Vera Volkova biography

[Alexandra]

Alexander Meinertz's excellent biography of "Vera Volkova" (originally published in Danish) is FINALLY available in English. It's not on Amazon, but is available from Princeton Books as well as Dance Books (www.dancebooks.co.uk). Even though Dance Books is in the U.K., you might get it faster from them than from Princeton, based on my experience of past orders. I ordered the Volkova book on Sunday and got it Friday. (Ordered air mail, of course.)

Volkova was one of the greatest teachers in the history of ballet. She was one of Vaganova's pupils who fled Russia after the Revolution, worked for a long time in London, where she coached many Royal Ballet dancers, including Margot Fonteyn. They had a long and rich relationship. She was also a friend and confidante to Frederick Ashton. She left London to work in Milan (one of her first pupils was a young Carla Fracci) and then went to Copenhagen, at first simply to teach for a few weeks. She came in the midst of what would be called The Lander Scandal, when Harald Lander, who had been artistic director, choreographer, lord and master of the Royal Danish Ballet, was abruptly fired for misbehavior, leaving the company without artistic leadership. Volkova stayed in Copenhagen until her death, and during those 20 years created two generations of Danish ballerinas and ballerinos. Henning Kronstam, Kirsten Simone and Mette Honningen were some of her most important pupils. She also worked intensively with Erik Bruhn and Rudolf Nureyev, who would come to Copenhagen to take classes with her during summers. Stanley Williams was also one of her pupils, learning from her how to teach. He came to the New York City Ballet in the 1960s and was that company's master teacher for 30 years. So Volkova had a long reach.

I found the early chapters of this book, chronicling Volkova's early years and training in Russia, especially interesting. Volkova was a protege of philosopher and critic Akim Volynsky, who had a ballet school (with Nikolai Legat) in the early 20th century and was a passionate classicist. There's also a lot about teaching in this book, from interviews with Volkova's pupils. Disclaimer: Meinertz is a good friend of mine, and I was aware of the book while it was being written and, later, translated. But I'd read it with pleasure if he were not If you're interested in Russian ballet, British ballet, Danish ballet, or ballet teaching, I'd recommend it. She also had an interesting life, too, for fans of biographies.

[bart]

Alexandra, I've also had good luck with Dance Books and will order from there, as you suggest. Thanks for the Heads Up.

Here's an digression prompted by your reference to Akim Volynsky. He's one of the Petersburgers quoted on the Kchessinska thread. Here are a few of the things Solomon Volkov (a relation of Volkova?) says about him in St. Petersburg: a Cultural History:

In the spirit of the symbolists, Volynsky maintained that ballet must return to its source -- religious ritual. [Fyodor] Lopukhov reminisced about him, not without irony: "Starting with raptures in honor of [isadora] Duncan and praise of the glory of Hellenism, he then moved over to the salon of Mathilda Kchessinska and began singing the praises of the most rigid classical ballet, discovering in it the same Hellenism. Now his adulation went to Kchessinska and his damnation to Fokine."

Balanchine, discussing Volynsky with me in New York in the early 1980s, was even more sarcastic (and unfair): "He loved ballet girls and built a whole ballet theory around them: that the most important element in ballet was eroticism and so on. He used to describe the big thighs of his favorites."

Volynsky saw Fokine as the destroyer of classical ballet and the assassin of ballet stars like Pavlova, Karsavina, Nijinsky. Volynsky never tired of repeating that Fokine's choreography was merely an illustration of the music.

Volkov goes on to describe in detail bitter disagreements beween Balanchine and Volynsky over Lopukhov's production of Grandeur of the Universe in 1922. (Lopukhov was the choreographer who replaced Fokine at the Maryinsky after it became clear that Fokine would not be returning to the Soviet Union.) Balanchine admired Lupukhov greatly and was himself involved in the production.

Volynsky attacked Lopukhov viciously, quoting to Pushkin's lines: "It's not funny, when a lousy house painter / Ruins Raphael's Madonna for me."

Balanchine, responding in an article published in Teatr included an attack on Volylnsky's schooll:

It lacks the basic rules of classicism ... It all creates a depressing impression. [ ... ] It is left iwth nothing but a broken trough [a reference to Pushkin's popular fairy tale].

Those were times when ballet was taken VERY seriously.

(Some Russian dance historians, according to Volkov, consider this production of The Grandeur of the Universe to be "the first neoclassical production in ballet history.")

