Ballet being presented at the Kennedy Center here. No company has a “Giselle” track record to match this one’s: since the 1840s, the “holy ballet” (as the ballerina Tamara Karsavina called it) has never been long out of repertory there. True, the St. Petersburg version was extensively revised by Marius Petipa in the 1880s and overhauled by various directors later.

A program credit suggests that the present production was shaped in 1978. In Act I the dichotomy between dancing, joyous peasants and pedestrian aristocrats looks actually even more Soviet than I remembered: the nobles are chilly, inhibited and formal, whereas the peasants are expansive, nuanced and remarkably refined.

Another style arises in Act II with the corps de ballet of supernatural and death-dealing wilis, who dance with a weighted, monumental but poignantly beautiful grandeur unlike anything in Act I. It is still a thrill to watch them form one gorgeously sculptural diagonal across the stage, like the most beautiful of barriers. Then a dominolike ripple passes down the line, as each one turns and directs the hapless Hans (as the Mariinsky calls Giselle’s unsuccessful suitor, Hilarion, a loser in both acts) to his doom.

Seconds later, after the wilis’ queen, Myrtha, has led them off in posses to hunt the next male victim, they reassemble in that original sensuous but unyielding diagonal, ready to commence the same fatal ritual with Albrecht, Giselle’s lover and their new prey. Next, however, a different ripple passes down their line, from the opposite corner toward Myrtha, as they react to Giselle, who comes running to interrupt the proceedings. No other company presents these lines and waves with such spectacular elegance.

But there are many kinds of style. When the Bolshoi Ballet brought “Giselle” to the West in the 1950s, the Stanislavskian realism of the acting made a tremendous impression. Today it tends to be Western productions that demonstrate, at least to some degree, that aspect of acting style (as the Royal Ballet simulcast showed handsomely), not the Bolshoi or Mariinsky companies. With the Mariinsky, for example, Hans — a rich acting role in the right hands — is now merely a melodramatic stick figure; the metronomic way he enters in Act II, pausing pointlessly on every chime of midnight, is ludicrous.

This is now the third Mariinsky staging I have seen in which a hunt scene includes a stuffed version of a dead animal (a deer in this case) so unconvincing that it elicits laughter from the audience. Giselle’s rival, Bathilde, who arrives with the hunt, is stuffy, bossy and charmless. Originally, the ballet ended with Bathilde tenderly reclaiming her fiancé, Albrecht. You wouldn’t wish such a fate on the poor guy at the Mariinsky.

Then there is the conundrum of how Mariinsky dancers are trained to hear but ignore the music. Generally they lag behind the beat (sometimes subtly and sometimes drearily), but most of them know how to anticipate it when it comes to striking a final pose. And there are stranger sequences when they’re evidently making a rhythmic point that seems to disregard the music.

Tuesday’s performance, led by the illustrious Diana Vishneva (who will also dance Giselle this spring with American Ballet Theater), was oddly flat. She kept turning her picture-perfect face to the audience, as if to say, “This is one of my best bits,” as she souped it up. The big moments were all technically admirable, but this was a Giselle who was living up to her own press notices rather than to the role’s drama.

Her Albrecht was Andrian Fadeyev: pallidly amiable, a moth to Ms. Vishneva’s self-conscious flame. Even the marvelous Ekaterina Kondaurova, as Myrtha — the company’s most elegantly statuesque dancer — seemed to be letting us know how often she had danced this role.

Wednesday’s Giselle was fresher. Alina Somova, who was often irksomely over-acrobatic when the Mariinsky danced at City Center in 2008, was vividly engaged in relating the story to the audience: though she’s not a remarkably subtle actress, her sheer energy and involvement injected some much-needed life into the action. Her dancing still has passages of leggy excess — both in jumps and lifts, her line can be uncoordinated — but there were moments when the brightness and fullness of her execution caught the breath.

Her partner, Evgeny Ivanchenko, has much of her welcome assertiveness of manner without showing particular dance individuality. Alexandra Iosifidi was another statuesque Myrtha but entirely compelling: the multifaceted nature of her dances — enigmatic, poignant, devout, intense, heroic — was unusually absorbing.

