Swan Lake and Stalin

[Old Fashioned]

A new article in The New Republic. Haven't gotten around to finishing it yet, but I thought I should post this here instead of Links for discussion purposes.

Jennifer Homans writes:

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Leningrad became once again St. Petersburg, the Kirov followed suit and reverted to its own former imperial title. In the West, this posed a problem. The Kirov was famous--it had given the world Nureyev and Baryshnikov--but few knew of the Maryinsky. As a result, the company is now the Kirov in New York, London, and Paris, and the Maryinsky at home in St. Petersburg. This problem of nomenclature points to a vexing post-Soviet dilemma facing Russian ballet today. The Kirov was, after all, an arm of the now-discredited party-state. Should the company close the door on its Soviet past, re-open Peter the Great's "window on the West," and rush to "catch up" with Europe and America? Or is there something of value worth preserving from the ballet of Soviet times? 

[Old Fashioned]

At first Homans goes into a lot of the history of Russian ballet under Soviet rule, but then she finally gets to the point of her article by making the claim the "new-old" reconstructions of the Petipa classics are useless in trying to bring back the Imperial style of the originals. Many people here seem to applaud the effort, and I was wondering what people think of Homans' assessment.

In short, the Kirov is trying to give itself a new history--the history it might have had but for 1917. Vaziev and many of his ballet masters belong to the Yeltsin generation, and their disdain for the Soviet era is palpable, and understandable ...

But this dismissal of Soviet aesthetics raises a serious problem. Ballet has no universally accepted standardized notation, and so the "text" of a dance exists in the minds and the bodies of those who perform it. ... The "classical tradition" is thus little more than a fragile chain of memories passed down from one generation to the next. Vaziev and his team are breaking the chain and removing many of the Soviet links, yet they depend on teachers and coaches whose careers were made in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. And these Soviet veterans feel that it is the accomplishments of their era that are being lost and betrayed, with dire consequences for the future of Russian ballet.

[Edited to shorten the quote. It is fine to summarize and/or to quote about a paragraph. (The rules are posted here.)

I hope the sense of Homans' point is clear from what remains, and that this is enough to continue the discussion that Old Fashioned has started.]

Edited February 16, 2005 by hockeyfan228

[Natalia]

Homans makes a legitimate argument. Having followed all of this for a long while, I have to agree that the Soviet heritage remains a powerful force, well beyond the ballet and the arts.

Isn't Lenin's Mausoleum still on Red Square? Doesn't a huge Lenin statue greet visitors to St. Petersburg, on Moskovsky Prospekt, not far from the airport? To banish the Soviet classics from the stage would be tantamount to tearing down that Lenin statue.

Russia is a place where senior citizens are (mostly) still respected and loved. The Vasiyev-Vikharev reconstructions were seen by many old-timers & their students (the Lopatkinas & Assylmuratovas) as an abrubt banishment of what they worked so hard to create.

p.s.

BIG ASIDE re. the respect for senior citizens in Russia: [edited...snipped as it was too far 'aside']

[Thalictum]

And the Kirov plans to tour only the 1952 Sleeping Beauty to the US this fall -- the same production that was critically panned in 1989 and even in 1964 in the US.

I'm talking about the production, not the dancing. Nor was the staging well liked in London or Paris in 1961.

I think it's ridiculous for Homans to claim that the Kirov was trying to bring back Imperial style -- would anyone call Zakharova in Sleeping Beauty Imperial-esque???

[Mashinka]

I think it's ridiculous for Homans to claim that the Kirov was trying to bring back Imperial style -- would anyone call Zakharova in Sleeping Beauty Imperial-esque???

Absolutely not! It seems a totally new style is emerging in Russia, particularly at the Kirov, that is actually inferior to what has gone before. I hope we aren't going to start to denigrate everything from the Soviet era as worthless. Ulanova, Semenova, Dudinskaya, Plisetskaya, Maximova, Nureyev, Soloviev, Vasiliev et al were all products of Soviet ballet. Compare them to the dancers coming out of Russia today and apart from a few honourable exceptions, we are watching inferior dancers.

As far as Segei Vikharev's "ballet archaeology" goes, I always interpreted his efforts as an exercise in going back to the source in order to show the choreographer's original intentions, how could it be called a return to imperial style with dancers throwing their legs to the ceiling?

Natalia, those rioting pensioners were given almost no media coverage in the UK either, most likely because with an aging population, likely to suffer unprecedented hardship in future years, it was felt showing protesting Russian seniors going in for direct action might give Britain’s impoverished pensioners ideas.

[sandik]

I think it's ridiculous for Homans to claim that the Kirov was trying to bring back Imperial style -- would anyone call Zakharova in Sleeping Beauty Imperial-esque???

...

As far as Segei Vikharev's "ballet archaeology" goes, I always interpreted his efforts as an exercise in going back to the source in order to show the choreographer's original intentions, how could it be called a return to imperial style with dancers throwing their legs to the ceiling?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'd like to speak up for these kinds of reconstructions. I can't say anything first-hand about the Kirov's revivals -- I haven't seen them in performance yet, but I did see (and review) a reconstruction of Petipa's Jardin Anime last year for Pacific Northwest Ballet's school performance. It was on many levels a thrilling experience -- although none of us can say with total conviction that this is how it looked at the time of its premiere, there were so many indicators that we were seeing an earlier version of "classicism" -- an example of the style from a time closer to its creation.

This is, perhaps, akin to the "original instruments" discussion in the early music world. Bach played on a contemporary piano or organ is not the same as Bach played on an instrument that replicates the sound (volume, dynamics, reponse, etc) of the composer's instrument, but can still be a fascinating and thrilling experience. I'm a greedy girl -- I want them all. The version on the pianoforte and the version on the Steinway -- the Sleeping Beauty from the 1890's, the one from the 1990's, and all the ones in between!

[Old Fashioned]

I'm a greedy girl -- I want them all.  The version on the pianoforte and the version on the Steinway -- the Sleeping Beauty from the 1890's, the one from the 1990's, and all the ones in between!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think we all do. I love the Sergeyev productions of the classics, but I also want to see them in the form closest to our knowledge of the originals. Are we forever to be stuck with a Swan Lake with a happy ending, since no one else in the world seems intend on creating a traditional staging? I do hope these new-old reconstructions can live alongside the Soviet productions.