[Alexandra]

Balanchine was very young ;) What I've read -- which admittedly isn't much, as I don't read Russian -- is that Volynsky was very conservative, against experiments, including Fokine's. He teamed with Nikolai Legat, who didn't like what Lopokhov was doing at the Maryinsky. Here's where it gets tricky, because I've read that Lopokhov was a reformer (and he did change the Lilac Fairy's role from a danseuse noble role to what is now called "neoclassical"), and others say that the Maryinsky was locked in the past, wedded to a rigid classicism and trying to keep Petipa mummified. Not being there, I can't tell which was a more accurate reflection of reality If anyone has a more informed opinion on that, please share! (I'd also note that Balanchine NEVER hung around ballet girls, nor could be accused of placing too much emphasis on women in ballet. That's one thing Mr. V and Mr. B have in common. Meinertz writes that Volynsky believed in the Russian concept of "sofia" (female beauty) and thought its most perfect expression was the swan.

I often get in trouble when writing from memory, but I THINK that Volynsky gets the credit for one of my favorite headlines, written in outrage at a new production of "The Sleeping Beauty," one of the first to try to make it better: CALL AN AMBULANCE!

Before this gets too much into Volynsky, though, Volkova was his pupil and protege, but taught her own way and with her own ideas.

Edited September 22, 2007 by Alexandra
adding a paragraph

[bart]

Balanchine was very young ;) What I've read -- which admittedly isn't much, as I don't read Russian -- is that Volynsky was very conservative, against experiments, including Fokine's. He teamed with Nikolai Legat, who didn't like what Lopokhov was doing at the Maryinsky. Here's where it gets tricky, because I've read that Lopokhov was a reformer (and he did change the Lilac Fairy's role from a danseuse noble role to what is now called "neoclassical"), and others say that the Maryinsky was locked in the past, wedded to a rigid classicism and trying to keep Petipa mummified. Not being there, I can't tell which was a more accurate reflection of reality

It does seem like there are lots of contradictions. For instance, Volynsky's alleged fondness for Isadora Duncan doesn't quite fit with his otherwise conservative image.

Here's what Volkov says about Grandeur of the Universe, set to Beethoven's Fourth. "Lopukhov did not try to use dance to illustrate literary concepts. He was inspired primariiy by Beethovan's music and followed the unfolding of the large symphonic canavas, creating parallels and counterpoint to it through bold, abstract movements. Balanchine used some of Lopukhov's innovative ideas in his first American ballet, Serenade, which eventually won immense popularity.

To return to Volkova (and ... my apologies for the digression), she would have been in her mid to late teens at the time this aesthetic turmoil would have been going on in the Leningrad ballet world. I wonder what she thought.

[Alexandra]

We were posting at the same time, bart. Sorry for some overlapped points.

Kronstam told me that when Balanchine was in Copenhagen to stage "Apollo" in the mid-50s, he'd come to Volkova's classes and seem almost angered by them. He'd leave -- but always come back the next day. (The two were friends; it was Volkova who got him to work at the Royal Theatre when he was in Copenhagen, when Tanaquil was in the hospital.)

They did take art more seriously then. I'm sure there are some today who do, but most of us are perhaps too casual about it.

[chrisk217]

Meinertz writes that Volynsky believed in the Russian concept of "sofia" (female beauty) and thought its most perfect expression was the swan

Doesn't "sofia" mean wisdom? I don't want to split hair here or drive things off-topic but the different meaning significantly changes what Volynsky though.

[Helene]

Meinertz writes that Volynsky believed in the Russian concept of "sofia" (female beauty) and thought its most perfect expression was the swan

Doesn't "sofia" mean wisdom? I don't want to split hair here or drive things off-topic but the different meaning significantly changes what Volynsky though.

It refers to "female wisdom," what Siegfried attributes to Brunnhilde -- little does he know that she doesn't touch it until the end of Gotterdammerung. Unlike beauty, it's one of those things that people worship, but rarely heed.

[Helene]

I finshed this book this past weekend, and it was one that I never wanted to end. I wanted to read the entire unfinished manuscript of Volkova's teaching manifesto, and I wanted her to have finished it. Last weekend's boarding pass is now a shredded series of bookmarks.

What an amazing, complex woman! She could size people up with the best of them. What a life she had.

I have a few questions, though:

When her spoken English was recorded, it was broken, but her letters, many to her husband, are beautifully written. What was the original language, and were they "cleaned up" somewhat in translation? Did she write the unfinished teaching principles in Russian?

When she left the Royal Ballet, was there anyone who kept up the standards of her teaching, especially during the transition to the MacMillan rep? The Sibley generation still seemed influenced by her teaching, but that's a hard thing to keep up in isolation.