No company takes greater pride in its traditions than the Mariinsky, and yet no company shows more evidence of systematic reconsideration of basic tenets of style and text. Wrists, posture, knees: over the years I’ve been alternately impressed and dismayed by how the company has reaccentuated these and other aspects of its heritage. It’s good to see almost no signs of the chin-up manner that disfigured so much of the company’s dancing a few years ago, and absolutely none of the swayback posture that became widespread 20 years ago.

Over the decades, this production has had quite a number of revisions. The most obvious have been for the Act I ensemble of male peasants. Thirty years ago, they were impeccable classicists who did unison double air turns arriving in fifth position, but they’d been rechoreographed as folk dancers by the late 1980s; their current incarnation is a tepid compromise.

Indeed, despite its best moments, the whole staging has grown tepid. In the 1980s the Mariinsky presented some of the most revelatory performances of “Giselle” of my experience. Some new ignition is needed.

It’s Not Easy to be Noble

An elegant exterior is essential for ballet to work

By Joel Lobenthal

When St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky ballet visited the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, I looked forward to seeing how, in Giselle, it would maintain its artistic mandate not to be “just folks.” Ballet began as entertainment performed by and for European aristocracies. After moving into professionalism, it retained the stylized physical comportment that became additionally appropriate to characters portrayed in fairy-tale narratives.

During the 1980s, I watched coach Elena Tchernichova at American Ballet Theatre break down for the company’s dancers what it was necessary to do and what it was important not to do to project this particular mode of exceptionalism. So it amazes me that American dancers continue, frequently, to not quite get it. Perhaps this type of affect clashes with the fantasy of egalitarianism that we continue to cherish even amidst our ever-increasing economic disparities. Confronted with these roles, I’m sorry to say that Americans often come across as strained and artificial. Or nobility often seems confused with snark; many dancers don’t seem to understand that the elegant exterior must connote a superiority that is cerebral and spiritual as well.

That’s true even with Giselle’s anti-hero, Albrecht. In Washington, I watched the Mariinsky’s Andrian Fadeyev dance the betrothed Count who betrays a village girl but then repents following her heartbroken death. Fadeyev showed you Albrecht’s aristocratic underpinnings even when disguised as a rustic in Act One. You were always aware that he was a man of parts, not to be trifled with. Even as he dallied with Giselle’s affections, he entertained serious apprehensions about where it could all lead, thus effectively setting the stage for his atonement in Act Two.

Entirely different in the same role was Vladimir Shklyarov. In Act One, he was a spoiled, willful adolescent who wanted the keys to Giselle’s cottage and a new car as well. Yet, while Shklyarov embodied a typology more native to the American popular zeitgeist, he stayed within the formalized balletic consciousness. In Act Two, where Albrecht is once again his own noble self, Shklyarov’s gravitas was convincing.

Vasili Scherbakov’s assumption of the pantomime role of Albrecht’s equerry was a matter of luxury casting such as we rarely get on the American ballet stage. Scherbakov—who has himself danced an original and most definitely noble Albrecht—created a cameo portrayal of a retainer both faultlessly trained in the ways of courtly propitiation as well as accustomed to wielding power on his liege’s behalf.

Giselle herself is one of those poetic and sensitive peasants that the Romantic era loved to immortalize. So we must always feel that she too exists in a zone of spiritual loftiness, both in her village community during the first act, as well as in the second act, where she returns as one of the un-dead Wilis to rescue her betrayer from annihilation.

Nobility requires self-possession, and it’s hard to project that in ballet if you’re physically unstable. Therefore a pleasant surprise of the run was Alina Somova’s Giselle. No longer wrenching her body into extreme contortions that undermine her equilibrium, instead she used her very long and flexible limbs to create a personal as well as idiomatic incarnation of the ballet’s Romantic style, fashioned after biomorphic impressions of wind and blossom. In her mid-twenties, Somova’s Giselle was further anchored by decade-older Evgeny Ivanchenko’s Albrecht, demonstrating again how crucial mature dancers are to a ballet company.

