Book: Days with Ulanova

[Allegro]

My grandfather just got me this book that he rescued that is called Days With Ulanova.

I was just curious if any of you had seen or read it. It is mostly photographs of her and the Kirov, and it is interesting to see how much dance has evolved over the years.

No offense to Ms. Ulanova, but her body shape and even her technicality (seen only from pictures) are SO much different than today's dancers.

Just curious!

Thanks!

[Victoria Leigh]

Allegro, I have this book, and I know what you mean about her body type, but she was an amazing dancer! She was a major star of the Bolshoi Ballet for many years, and there are films of her out there somewhere. She is on some of the video tapes that are available too. I saw a film of her in Giselle, and I thought she was very special. But yes, the technique and the look are somewhat different today in terms of what one expects to see. But the artistry, that was the difference

[glebb]

I seem to remember one of my early ballet teachers saying that Ulanova danced Juliet when she was 61 years old. He said that her acting made him believe she was a 14 year old girl.

Is it possible that she performed at 61 years of age, or is my memory playing games?

I also think that Ulanova was my favorite ballerina's teacher/coach.

Didn't she teach Makarova?

[Mel Johnson]

Part of the Days with Ulanova book deals with her going to St. Petersburg to dance a twenty-year reunion performance of Romeo and Juliet with Konstantin Sergeyev - that was 1961, when she was 51. They both looked pretty good in the photos.

And Ulanova was Ekaterina Maximova's coach, so I just think you have the "M"s crossed. Coaching from the Bolshoi to the Kirov would have been very difficult in those days to say the least!

[Allegro]

I agree, Ms. Leigh. Although the pictures of her in class are different, one can see her amazing performing ability just from looking at the pictutres of her on stage.

And since ballet is a performing art, it is almost all that matters!

[katharine kanter]

Galina Ulanova, who died aged nearly ninety a year or two ago, was undoubtedly one of the greatest theatrical artists of the century.

She was a direct pupil of Agrippina Vaganova, and represented that school as Vaganova herself taught it, whether one likes it or not. Personally, I do not, but that cannot blind one to the fact that Russia is a great nation, that Russians think big, and that people of the calibre of Ulanova burst the bonds of whatever system or scheme they may be thrust into.

Although photographic techniques for the ballet have improved greatly in recent years, the truth is that Galina Ulanova actually had ideal harmonic proportions. Her only real physical "flaw" was that her neck was noticeably too short; otherwise, her body, and notably her legs, were extremely beautiful. As for her face, though perhaps not pretty, it was a poem, her eyes, a book.

Disagree as one might with the purely "stylistic" aspects of her dancing, and as much as one might initially be put off by some of the peculiar choreography she graced, Galina Ulanova was totally committed to classical ballet and very open to other schools. Indeed, she wrote to the Danish professor Hans Brenaa, after having seen the RDB at Moscow, something to the effect:

"I have never seen such pas de deux. So clean ! The man and the woman both dance ! We must see more of this ! Can you come here to teach this to us ?"

Had Ulanova not existed, and had she not been the noble human being, and great artist, that she was, classical ballet might have been exterminated in Russia, in the wake of the Revolution. Many in the Universal Fascist movement, of which the Bolsheviks, at the time, considered themselves to be an expression - take a look at the fascii imprinted on the original cover page of the First Russian Revolutionary Constitution - had been committed to doing away with classical art, across the board.

Ulanova didn't talk about art, she was art.

[Sonora]

I wish my grandfather had rescued "Days with Ulanova"! It's a beautiful book, written rather reverently as I recall, with wonderful photos that imprinted themselves on my memory when I was very little, particularly the class and rehearsal photos.