What struck me from the Russian interview was a general tone indicative of the almost monastic atmosphere of the theatre and general life in which ballerinas like Zakharova emerge, how sheltered she appears to be for a woman of 27. She talks of how she likes to go shopping with her mother, how her mother and brother protect her fiercely and prevent her from driving, insisting that she has a chauffeur. She tries to grab the occasional chance to drive, if the driver's having a day off, but says it is useless because of the family's close watch on her. How many 27 year olds do what their mother and brother tell them? On the health question she says that the theatre's regime of "don't eat/drink/walk about unnecessarily" is aimed at the dancer keeping in the best shape physically and mentally for daily work in the theatre - the same as an office worker turning up for work with a clear head. (We would say don't eat too much, they say don't eat more than is necessary - a psychological difference? We say, it's down to your personal judgment, they say, there is a line set down.) I also remember Lopatkina saying in a London interview that when the Kirov was on tour she did not go sightseeing because walking on hard pavements was bad for the feet.
I wonder if this quite prescriptive focus over there on nannying a kind of hot-house physical condition and the institutional-historical narrowness of intellectual exposure ingrained from Soviet times and which was culturally set from earliest Soviet philosophy to dismiss any sacrosanct Tsarist artistic style may leave dancers of superior natural qualities today too easily tempted to fall back on perfecting their physical flourishes rahter than searching for something to do with them. Great dancers always have very interesting minds, which they release through their bodies' eloquence (never mind Fonteyn couldn't talk, she had an absorbent imagination, shaped by the even more fascinating Ashton). Unlike Lopatkina who evidently has a rich inner life and Guillem who is a great reader and enthusiastic eclectic, in interviews Zakharova doesn't seem to divvy up much information about her own aesthetic resources. Again I remember being struck by an interview in the past when she explained about her habitually high leg that it "just went up there". That just seemed so dumb. Having said that, she was surprisingly gorgeous and charming in Pharaoh's Daughter in London, which is of course Pierre Lacotte's pastiche of Petipa rather than "real", and as he made her his star on the revival, I suppose its light-hearted, decorative excess could be considered a showcase for her essential qualities. I thought it suited her much better than the profounder roles. She's maybe what in opera would be a lyrical soprano who's been pushed into dramatic roles, and has overegged her facility for coloratura to hide her discomfort to the point where she no longer feels discomfort (and has hundreds of thousands of fans to quash any lingering self-doubt).
It seems to me that the matter of preserving classical style may have much to do with revaluing the tentative steps to "authenticity" taken by the Kirov in its Sleeping Beauty and Bayadere reconstructions, and deciding to hallow and isolate the stylistic colours of the 19th century- which would then free the 20th and 21st centuries to create new works in their own, more modern technical idioms. It would be similar to the "authentic' movement in classical music which has done so much to clarify performances of 19th-century music, let alone that of earlier eras. However, this must depend on a consensus of older teachers in major institutions who've been raised in a very different tradition, the one that allows for so many changes to suit and showcase their proteges that the original vanishes very quickly. This new seriousness may never happen, and I am almost resigned to it. Intellectual base in dance is not highly valued and the lack of it will be the art's death. I am certiain from watching their ballets that Balanchine and Ashton both had it, but were not surrounded by people who understood the consequences for the long-term future.