In the second act, Diana Vishneva’s Giselle spun off another element of Romantic consciousness: a taste for the bizarre, the febrile, the enraptured. As the graveyard wraith into which death has transfigured Giselle, she suggested Rimbaud’s disordering of all the senses. Partnered by Fadeyev, the extraordinary physical control she manifested allowed feverish abandon to flourish at its most potent, most untrammeled.

Also present Giselle-wise were Viktoria Tereshkina (partnered by Shklyarov), a newcomer to the role, and Uliana Lopatkina (partnered by Daniil Korsuntsev), who dances it infrequently. Neither is entirely suited to Giselle; both were unstinting in their application of energy and artistry. And then there was Alexandra Iosifidi and Ekaterina Kondaurova, each dominating in another key altogether as Myrtha, queen of the Stygian netherworld to which Giselle is consigned in Act Two.

And so I left Washington believing in balletic nobility for what it is: not cardboard pretension, but a quality vital, individually interpreted—and indispensable.

....

Veronika Part. Coming back

Veronika Part and Danila Korsuntsev
at a rehearsal of the ballet Swan Lake

Are you often in St Petersburg?
No, not so often. The last time was about two years ago. At first I came once or twice a year. But recently I have not been able to for different reasons.

Do you miss St Petersburg? Do you miss the Mariinsky?
Yes, I miss it a great deal.

Why haven’t you been at your “home theatre” for so long?
I don’t know. It didn’t work out somehow.

How did you end up at American Ballet Theatre? How many years have you worked there?
It’s my ninth year now. How did I end up at ABT? I always wanted to try something different. A different company or a different theatre. I was offered work by ABT and I agreed. I agreed because I was young. If I had the same proposal now I think I would refuse it.

Why? Because everything is working out successfully: you are a soloist and were recently promoted to the rank of principal.
Yes, that’s so. But it wasn’t easy for me. In the first place I consider myself to be European rather than American. Secondly, I never had any wish to leave for America. I did not have the luck to become familiar with America when the Mariinsky Ballet was on tour. When I left I didn’t understand what I would have to deal with and how I would change myself and my attitude to work.

But ABT is the most European of all American companies in terms of its composition. And, possibly, the most Russian as well.
Yes, but the managers at ABT are Americans. And they direct the company with American standards. And so it’s not all Europeans that come to work with the company.

Why?
Americans approach everything as a business. Art as well as business. For example, an artist today may have a flight of fantasy and start to paint a picture, and tomorrow his inspiration vanishes and he sits, does nothing and waits until inspiration comes. That is impossible in America. There you have to work every day, regardless of the lack of inspiration or however bad you may feel, and you have to be professional about everything they tell you to do.
Not so long ago Alexei Ratmansky staged The Nutcracker and I danced the first performance. The opening night, as usual, was attended by all the sponsors. One of them gave two and a half million, just for that performance. It’s a complex production, never in my life have I danced anything harder. After the performance I was literally dead. They phoned me and said “Veronika, we know you were very tired yesterday, but please come today, we have to accompany the sponsors to the performance.” I had another performance the next day. But I had to appear on high heels in evening dress with my hair done and makeup as well. And smile. I don’t like that, but I have to do it. Because that’s part of my work. In America art depends on sponsors.

How does the production of Swan Lake at the Mariinsky Theatre differ from that at ABT?
At ABT it is a version by Kevin McKenzie. In his production the role of Odette-Odile is very similar to that of the Mariinsky Theatre’s production. The main differences lie in Act III and the prologue, which is nonexistent in the Mariinsky Theatre’s production. In the prologue we see the prehistory of Odette being abducted by the evil sorcerer and her transformation into a swan.

Which of your partners was it most interesting to dance with in the West?
It’s a short list, as I have had few great partners as soloists. Most frequently I dance with Marcelo Gomes and less frequently with David Hallberg. He’s tall and ductile, he finds it hard to dance with me because I am also tall and have long arms and long legs. But with Marcelo everything is always fine. He is a great partner. Without fault he performs all the most difficult supports, and in his arms I feel almost weightless. I am always confident with him, and in dance that freedom always shines through.

