Russian ballet. Primas of pre-revolutionary Russia
The 19th century was a period of great change in society, and this was reflected in ballet, with a shift away from the aristocratic powers of perception that had previously dominated, towards romantic ballet.
Romanticism was a reaction against the formal restrictions and mechanics of industrialization. The wisdom of the era led choreographers to create romantic ballets that were light, airy and free, which was meant to be a contrast to the reductionist science that, in Poe's words, "brought the dryads out of the woods." These seemingly unreal ballets presented women as delicate, ethereal, airy creatures who could be lifted without difficulty and appear almost floating in the air. Ballerinas began to wear costumes in pastel colors, with skirts floating around their legs. The scripts were on the theme of terrible folk spirits.
Ballerinas Geneviève Gosselin, Maria Taglioni and Fanny Elssler experimented with new techniques such as finger dancing, which gave increased height as an ideal stage figure. Professional librettists wrote stories for ballets. Teachers such as Carlo Blasis described ballet technique in the basic form that is still used today. Pointe shoes were invented to support finger dancing.
In 1832, Filippo Taglioni (1777-1871), Maria Taglioni's father, choreographed the ballet La Sylphide for her to perform. Maria Taglioni danced the role of Sylphide, a supernatural being who was loved by corporeal man and was inadvertently destroyed by him. The choreography used finger dancing to emphasize the supernatural brightness and insubstantiality. La Sylphide caused many changes in the ballets of the era in theme, style, technique and costumes. At La Sylphide, Maria Taglioni wore a bell-shaped suit with a whalebone bodice. On this basis, 50 years later, a romantic ballet skirt was designed.
La Sylphide began the romantic period, it is one of the most important ballets and is one of the old ballets that is still performed today.
The Romantic era more or less began with the production of Giselle, ou Les Wilis (or simply Giselle - Giselle) at the Paris Opera in 1841, choreographed by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot (1810-1892). The music was composed by Adolphe Adam. The role of Giselle was played by Carlotta Grisi (1819-1899), a new ballerina from Italy. Giselle featured a contrast between the human and supernatural worlds, and in its second act the ghostly spirits, called wilita, were dressed in the white skirts popularized in La Sylphide. Romantic ballet was not limited to supernatural beings, however.
In 1845, Jules Perrot staged Pas de Quatre at Her Majesty's Theater in London.
As the relatively new skill of finger dancing improved, female dancers became increasingly prominent during the Romantic era. Only a few men were prominent in ballet at that time. Some of them were Jules Perrot, the choreographer of Pas de Quatre, Lucien Petipa (1815-1898) who knew how to be a virtuoso partner, Arthur Saint Léon (1821-1870) who was not only an excellent dancer, but also an excellent cellist.
In Russia and Denmark, however, men were trained alongside women, while ballet in these countries was supported by monarchical courts. The Dane who left the most significant mark on ballet was Auguste Bournonville. After studying in Denmark and Paris, after dancing at the Paris Opera, August Bournonville returned to Denmark. There in 1836 he staged his version of La Sylphide, with new choreography and new music; 16-year-old Lucille Grahn played the role of Sylphide.
Ballet in Russia
While France was successful in early ballet, other countries and cultures soon adapted the art form for themselves, most notably Russia. Russia has a recognized tradition of ballet, and Russian ballet plays a prominent role in the history of this country.
After 1850, ballet began to fade away in Paris. Ballet was still popular, but it was seen mainly as a performance beautiful women. In London, ballet practically disappeared from the stages of opera houses and moved to the stage.
But ballet flourished in Russia and Denmark thanks to the masters August Bournonville, Jules Perrot, Arthur Saint-Léon, Enrico Cecchetti and Marius Petipa (1818-1910) (brother of Lucien Petipa). At the end of the 19th century, Orientalism was in vogue. Colonial policies provided knowledge about Asian and African cultures, but they were distorted by error and imagination. The East has often been seen as a faraway place where anything is possible, as if it were lavish, exotic and decadent.
Before this, France had imported many talents from Italy for several centuries. Likewise, Russia imported dancers from France. Previously, Russia’s own dancers performed in front of audiences in St. Petersburg. One of the most notable dancers was Maria Danilova, who was an excellent finger dancer and was remembered as the “Russian Taglioni.” She died at the age of 17 in 1810.
In 1842, Christian Johansson (1817-1903) accompanied Maria Taglioni to Russia and stayed there, later becoming one of the most prominent teachers in Russia.
Giselle was first performed in Russia a year after its premiere in Paris, with Elena Andreyanova (1819-1857) in the role of Giselle. She danced with Christian Johansson and Marius Petipa, two of the most important figures in Russian ballet.
In 1848, Fanny Elssler and Jules Perrot came to Russia. Perrot remained there for 10 years as director of the St. Petersburg Imperial Russian Ballet (now the Mariinsky Ballet Company).
In 1852, Lev Ivanov (1834-1901), the first Russian-born innovator, graduated from the Imperial Ballet School (now the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet).
In 1859, Arthur Saint-Leon became the director of the St. Petersburg Imperial Russian Ballet (now the Mariinsky Ballet Company) instead of Jules Perrot.
Marius Petipa was still a leading dancer with the St. Petersburg ballet in 1862 when he created his first multi-act ballet, Pharaoh's Daughter, for the Tsar's Imperial Theater. It was an incredible fantasy with Egyptian themes, with mummies coming to life and poisonous snakes. This ballet led to the appearance of other ballets and perhaps to what is now considered as classical ballet.
In 1869, Marius Petipa became the chief director of the St. Petersburg Imperial Russian Ballet (now the Mariinsky Ballet Company) instead of Arthur Saint-Leon and was its dictator for the next 30 years. Petipa created many ballets of one act and several acts for production on the imperial stages of Russia. In 1869 he went to Moscow and there he staged the ballet Don Quixote for the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
Then Arthur Saint-Leon returned to Paris and staged Coppelia, the last great ballet Paris Opera. The Franco-Prussian War and the Siege of Paris led to the death of ballet in Western Europe.
In 1877, Petipa created the ballet La Bayadère for the Bolshoi Theater in St. Petersburg.
