The short history of Russian Ballet//История русского балета

  • 11 years ago
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - An Overture to the "Swan Lake"
Camille Saint-Saëns - The Carnival of the Animals (Le carnaval des animaux) - Le Cygne (Swan)
Georges Bizet - Rodion Shchedrin Carmen Suite (ballet)
A footage from the movie "Anna Pavlova" (1983-1985)
Ballet is a formalized form of dance with its origins in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th and 16th centuries.
The predominance of French in the vocabulary of ballet reflects this history.
Victor Marius Alphonse Petipa (11 March 1818 – 14 July [O.S. 1 July] 1910) was a French-Russian ballet dancer, teacher and choreographer. Petipa is considered to be the most influential ballet master and choreographer of ballet who has ever lived.
Marius Petipa is noted for his long career as premier maître de ballet of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters, a position he held from 1871 until 1903. Petipa created over fifty ballets.
Sergei Diaghilev brought ballet full-circle back to Paris when he opened his company, Ballets Russes. It was made up of dancers from the Russian exile community in Paris after the Revolution. The most controversial work of the Ballets Russes however, was The Rite of Spring, choreographed by Nijinsky with music by Stravinsky.
After the “golden age” of Petipa, Michel Fokine began his career in St. Petersburg but moved to Paris and worked with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.
A protégé of Diaghilev, George Balanchine, founded the New York City Ballet in 1948.
By the mid-1930s that new generation of dancers and choreographers appeared on the scene.
The most widely used is the Vaganova method, which was named after the ballerina and teacher, Agrippina Vaganova.
The Soviet era of the Russian Ballet put a lot of emphasis on technique, virtuosity and strength. It demanded strength usually above the norm of contemporary Western dancers. When watching restored old footage, one can only marvel at the talent of their prima ballerinas such as Galina Ulanova, Natalya Dudinskaya and Maya Plisetskaya and choreographers such as Pyotr Gusev.

Category

🎵
Music

Recommended