How important is it for you to have a rapport with your partner?
Very important. And with every partner in the same duet in the same ballet it is always different. Because we are all different, and different people have different energies. The image is created by a duo, not by two individuals. But the emotions cannot be rehearsed. You have to come on stage and live the production each time in a new way.

Is your repertoire at ABT different?
Not so much different. I still dance the classics – Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and Balanchine’s ballets. But my repertoire also now includes ballets by Ashton and MacMillan. There are many new productions staged by Alexei Ratmansky in which I am engaged. I am beginning to dance modern choreography more and more.

Who do you rehearse with at ABT?
With Irina Alexandrovna Kolpakova. She helps me retain that special link with the Russian school.

At АВТ there are representatives of the most diverse ballet schools. It is, arguably, one of the most international ballet companies in the world. What is the predominant style there?
It seems to me that over her many years of work with the company that Irina Kolpakova has managed to convey to its performers much of which the Russian ballet school is strong in. That includes the “songfulness” of the arms and the body and the épaulement. But we also have some things to learn from the West: the spins, the leaps and the aplomb. The schools are gradually coming closer, assimilating. All of the dancers in the company work so much. Rehearsals can last for seven hours at a time. And in the evening almost everyone is engaged in the performance. And the training is not paid work. You only get paid for rehearsals.

How often do you perform?
All the time. And when the summer season begins and ABT performs at the Metropolitan Opera ever day it can happen that I am onstage every day for two months. And you have seven-hour rehearsals and work for twelve hours: from eleven in the morning until eleven at night. The company generally performs in New York and cities in the USA. There are few foreign tours, much less than the Mariinsky Ballet Company tours.

Don’t you have any free time? Or do you manage to go places and see things?
Of course I manage. There are plenty of places to go and things to see in New York. I always try to see art exhibitions, and I recently went to a cabaret performance. I never thought it could be so interesting! And I love musicals.

So you don’t regret leaving for America?
No, of course not. Can you ever regret anything?

What is your most vivid impression in recent years of living in a new country and working with a new company?
It was possibly performing Fokine’s The Swan at the Kennedy Center at an evening dedicated to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. After the concert there was a reception to which I was also invited. The guests included such stars as Morgan Freeman, Yo-Yo Ma and Barbra Streisand, as well as sponsors of the Kennedy Center and the political elite including John Carey and current US President Barack Obama. I felt like Cinderella at the ball!

Well, if Cinderella becomes a Princess then that means her whole future life will be that of a Princess!
I don’t know about Princesses, but working at ABT has taught me a lot. Now I know that I can do anything.

And what would you wish for yourself?
More peace and being able to enjoy life. And being able to appreciate its every minute…

Review: La Bayadère by the Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet

Natasha Gauthier

Like plays within a play, many classical ballets feature dance itself, or the idea of dance, as a major element of the plot. Poor deceived, deserted Giselle dances herself to death. In Coppelia, the village heartthrob ditches his girlfriend for a life-size dancing doll. And the title character of La Bayadère is a temple dancer who must give the performance of her life even as her heart is crumbling to pieces.

La Bayadère is one of the signature productions of Russia’s Mariinsky Ballet, better known as the Kirov. The company is performing it at the NAC, and Thursday night’s premiere was presented before a nearly-sold out audience of enthusiastic ballet lovers.

Choreographed by Marius Petipa in the 1870s for the Kirov, La Bayadère takes place in exotic India. The convoluted plot centres on Nikiya, a beautiful temple dancer. She is in love with the warrior prince Solor, who adores her in return and swears to be faithful. But Solor has been promised since childhood to Gamzatti, the Rajah’s dazzling, jealous daughter. Meanwhile, the temple’s high Brahmin priest is desperately in love with Nikiya, and promises her wealth and power if she will return his affections.