In 1877 there was the first production of Swan Lake, a ballet so popular that its title is a representation of the classical ballet. Swan Lake, with the first music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, was the first of the big three of Russian ballet. Originally created by the Austrian Wenzel Reisinger (1827-1892), Swan Lake has been reworked by many, among them Joseph Hansen (1842-1907), and Petipa in 1895.
In the 1880s, Petipa staged two ballets in Russia that were very successful in Paris. The first was Giselle, the second was Coppélia staged by Saint-Léon (the original production was in 1870).
In 1889, Petipa created the ballet Amulet.
In 1890, Enrico Cecchetti (1850-1928) became a dancer and director of the Imperial Ballet School. He was born in Rome, both of his parents were dancers and he studied with them. He also studied with Giovanni Lepri, a student of Carlo Blasis.
In 1890, the Italian ballerina Carlotta Brianza (1867-1930) was chosen by Petipa for the role in the new ballet The Sleeping Beauty). This ballet is the second in the big three and one of the main classical ballets.
In 1892 (although the year remains an open question for historians), Petipa, designer Ivan Vsevolzhsky and second director Lev Ivanov created the ballet The Nutcracker. This is the third ballet of the big three. It is based on a sweetened French retelling of the story by E. T. A. Hoffmann. The Nutcracker is hugely popular in hundreds of different versions as a Christmas ballet. The Nutcracker premiered at the Mariinsky Theater on December 18 (December 6 according to the Julian calendar then used in Russia) 1892.
Petipa is best known for his collaborations with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Petipa used Tchaikovsky's music for his dances in The Nutcracker (1892), Sleeping Beauty (1890), and the final adaptation of Swan Lake (1895, with Lev Ivanov). All of these works are based on European folklore.
In the 1890s, ballet ceased to be a great art in Western Europe and did not exist in America. Three men, all from Russia but not all Russians, appeared on the stage at approximately the same time and created a new interest in ballet throughout Europe and America: Enrico Cecchetti, Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) and Agrippina Vaganova (1879-1951).
The classic tutu began to appear at this time. It consisted of short skirt, supported by layers of crinoline or tulle, and allowed the legs to perform acrobatic tricks.
In 1895, Petipa remade Swan Lake to include important choreographic additions. One of the additions was 32 fouette turns.
In 1898, Petipa staged his last ballet using all remaining possibilities. Raymonda was a ballet in three acts with music by Alexander Glazunov. Similar in style to Tchaikovsky's ballets, Raymonda was very difficult to perform as it had big variety dancing, more than can be seen from the graphic line of the performance.
At the beginning of the 20th century, people began to tire of the ideas and principles of Petipa's ballets and were looking for fresh ideas. Russian ballet was already more famous than French and many Russian dancers had international fame. Probably the most notable ballerina of the time was Anna Pavlova (1881-1931), famous for her performance of The Dying Swan (1907).
In 1907, Mikhail Fokin began trying to change the rules regarding costumes at the Imperial Theater. He felt that the look of an open umbrella, the way women dressed then, was boring and not decent. In my ballet Greek style Eunice, he made the dancers appear barefoot. It was then against the rules of the Imperial Theater to have bare feet, so toes were painted on the dancers' shoes. In addition, he used serious music instead of dance music.
In 1909, Sergei Diaghilev brought ballet back to Paris, opening his company Ballets Russes. Among the Ballets Russes dancers were the best young Russian dancers - Anna Pavlova, Tamara Krasavina, Adolf Bolm (1884-1951), Vaslav Nijinsky (1889-1950), Vera Caralli. The Ballet Russes opened in Paris on May 19, 1909 and were an immediate success. The male dancers, among them Vaslav Nijinsky, deserve special admiration, since good male Togla dancers have practically disappeared in Paris. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the company consisted of emigrants from Russia. The revolution deprived Diaghilev of the opportunity to return to Russia.
Ballets Russes performed for the most part in Western Europe, but sometimes in North and South America. For 20 years Sergei Diaghilev was the director of all ballet in Western Europe and America.
After one season with the Ballets Russes, Anna Pavlova founded her own company, which was based in London and traveled extensively around the world, visiting places where the Ballets Russes did not come. Anna Pavlova visited many cities in the USA, including small ones. She did not found a ballet school or company in the United States, but through her performances she encouraged many girls to take up dancing.
Ballets Russes started with strong Russian iconic works. However, the first ballet shown was Le Pavillon d'Armide, which had a strong French influence. Le Pavillon d'Armide was performed in both St. Petersburg and Paris and featured Vaslav Nijinsky, known as one of the best jumpers of all time. The Ballets Russes also presented in Paris a ballet formerly known as Chopiniana, since all the music belonged to Chopin. But it was renamed Les Sylphides for French audiences. It was not the same as La Sylphide, but it was given a similar name since Parisian audiences had seen La Sylphide shortly before.
Diaghilev and composer Igor Stravinsky combined their talents to create the ballets Firebird and Parsley based on Russian folklore. Over the next few years, the Ballets Russes performed several ballets that thus became famous, among them Scheherazade (1910), The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (Petrooucha) (1911).
Mikhail Fokin began his career in St. Petersburg and then moved to Paris and worked with Diaghilev at the Ballets Russes.
Enrico Cecchetti was one of the performers of Petrushka, playing pantomime since he was already in a not very good physical fitness. Enrico Cecchetti became famous for his roles as the fiery fairy Carbosse and the blue bird in Petipa's 1890 production of The Sleeping Beauty. Afterwards he became known as the creator of Cecchetti's way of teaching ballet.
In 1913 Nijinsky created new ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (Russian title for The Sacred Spring, although literal translation from French “Dedication to Spring”). This was the most controversial work of the Ballets Russes. This ballet was staged with music also called Stravinsky. Modern ballet music and the theme of human sacrifice greatly impress the audience. Many in the US associate The Spell of Spring with the dinosaur sequence from Walt Disney's Fantasia.
The last important production of the Ballets Russes in Paris was in 1921 and 1922, when Diaghilev restaged Petipa's 1890 version of Sleeping Beauty. Her show for four months did not return the investment financial resources, and it was actually a failure. However, Sleeping Beauty restored audience interest in the evening-long ballet.
In 1933, after Diaghilev's death, René Blum and others founded the Ballet Russe in Monte Carlo and continued to carry on the ballet tradition. Blum was later killed at Auschwitz by the Nazis.
After Russian revolution ballet in Russia was preserved by Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first People's Commissar of Education. After Lunacharsky, the commissioners allowed ballet if it was bright and sublime.
Russian ballet continued its development in Soviet era. After the revolution, a small number of talented people remained in the country, but this was enough to create a new generation. After stagnation in the 1920s, a new generation of dancers and choreographers appeared on the stage in the mid-1930s.
In the 1930s in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), Agrippina Vaganova was the artistic director of what was previously called the Imperial Russian Ballet, and began to leave traces of her activities. In 1935, the ballet company was renamed the Kirov Ballet (now the Mariinsky Ballet Company). As artistic director, Vaganova performed government regulations and changed the ending of Swan Lake from tragic to sublime.
Vaganova demanded technical perfection and precision of dance, she was a student of Petipa and Cecchetti and had previously directed the Imperial Ballet School, renamed the Leningrad State Choreographic Institute, which trained dancers for the Mariinsky Ballet Company. In 1957, six years after Vaganova's death, the government renamed the Leningrad State Choreographic Institute into the Academy of Russian Ballet. A. Ya. Vaganova. When the Mariinsky Ballet Company began traveling to Western Europe, Vaganova had already died. Vaganova’s method of teaching ballet is known from her book “Fundamentals of Classical Dance,” which has been translated into various languages.
The ballet was popular with the public. Both the Moscow Bolshoi Ballet Company and the St. Petersburg Mariinsky Ballet Company were active. Ideological pressure led to the creation of ballets socialist realism, most of which did not impress the public and were later dropped from the repertoire of both companies.
Some works of this era, however, were notable. Among them are Romeo and Juliet by Sergei Prokofiev and Leonid Lavrovsky. The ballet Flames of Paris, although it has all the characteristic features of the art of socialist realism, was the first to actively use the corps de ballet in the performance. The ballet version of The Bakhchisarai Fountain based on the poem by Alexander Pushkin with music by Boris Asafiev and choreography by Rostislav Zakharov was also successful.
The famous ballet Cinderella with music by Prokofiev is also a product Soviet ballet. During the Soviet era, these productions were largely unknown outside the Soviet Union and later the Eastern Bloc. After the collapse of the Soviet Union they became more famous.
After the Ballets Russes appeared in France, the ballet gained greater influence, especially in the United States.
In 1910, the first ballet company in America, the Chicago Opera Ballet, was founded.
In 1929, the Aleksander Dorothy Concert Group appeared, which later became the Atlanta Civic Ballet.
In 1933, Adolph Bolm founded the San Francisco Ballet.
From Paris, after disagreements with Diaghilev, Fokine moved to Sweden and then to the USA and finally settled in New York. He believed that traditional ballet was little more than a pretty athletic performance. For Fokin this was not enough. In addition to technical skill, he demanded drama, expressiveness and historicity. In his opinion, the choreographer should research the era in which the ballet is staged and its culture, and abandon the traditional tutu in favor of a costume appropriate to the era.
Fokine directed Scheherazade and Cleopatra. He also redesigned Parsley and the Firebird. One of his most famous works was The Dying Swan performed by Anna Pavlova. In addition to her talents as a ballerina, Pavlova had the theatrical ability to match Fokine's vision of ballet as drama.
A young dancer and choreographer with the Ballets Russes was Georgy Melitonovich Balanchivadze (1904-1983), whose name was later changed into French as George Balanchine. He staged several works at the Ballets Russes, most famously Apollon Musagète (later Apollon) (1928), a classic work of neoclassicism. It was a one-act ballet in the Greek style. After Diaghilev's death, Balanchivadze left the Ballets Russes, traveled alone for a short time, eventually becoming the head of the Ballets 1933 company, which, however, soon closed. Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1995) invited Balanchivadze to America. Kirstein knew almost nothing about ballets, and Balanchivadze knew almost nothing about America, except that women who look like Ginger Rogers appear there. Balanchivadze decided to accept the offer and found a ballet in America. Then Kirstein began to list the ballets that he would like to see in America, the first item on the list was Pocahontas.
In 1933 or 1934, Kirstein and Balanchivadze founded the School of American Ballet in Hartford, Conneticut, which gave its first performance, a new production called Serenade, that same year. Balanchivadze developed an exemplary technique in the USA, founding a school in Chicago. In 1934, the School of American Ballet moved to New York, which was more important. Balanchivadze adapted the ballet to new media, films and television. A prolific worker, Balanchivadze remade the classics Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty and also created new ballets. He created original interpretations of Shakespeare's dramas - Romeo and Juliet, The Joyful Widower, The Dream of summer night. In the ballet Jewels, Balanchivadze broke the tradition of the story and dramatized the theme instead of graphic representation.
Barbara Karinska, an emigrant from Russia, was a capable tailor and collaborated with Balanchivadze. She elevated the role of costume design from a supporting role to an important part of a ballet performance. She introduced a bias hem and simplified the classic ballet skirt, giving dancers additional freedom of movement. With scrupulous attention to detail, she decorated skirts with beads, embroidery, and appliqué.
Thanks to Balanchivadze, the ballet came to America. Now, thanks in part to Balanchivadze, ballet has become one of the best preserved dances in the world. In America there is a popular misconception that ballet came from Russia.
Related information.
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How beautiful is the flight of a ballerina in dance, how light and airy it is, and how hard her work is on the way to this apparent lightness. Thousands of girls start this path in ballet schools, but only a few become Great Ballerinas. April 23 is a significant date in the world of ballet - 210 years since the birth of Maria Taglioni, the first ballerina to stand on pointe shoes and the first to present a ballet tutu in an airy cloud. But these are not the main pages in the history of ballet, written great ballerina– her dance, airy, mystical, which was compared to Paganini’s violin, became the most famous legend of ballet.
Maria Taglioni (1804-1884)
Maria's father was a choreographer and choreographer, so he saw in his daughter something that others did not see. How else? After all, she was supposed to become a third generation ballerina! And she looked like an ugly, hunched duckling among his other students, from whom she suffered a lot of ridicule. The father was unforgiving and strict, sometimes the lesson ended with the exhausted Maria fainting, but it was hard labor that turned her into a ballet nymph. And ahead of her was a triumph - in 1827, the “Venice Carnival” in Paris, after which she danced at the Grand Opera and world fame at the age of 28 in his father's production of La La Sylphide. The role of Sylphide became the main one in her life - for a quarter of a century she was the best performer of this part. She was followed by other roles in productions by Philippe Taglioni, a long contract with the Grand Opera and... tours in Russia. And St. Petersburg literally “got sick with ballet” - she performed at the price every other day, invariably causing delight and admiration, attention imperial family and the adoration of the public. Last performance ballerinas in St. Petersburg took place on March 1, 1842. They called her eighteen times - her, the Sylphide, flying above the stage on the tips of her pointe shoes in a gas cloud of a ballet tutu...