The Kirov is touring with the traditional Chabukiani-Ponomarev staging from 1941, also known as the “Soviet version.” It’s a magnificent production, with sumptuous, exquisitely detailed sets and opulent costumes, as colourful and spangled as a Jaipur bazaar. There’s even a lumbering mechanical elephant. But with the Kirov, the dancing is the richest jewel of all.

The incomparable Diana Vishneva danced Nikiya in Thursday night’s cast. She brings to the role the most tender vulnerability married to languid sensuality. Moonlight-pale, she moves like a serpent, curving sinuously from the tips of her pointe shoes to the end of her long braid.

Her Solor was handsome, chiselled Denis Matvienko, whose spectacular technique — such height on those cabriole jumps! — is enhanced by expressive, natural acting. His wife Anastasia glittered with cool, haughty fire as Princess Gamzatti. Her Act II variation was as buoyant and crisp as Vishneva’s was melancholy and poignant.

Several character dancers were outstanding. Georgy Popov exuded animal grace and power as the fakir Magdaveya, while Philip Stepin was a superbly athletic, statuesque Golden Idol, although he performed his variation at an unusually slow tempo. As the High Brahmin, Vladimir Ponomarev epitomizes the Kirov’s supremacy in pantomime.

The other shining star of the evening was the Kirov corps, especially in the famous Act III Kingdom of the Shades scenes. Their dreamlike, stately, zigzagging entrance was a miracle of control, unison and simplicity. The arms are so light, so ethereal, they seem to be made of the same material as their gossamer scarves.

The NAC Orchestra musicians, under the congenial direction of Pavel Bubelnikov, appeared to enjoy themselves romping through Ludwig Minkus’s decidedly un-Oriental score. But nobody had more fun than the young Ottawa dancers who get to perform with the professionals. They were disciplined and impervious to opening night jitters, and they did their teachers and families proud.



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Russian troupe brings classically graceful ‘Swan Lake’ to Toronto
PAULA CITRON

St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Ballet, along with its sister company the Bolshoi Ballet from Moscow, represent the quintessence of the Russian imperial style. Both companies have contemporary works in their repertoires, but on tour, audiences expect to see “classical ballet,” and that’s what the Mariinsky brought, first to Ottawa last week with La Bayadère, and now to Toronto with Swan Lake.

Among ballet aficionados, the Bolshoi is known for its crisper attack, and the Mariinsky for its lyrical grace. In the latter case, the port de bras – or the carriage of the arms and upper torso – define the Mariinsky style. One can only be in awe of the ensembles, particularly the glorious female swan corps de ballet, every arm in perfect placement, the bodies in complete alignment – the whole moving as one in fluid harmony.

The Mariinsky version of Swan Lake was choreographed in 1950 by former star dancer Konstantin Sergeyev (1910-1992) who became artistic director in 1951. Much of the original 1895 choreography remains intact, with Marius Petipa credited for the lively court scenes, and Lev Ivanov for the melancholy “white” acts set at Swan Lake.

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Mariinsky Ballet’s Swan Lake dancers poetry in motion
Michael Crabb



However dazzling its stars, the rock bed of any great classical ballet company is its female corps. When it comes to the poetry of motion the women of St. Petersburg’s mighty Mariinsky Ballet are unsurpassed and rarely equalled.

This was clearly evident at the Sony Centre on Tuesday night as the venerable troupe returned to Toronto after a lamentable 19-year absence – it was then known as the Kirov – with its heirloom production of Swan Lake.

The ballet’s waterside acts as choreographed in 1895 by Lev Ivanov are masterworks of late 19th-century Russian classicism. The collective expressiveness of the corps is as indispensable to the overall effect as the dancing of the principal leads. No other moments in Russian ballet – other perhaps than the famous “Kingdom of the Shades” scene from La Bayadère, which the Mariinsky performed in Ottawa last month – matches them.

To watch this superlatively trained ensemble – one that can quickly recover from an unlucky swan’s early opening night fall – is to be reminded why old ballets still can move modern hearts. Tuesday’s standing ovation was surely as much for those admirable women as for any featured performer.

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