Anna Pavlova (1881-1931)
The future Russian ballet star dreamed of a white rehearsal hall with a portrait of Maria Taglioni on the wall. The daughter of a railway contractor and a laundress had excellent natural ballet abilities and great perseverance, thanks to which she was able to become a student at a theater school, because she was not accepted right away! Only the second attempt was successful, thanks to Marius Petipa, who saw “a feather in the wind” in the little girl. After graduating from college, Anna entered the Mariinsky Theater, where she became a principal 6 years later after her first appearance on stage. “La Bayadère”, “Giselle”, “The Nutcracker” in her brilliant performance delighted theater audiences and picky “balletomanes”. Real fame came to her in 1907 after performing the miniature “The Dying Swan” to the music of Saint-Saëns, which Mikhail Fokin staged for her literally overnight for performance at a charity concert. The miniature forever became a symbol of Russian ballet of the 20th century. Since 1910, a series of tours of the “Russian Swan” and the history of its world fame begin. The "Russian Seasons" in Paris became one of the "golden pages" in the history of Russian and world ballet. Anna Pavlova creates her own troupe, her own ballet family, with which she opens the world to the classical ballet of Tchaikovsky and Glazunov. In 1913 she moved to London and never returned to Russia. America, Europe, India, Cuba, Australia applauded Pavlova, who became a living legend. Anna Pavlova died during a tour in The Hague on January 23, 1931 from pneumonia.
Olga Spesivtseva (1895-1991)
What broke the soul of the ballerina most of all was the shock of the revolution, which haunted her with accusations of emigration of “espionage”, emotional drama or complete immersion in the image of Giselle, for whom she visited mental homes and with whom she shared her madness? She could no longer go on stage and, broken, in 1931 she moved to the USA, where she soon found herself in a hospital in a state of complete loss of memory, where she stayed until 1963. A miracle happened, her memory returned to her and until her death Olga Spesivtseva lived in the boarding house of the Leo Tolstoy Foundation, managing to star in a documentary film...
Agrippina Vaganova (1879-1951)
She did not become a great ballerina at a price, but her name is known throughout the world as the name of a great ballet teacher, which the Academy of Dance bears….
On stage, she was destined for only third-rate roles - she was not attractive in appearance and the first roles bypassed her, and critics did not see her as an “ethereal beauty”. Hard work, talent, and excellent performance technique turned out to be more important than a beautiful outer shell. Agrippina Vaganova “sculpted” herself, initially achieving supporting roles, the images of which she rediscovered for the public. Creating more and more new variations of already seemingly worn-out images, she received from critics the title of “queen of variations.” She did not become a famous ballerina; at the age of 36 she was sent into “retirement,” but, devoting herself to choreography, she became the most famous teacher, writing her name in golden letters in the history of ballet. She devoted herself to choreography in those years when the issue of... eliminating ballet as an alien art form was being discussed quite seriously. Vaganova school has rightfully become one of the best in the world, producing ballerinas whose names rightfully deserve the prefix “great”: Marina Semenova, Galina Ulanova, Natalya Dudinskaya. Agrippina Vaganova directed the Academic Opera and Ballet Theater in 1931-1937, staging Swan Lake and Esmeralda in new edition, in his own special manner, which received the name “Vaganova”. Her teaching experience has become a worldwide property largely thanks to the book she wrote, “Fundamentals of Classical Dance,” which was translated into almost all languages of the world and went through 7 reprints.
Alicia Alonso (1920)
The creator of the National Ballet of Cuba, Alicia Martinez del Hoyo, at the age of 9, entered the only ballet school in Cuba at that time of the Russian choreographer Nikolai Yavorsky. And from the very first day, ballet became the meaning of her whole life. Step by step, Alicia walked towards her goals, one after another: to become a professional ballerina, and then to create a national ballet school in Cuba. When politics interfered with her plans, and the very existence of a ballet troupe in Cuba became impossible, she made it her goal to support the most gifted dancers until better times. After the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, she selects the most gifted students and puts new goal- raise Cuban ballet to world level. But in her life there were not only large-scale plans, in her life there was the Ballet, of which Alicia called herself a “laborer.” She was applauded by Paris, Milan, Vienna, Naples, Moscow, Prague, but she was never satisfied with herself. At the age of 19, she had her first eye surgery; her vision deteriorated every year, but she danced. "Dancing in the dark" - that's what they said about the great Cuban ballerina. Especially for her, the center of the stage was illuminated with the brightest spotlight - she did not see the backstage, the scenery, she danced with her soul... A lot of performances, images - she danced, danced, always danced, without giving herself any concessions or discounts for age and loss of vision. Alicia Alonso's last performance in the ballet "Butterfly" staged by her took place in 1995, when the ballerina turned 75 years old! She still dances, sitting in a wheelchair, having completely lost her sight - she still dances with her hands and heart. Alicia Alonso - Prima ballerina assoluta.
19th century choreographers .
Ballet (French ballet, from Italian ballo - dancing) - a type of performing art; a performance whose content is embodied in musical and choreographic images. Most often, a ballet is based on a certain plot, dramatic concept, libretto, but there are also plotless ballets. The main types of dance in ballet are classical dance and character dance. An important role here is played by pantomime, with the help of which the actors convey the feelings of the characters, their “conversation” with each other, and the essence of what is happening. IN modern ballet Elements of gymnastics and acrobatics are also widely used. Ballet requires endurance and endurance from any person practicing it.
The birth of ballet
Ballet originated in Italy in the 16th century. At first, as a dance scene united by a single action or mood, an episode in musical performance, opera Borrowed from Italy, court ballet flourished in France as a magnificent ceremonial spectacle. The beginning of the ballet era in France and throughout the world should be considered October 15, 1581. The first ballet was called "The Queen's Comedy Ballet" (or "Cerce"), choreographed by the Italian Baltazarini.
The musical basis of the first ballets was folk and court dances, which were part of the ancient suite. In the second half of the 17th century, new theatrical genres appeared, such as comedy-ballet, opera-ballet, in which significant place allocated to ballet music, and attempts are made to dramatize it. But ballet became an independent form of stage art only in the second half of the 18th century thanks to reforms carried out by the French choreographer Jean Georges Nover. Based on the aesthetics of the French Enlightenment, he created performances in which the content is revealed in dramatically expressive plastic images, and established the active role of music as “a program that determines the movements and actions of the dancer.”
Choreographer- author and director of ballets, dances, choreographic numbers, dance scenes in opera and operetta, director of a ballet troupe. The choreographer sets choreographic scenes and dances, creates a system of movements in the space of the stage or dance floor, determines the makeup and costumes of the characters, chooses scenery and lighting. He subordinates all this to the main idea, so that the dance spectacle represents a harmonious whole. Preparation for a performance or dance occurs during rehearsals. The final stage work is showing a performance in the presence of spectators or filming if the work takes place in cinema or television.
Famous choreographers of the 19th century
Charles Didelot - one of the first ballet reformers
Charles (Carl) Louis Didelot(Didelot) French choreographer, ballet dancer, teacher. One of the outstanding dancers and choreographers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1801, he was invited as a dancer and choreographer to St. Petersburg, where he served until 1831 (with a break, 1811-1816), and staged more than 40 ballets. Didelot sought to deepen the dramatic content of the ballet and enhance the emotional and psychological expressiveness of the images. In 1823, Didelot staged the ballet ( before opera and drama)" Caucasian prisoner"Pushkin. Since 1804 he headed the St. Petersburg drama school(students - M. I. Danilova, A. I. Istomina, etc.)
His debut took place on May 22, 1788. He staged two one-act ballets on the London stage - "The Lord's Grace" and "Richard the Lionheart". The success was such that a contract was signed with the novice choreographer for several seasons. London gathered more and more fresh forces and provided a platform for experiments. Didelot's fame came from the following ballets: “The Love of Little Peggy”, “Caravan on Holiday”, “Avenged Love”, “Flora and Zephyr”, “The Happy Shipwreck”, “Acis and Galatea” - a total of eleven ballets in five years.
In September 1801, he came to Russia with his wife and little son. He was invited to St. Petersburg - and could he have known that it was here that he would realize all his plans, even the most fantastic ones?
At first he took a modest place in the ballet troupe, but soon made such a name for himself that he overtook both Walberg and another French choreographer, Charles Le Pic. First dancer chief choreographer, dance teacher in a ballet troupe and at a school - isn’t this a career? But Didelot was tied hand and foot by a contract with the directorate of the imperial theaters, which directly stated that “the talents of M. Charles Louis Didelot... belong exclusively to the imperial directorate.” He was obliged to perform all the first roles in ballets, train soloists, compose ballets and divertissements, follow the troupe wherever it was sent, and be satisfied with the costumes that were given to him. But in the troupe and at school he was an autocratic master.
His debut on the Russian stage took place in 1802 - it was the ballet “Apollo and Daphne”, which opened a whole cycle of “Anacreontic ballets”, which came into fashion back in the eighteenth century. They were created in the spirit of the poetry of the ancient Greek poet Anacreon - cheerful, a little frivolous, about the amorous pranks of the Olympian gods, with the participation of zephyrs, nymphs, cupids, fauns and other fantastic characters. What new did Didelot bring to this genre?
If earlier Venus and Mars were “portrayed” in gold-embroidered caftans and dresses with hoops, and most importantly, in high-heeled shoes, Didelot threw these costumes into the landfill. No wigs, hairpieces, tightly laced corsets, heavy shoes with buckles - the costume should be light and weightless, and best of all, if it is a tunic in the style of an antique one. And under the tunic you should wear flesh-colored tights. The arms, shoulders and neck were left bare; women's hair was tied into a Greek knot or loosened and decorated with flowers.
The costume reform was directly related to changes in choreographic technique. Stage dance has finally ceased to be a more complex form of salon dance and has acquired the features of modern classical dance with clarity and clarity of body lines, greater amplitude of movements of the arms, body and especially legs, flight, which led to greater freedom of movement. Transformations in dance technique inevitably led to changes in the training system, which Didelot made while at the head of the troupe and ballet school.
The men's dance was replete with high and strong jumps, spins on the floor and in the air, and various lifts. Women's dance technically was much less complicated - the time of pointe shoes had not yet come. Some artists attempted to stand not just on their high toes, but on the very tip of their toes. But special ballet shoes had yet to be invented. The dancer was required to imitate beautiful picture or a statue, the closest attention was paid to her hands. Duet supports were also very modest - the dancer only occasionally supported his partner, sometimes raised her to chest level and never threw her into the air. The entire virtuoso load fell on the solo male dance.
The main theme of the elegant and poetic Anacreontic ballets was love. But the affectation and ponderous conventions of the eighteenth century were replaced by classical clarity of content and form. Living human experiences reigned on the stage. And the flight of the soul corresponded to real flights over the stage.
For the first time, Didelot lifted up and, with the help of a stretched wire, made him fly over the corps de ballet and the scenery of the performer of the role of Zephyr in the ballet “Zephyr and Flora”. Then the stage operators, captivated by his ideas, began to develop systems from blocks and ropes. As a result, entire groups of performers flew on and off the stage. In the ballet Cupid and Psyche, Venus arrived by air in a chariot drawn by live white doves.
Didelot felt like the owner of the theater, and this was reflected in everything. When ordering music, he set the most stringent limits for the composer - first he stipulated all the episodes of the script, then it came to the number of bars, tempo, orchestration, and when individual fragments already somehow linked into a single whole, Didelot ordered cuts to be made. This utilitarian view of the role of music in ballet was common misfortune in theaters of the early nineteenth century. But what is curious is that the fierce arguments between Didelot and composer Katerino Kavos led to the birth of good performances.
He was a very strict teacher and could even beat a careless student with a stick. They said about him: light on the foot and heavy on the hand. Those whom he considered the most talented got the most. But in a strange way, this did not dampen the enthusiasm - Didelot knew how to infect ballet youth with his passion. He paid great attention acting– in his productions there were always small roles for children, and the children coped with the assigned tasks perfectly.
But in 1811 Didelot left St. Petersburg. The reason given was “serious illness.” This reason did not prevent the choreographer from leaving for London and working there until 1816. He put in Royal Theater ballets “The Wooden Leg”, “Zephyr and Flora”, “Alina, Queen of Golconda” and many others, including the divertissement “Swing”, which included Russian, Tatar, Polish and gypsy dances.
In the summer of 1816, Didelot returned to Russia, and in August the premiere of his new ballet Acis and Galatea took place. Avdotya Istomina, who had just graduated from ballet school, made her debut in the role of Galatea.
Didelot staged many ballets - mythological ballets, fairy-tale ballets, with fairies and magic, comic ballets ("in the Spanish style" and "in the Scottish style"), dramatic ballets - five-act performances with large pantomime scenes. But no matter what ballet Didelot turned to, he tried to show living characters and destinies. He brought Russian ballet to a height unprecedented before him and formed many Russian choreographic celebrities: Danilova, Istomin, Teleshova, Zubova, Likhutina, Goltz, Didier and others. Pushkin and Griboedov sang the ballets of Didelot and his students.
Publications in the Theaters section
Modern Russian ballerinas. Top 5
The proposed five leading ballerinas include artists who began their careers in the main musical theaters of our country - the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi - in the 90s, when the situation in politics, and then in culture, was rapidly changing. The ballet theater became more open due to the expansion of the repertoire, the arrival of new choreographers, the emergence of additional opportunities in the West, and at the same time more demanding of performing skills.
This short list the stars of the new generation are being discovered by Ulyana Lopatkina, who came to the Mariinsky Theater in 1991 and is now almost finishing her career. At the end of the list is Victoria Tereshkina, who also began working in the era of perestroika in ballet art. And right behind her comes the next generation of dancers, for whom the Soviet legacy is only one of many directions. These are Ekaterina Kondaurova, Ekaterina Krysanova, Olesya Novikova, Natalya Osipova, Oksana Kardash, but more about them another time.
Ulyana Lopatkina
Today's media call Natalia Dudinskaya's student Ulyana Lopatkina (born in 1973) a “style icon” of Russian ballet. There is a grain of truth in this catchy definition. She is the ideal Odette-Odile, the true “two-faced” heroine of “Swan Lake” in the coldly refined Soviet version by Konstantin Sergeev, who also managed to develop and convincingly embody on stage another swan image in Mikhail Fokine’s decadent miniature “The Dying Swan” by Camille Saint-Saëns. From these two works of hers, recorded on video, Lopatkina is recognized on the street by thousands of fans all over the world, and hundreds of young ballet students are trying to master the craft and unravel the mystery of transformation. The refined and sensual Swan is Ulyana, and for a long time, even when the new generation of dancers eclipses the brilliant galaxy of ballerinas of the 1990–2000s, Odetta-Lopatkina will bewitch. She was also unattainable, technically precise and expressive in “Raymond” by Alexander Glazunov, “The Legend of Love” by Arif Melikov. She would not have been called a “style icon” without her contribution to the ballets of George Balanchine, whose American heritage, imbued with the culture of the Russian Imperial Ballet, was mastered by the Mariinsky Theater when Lopatkina was at the very peak of her career (1999–2010). Her best roles, namely roles, and not parts, since Lopatkina knows how to dramatically fill plotless compositions, she became solo works in “Diamonds”, “Piano Concerto No. 2”, “Theme and Variations” to the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, “Waltz” by Maurice Ravel. The ballerina participated in all the avant-garde projects of the theater and, based on the results of collaboration with modern choreographers, will give a head start to many.
Ulyana Lopatkina in the choreographic miniature “The Dying Swan”
Documentary film “Ulyana Lopatkina, or Dancing on Weekdays and on Holidays”
Diana Vishneva
Second by birth, only three years younger than Lopatkina, student of the legendary Lyudmila Kovaleva Diana Vishneva (born in 1976), in reality she never “came” second, but only first. It so happened that Lopatkina, Vishneva and Zakharova, separated from each other by three years, walked side by side at the Mariinsky Theater, full of healthy rivalry and at the same time admiration for each other’s enormous, but completely different capabilities. Where Lopatkina reigned as the languid, graceful Swan, and Zakharova formed a new - urban - image of the romantic Giselle, Vishneva performed the function of the goddess of the wind. Having not yet graduated from the Academy of Russian Ballet, she was already dancing on the stage of the Mariinsky Kitri - main character in Don Quixote, a few months later she showed her achievements in Moscow on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater. And at the age of 20 she became a prima ballerina of the Mariinsky Theater, although many have to wait until they are 30 or more years old to be promoted to this status. At 18 (!), Vishneva tried on the role of Carmen in a number composed specially for her by Igor Belsky. In the late 90s, Vishneva was rightfully considered the best Juliet in Leonid Lavrovsky’s canonical version, and she also became the most graceful Manon Lescaut in Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet of the same name. Since the early 2000s, in parallel with St. Petersburg, where she participated in many productions of such choreographers as George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, William Forsythe, Alexei Ratmansky, Angelen Preljocaj, she began performing abroad as a guest etoile (“ballet star”). Now Vishneva often works in her own projects, commissioning ballets for herself from famous choreographers (John Neumeier, Alexei Ratmansky, Caroline Carlson, Moses Pendleton, Dwight Rhoden, Jean-Christophe Maillot). The ballerina regularly dances in premieres of Moscow theaters. Vishneva enjoyed enormous success in the Bolshoi Theater ballet choreographed by Mats Ek “The Apartment” (2013) and in John Neumeier’s play “Tatyana” based on “Eugene Onegin” by Alexander Pushkin at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Musical Theater in 2014. In 2013 she became one of the organizers of the November festival modern dance Context, which since 2016 has been taking place not only in Moscow, but also in St. Petersburg.
Documentary film “Always on the move. Diana Vishneva"
Svetlana Zakharova
The youngest of the three famous chicks of the A. Vaganova Academy from the 90s, Svetlana Zakharova (born in 1979) instantly caught up with her rivals and in some ways surpassed them, acting like the once great Leningrad ballerinas Marina Semyonova and Galina Ulanova, “to serve” at the Moscow Bolshoi Theater in 2003. Behind her, she had studied with the excellent ARB teacher Elena Evteeva, had experience working with Olga Moiseeva, the star of the Kirov Ballet of the 70s, and a gigantic achievement list. In any of the performances of the St. Petersburg period, Zakharova stood out clearly. Her strong point, on the one hand, was the interpretation of heroines in ancient ballets by Marius Petipa, restored by Sergei Vikharev, and soloists in avant-garde productions by leading choreographers, on the other. In terms of natural data and “technical characteristics,” Zakharova not only surpassed her colleagues at the Mariinsky Theater and then at the Bolshoi, she entered the cohort of the most sought-after ballerinas in the world who dance everywhere in guest status. And the most important ballet company in Italy - La Scala Ballet - offered her a permanent contract in 2008. Zakharova at some point admitted that she danced “Swan Lake”, “La Bayadère” and “The Sleeping Beauty” in all possible stage versions from Hamburg to Paris and Milan. IN Bolshoi Theater, shortly after Zakharova moved to Moscow, John Neumeier staged his program ballet A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the ballerina shone in it in the double role of Hippolyta-Titania paired with Nikolai Tsiskaridze's Oberon. She also took part in the production of “Lady with Camellias” by Neumeier at the Bolshoi. Zakharova successfully collaborates with Yuri Posokhov - she danced the premiere of his “Cinderella” at the Bolshoi Theater in 2006 and in 2015 she performed the role of Princess Mary in “A Hero of Our Time.”
Documentary film “Prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Theater Svetlana Zakharova. Revelation"
Maria Alexandrova
At the same time, when the triad of St. Petersburg dancers conquered Northern Palmyra, the star of Maria Alexandrova (born in 1978) rose in Moscow. Her career developed with a slight delay: when she came to the theater, ballerinas of the previous generation had finished their time dancing - Nina Ananiashvili, Nadezhda Gracheva, Galina Stepanenko. In the ballets with their participation, Alexandrova - bright, temperamental, even exotic - was in the supporting roles, but it was she who received all the experimental premieres of the theater. Critics saw the very young ballerina in Alexei Ratmansky’s ballet “Dreams of Japan”; soon she interpreted Catherine II in Boris Eifman’s ballet “Russian Hamlet” and others. And debuts in the main roles of such ballets as “Swan Lake”, “Sleeping Beauty” ", "Raymonda", "The Legend of Love", she waited patiently for years.
The year 2003 became fateful when the choreographer chose Alexandrova as Juliet new wave Radu Poklitaru. It was an important performance that opened the way new choreography(without pointe shoes, without classical positions) at the Bolshoi Theater, and Alexandrova held the revolutionary banner. In 2014, she repeated her success in another Shakespearean ballet - The Taming of the Shrew, choreographed by Mayo. In 2015, Alexandrova began collaborating with choreographer Vyacheslav Samodurov. He staged a ballet about the theater behind the scenes - “Curtain” in Yekaterinburg, and in the summer of 2016 he chose her for the role of Ondine in the ballet of the same name at the Bolshoi Theater. The ballerina managed to use the forced waiting time to hone the dramatic side of the role. The secret source of her creative energy aimed at acting does not dry out, and Alexandrova is always on alert.
Documentary film “Monologues about myself. Maria Alexandrova"
Victoria Tereshkina
Like Alexandrova at the Bolshoi, Victoria Tereshkina (born 1983) was in the shadow of the aforementioned trio of ballerinas. But she did not wait for anyone to retire; she began to energetically capture parallel spaces: she experimented with novice choreographers, did not get lost in the difficult ballets of William Forsythe (Approximate Sonata, for example). She often did what others did not undertake, or attempted, but could not cope with, but Tereshkina succeeded and is succeeding in absolutely everything. Her main strength was impeccable mastery of technique, helped by endurance and the presence of a reliable teacher nearby - Lyubov Kunakova. It is curious that, unlike Alexandrova, who went into the true drama that is only possible on the ballet stage, Tereshkina “focused” on improving technique and erected a triumphant plotlessness into a cult. Her favorite plot, which she always plays on stage, grows out of a sense of form.
Documentary film “The Royal Box. Victoria Tereshkina"
History of balletBallet is a fairly young art. It is a little over four hundred years old, although dance has been decorating human life since ancient times. Ballet was born in Northern Italy during the Renaissance. Italian princes loved lavish palace festivities, in which dance occupied an important place. Rural dances were not suitable for court ladies and gentlemen. Their attire, like the halls where they danced, did not allow for unorganized movement. Special teachers - dance masters - tried to restore order in court dances. They rehearsed individual figures and dance movements with the nobles in advance and led groups of dancers. Gradually the dance became more and more theatrical.
The term "ballet" appeared in late XVI century (from the Italian balletto - to dance). But then it did not mean a performance, but only a dance episode conveying a certain mood. Such “ballets” usually consisted of slightly interconnected “exit” characters - most often heroes Greek myths. After such “exits” began general dance- “grand ballet”.
The first ballet performance was the Queen's Comedy Ballet, staged in 1581 in France. Italian choreographer Baltazarini di Belgioioso. It was in France that the further development of ballet took place. At first these were masquerade ballets, and then pompous melodramatic ballets with chivalric and fantastic plots, where dance episodes were replaced by vocal arias and recitation of poetry. Don't be surprised, at that time ballet was not just a dance performance.
During the reign of Louis XIV, court ballet performances reached special splendor. Louis himself loved to participate in ballets, and received his famous nickname “The Sun King” after performing the role of the Sun in “Ballet of the Night.”
In 1661 he created the Royal Academy of Music and Dance, which included 13 leading dance masters. Their responsibility was to preserve dance traditions. The director of the academy, royal dance teacher Pierre Beauchamp, identified five main positions of classical dance.
Soon the Paris Opera was opened, and the same Beauchamp was appointed choreographer. A ballet troupe was formed under his leadership. At first, it consisted of only men. Women appeared on the stage of the Paris Opera only in 1681.
The theater staged operas and ballets by composer Lully and comedies and ballets by playwright Moliere. At first, courtiers took part in them, and the performances were almost no different from palace performances. The already mentioned slow minuets, gavottes and pavanes were danced. Masks, heavy dresses and high heels prevented women from performing complex movements. Therefore, men's dances were then distinguished by greater grace and elegance.
By the middle of the 18th century, ballet gained great popularity in Europe. All the aristocratic courts of Europe sought to imitate the luxury of the French royal court. Opera houses opened in cities. Numerous dancers and dance teachers easily found work.
Soon, under the influence of fashion, women's ballet costumes became much lighter and freer, and the lines of the body could be seen underneath. The dancers abandoned high-heeled shoes, replacing them with light heelless shoes. The men's costume also became less bulky: tight trousers to the knees and stockings made it possible to see the dancer's figure.
Each innovation made dancing more meaningful and dance technique higher. Gradually, ballet separated from opera and became an independent art.
Although French ballet school She was famous for her grace and plasticity; she was characterized by a certain coldness and formality of execution. Therefore, choreographers and artists looked for other means of expression.
At the end of the 18th century, a new direction in art was born - romanticism, which had a strong influence on ballet. In a romantic ballet, the dancer stood on pointe shoes. Maria Taglioni was the first to do this, completely changing previous ideas about ballet. In the ballet La Sylphide, she appeared as a fragile creature from the other world. The success was stunning.
At this time, many wonderful ballets appeared, but, unfortunately, romantic ballet became the last period of heyday of dance art in the West. From the second half of the 19th century, ballet, having lost its former significance, turned into an appendage to opera. Only in the 30s of the 20th century, under the influence of Russian ballet, the revival of this art form in Europe began.
In Russia, the first ballet performance - “The Ballet of Orpheus and Eurydice” - was staged on February 8, 1673 at the court of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Ceremonial and slow dances consisted of a change of graceful poses, bows and moves, alternating with singing and speech. No significant role he did not play a role in the development of stage dance. It was just another royal “fun” that attracted people with its unusualness and novelty.
Only a quarter of a century later, thanks to the reforms of Peter I, music and dance entered the everyday life of Russian society. Compulsory dance training was introduced into noble educational institutions. Musicians, opera artists and ballet troupes imported from abroad began to perform at the court.
In 1738, the first ballet school in Russia opened, and three years later, 12 boys and 12 girls from the palace servants became the first professional dancers in Russia. At first they performed in the ballets of foreign masters as figures (as the corps de ballet dancers were called), and later in the main roles. Timofey Bublikov, a wonderful dancer of that time, shone not only in St. Petersburg, but also in Vienna.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Russian ballet art reached creative maturity. Russian dancers brought expressiveness and spirituality to the dance. Feeling this very accurately, A.S. Pushkin called the dance of his contemporary Avdotya Istomina “soul-filled flight.”
Ballet at this time occupied a privileged position among other forms of theatrical art. The authorities paid him great attention, provided government subsidies. Moscow and St. Petersburg ballet troupes performed in well-equipped theaters, and graduates theater schools the staff of dancers, musicians and decorators was annually replenished.
Arthur Saint Leon
In the history of our ballet theater, the names of foreign masters who played a significant role in the development of Russian ballet are often found. First of all, these are Charles Didelot, Arthur Saint-Leon and Marius Petipa. They helped create the Russian ballet school. But talented Russian artists also gave the opportunity to reveal the talents of their teachers. This invariably attracted the largest choreographers of Europe to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Nowhere in the world could they meet such a large, talented and well-trained troupe as in Russia.
In the middle of the 19th century, realism came to Russian literature and art. Choreographers feverishly, but to no avail, tried to create realistic performances. They did not take into account that ballet is a conventional art and realism in ballet differs significantly from realism in painting and literature. The crisis of ballet art began.
New stage in the history of Russian ballet began when the great Russian composer P. Tchaikovsky first composed music for ballet. It was Swan Lake. Before this, ballet music was not taken seriously. It was considered a lower type of musical creativity, just an accompaniment to dancing.
Thanks to Tchaikovsky, ballet music became a serious art along with opera and symphonic music. Previously music was completely dependent on the dance, now the dance had to obey the music. New means of expression and a new approach to creating a performance were required.
The further development of Russian ballet is associated with the name of the Moscow choreographer A. Gorsky, who, having abandoned the outdated techniques of pantomime, used modern directing techniques in the ballet performance. Giving great importance the picturesque design of the performance, he attracted the best artists to work.
But the true reformer of ballet art is Mikhail Fokin, who rebelled against the traditional construction of a ballet performance. He argued that the theme of the play, its music, and the era in which the action takes place require different dance movements and a different dance pattern each time. When staging the ballet “Egyptian Nights,” Fokine was inspired by the poetry of V. Bryusov and ancient Egyptian drawings, and the images of the ballet “Petrushka” were inspired by the poetry of A. Blok. In the ballet Daphnis and Chloe, he abandoned dancing on pointe shoes and revived the ancient frescoes with free, flexible movements. His "Chopiniana" revived the atmosphere romantic ballet. Fokin wrote that “he dreams of creating a ballet-drama out of ballet-fun, and out of dance into an understandable, speaking language.” And he succeeded
Anna Pavlova
In 1908, annual performances of Russian ballet dancers began in Paris, organized by theater figure S. P. Diaghilev. The names of dancers from Russia - Vaslav Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina, Adolf Bolm - became known throughout the world. But first in this row is the name of the incomparable Anna Pavlova.
Pavlova - lyrical, fragile, with elongated body lines, huge eyes - evoked engravings depicting romantic ballerinas. Her heroines conveyed a purely Russian dream of a harmonious, spiritualized life or melancholy and sadness about something unfulfilled. “The Dying Swan”, created by the great ballerina Pavlova, is a poetic symbol of Russian ballet at the beginning of the 20th century.
It was then, under the influence of the skill of Russian artists, that Western ballet shook itself up and found a second wind.
After the October Revolution of 1917, many ballet theater figures left Russia, but despite this, the school of Russian ballet survived. The pathos of movement towards a new life, revolutionary themes, and most importantly the scope for creative experimentation inspired the ballet masters. They were faced with a task: to bring choreographic art closer to the people, to make it more vital and accessible.
This is how the genre of dramatic ballet arose. These were performances, usually based on the plots of famous literary works, which were built according to the laws of dramatic performance. The content was presented through pantomime and figurative dance. In the middle of the 20th century, dramatic ballet was in crisis. Choreographers made attempts to preserve this genre of ballet, enhancing the entertainment value of performances with the help of stage effects, but, alas, in vain.
