Inside the Bolshoi

Very little escapes the fear of terrorism in our world today. And so, beginning this season, everyone entering the Bolshoi is thoroughly scanned and searched, as if they were boarding an airplane. Long lines of audience members snake between the theater’s columns, waiting to pass through the metal detector and to open their bags; another line – replete with ballet stars, stagehands, journalists and guests – extends out the stage door. Following recent bombings and the fire at the nearby Manezh, no one thinks of protesting. The hum of conversation surrounds the entrances; jokes are made about how all are equal before the greatness of the Bolshoi.

Yet some are more equal than others. The heavy oak door opens and the line respectfully steps aside to let pass a small, elderly lady with grey hair and a piercing, searching gaze. She is Soviet ballet legend Marina Semyonova, a renowned teacher who trained generations of the Bolshoi’s best dancers, and who this year celebrated her 96th birthday. Semyonova gave up her weekly classes only last year, but continues to work with individual dancers. To see her exchange cordial greetings, passing coolly through formalities and setting off down the corridor with a brisk, businesslike step, is to immediately understand what is meant by “regal simplicity” – perfect beau monde or theatrical society manners.

The 228-year old Bolshoi Theater measures its history in ages. In each, the soloists, conductors, managers, staging traditions and even the architectural appearance of the building change. At times, the Bolshoi has been a yardstick; at others a theatrical backwater. It has been threatened with closure several times, but it has always been the country’s principal theater, and not just because it is Russia’s largest, both physically (the word bolshoi means “large” or “grand”) and in the number of its employees (currently about 3,000, with 250 in the corps de ballet alone). No, the Bolshoi is Russia’s principal theater because the state of the Bolshoi can be used to judge the cultural situation in Russia more broadly.

Marina Semyonova’s career coincides with the era in which the Soviet state turned the Bolshoi Ballet into its prima cultural showcase. The best dancers from all over the Soviet Union were invited to the Bolshoi; those that reached the pinnacle of artistry were pulled into the inner orbits of cultural and political power. Of course, this led to some disconnects: e.g. Bolshoi prima ballerina Galina Ulanova was held up as an example of the Soviet worker and public figure, but at the same time did not need worry about life’s mundane problems. But if the stars were taken care of, the State also “took care of” all the fees for ballet performances abroad – sizeable sums once the Bolshoi had been turned into a hot export commodity.

At first glance, it may seem strange that ballet could have flourished under the totalitarian Soviet regime, which sought to negate so much of what had come before it. Yet, notably, some of the earliest Soviet choreographers – Rostislav Zakharov, Leonid Yakobson, Kasyan Goleizovsky, Leonid Lavrovsky and, later, Yuri Grigorovich – succeeded through application of principles from the Imperial Theater.

Grigorovich, in fact, is responsible for opening a new chapter in Russian ballet. Following his Stone Flower and Legend of Love at the turn of the 1950s, he proposed a new form of ballet, in which the dance – using modern flexible movements – shaped the plot, rather than the other way around. Moreover, the Grigorovich era was remarkable for the huge number of brilliant dancers – including Maya Plisetskaya, Nina Timofeyeva, Natalya Bessmertnova, Vladimir Vasilyev, Yekaterina Maksimova, Lyudmila Semenyaka, Alexander Godunov, and Nadezhda Pavlova. In previous eras, there had been only one or two stars of this calibre at any one time. These dancers combined textbook technique with cutting-edge (for the time) repertoire and audacious aesthetics that at times all but contradicted traditional ideas about ballet. In short, they showed that the Russian school, combining elements of the French, Italian, and Danish, was not only viable, but could also strike out in new directions on its own, and that Russian dancers could perform anywhere – from the Paris Grand Opera, where Rudolf Nureyev created a new repertoire, to Hollywood, where Mikhail Baryshnikov made a career starring in musicals.

With Gorbachev’s perestroika, ballet was freed from having to propagandize Soviet achievements. Now, however, it had to defend itself as an art form, and resist attempts to turn ballet into show business. The artistic goals and problems of Russian ballet were further challenged by problems with facilities. Decades of neglect meant that colossal restructuring was needed at both the Bolshoi and St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the Bolshoi gradually became an enormous complex whose main building – the historical theater – seemed to be constantly being readied for “unprecedented reconstruction.” Staff and management also underwent fundamental (and repeated) changes.

Experts and the public have viewed all of this with ambivalence. In recent years, barely a month has gone by without some media discussion of impending changes, be they in personnel or infrastructure. The Bolshoi has remained Russian culture’s leading newsmaker.

Perhaps to distract from discussions about reconstruction, the Bolshoi lured 24-year-old Mariinsky star Svetlana Zakharova to the capital for the start of last season (2003/2004). Zakharova thus became not only a Bolshoi prima ballerina, but in essence the “new face” of Russian ballet, with both the press and theater fans obsessively following her every move. Official visitors are escorted to Zakharova’s performances: when she debuted in Giselle, then-Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov brought along his French counterpart, Jean-Pierre Raffarin; Zakharova also danced a triumphant opening night when the Bolshoi went on tour to Paris.

Zakharova’s status at home equaled her international fame as one of Russia’s most popular young stars, someone who dances all the leading roles in the top theaters of Europe and the US.

But apart from all the usual ceremony around Zakharova’s performances, there are also interpretative discoveries confirming that, if anyone can take Russian ballet into new aesthetic territory, it is this ballerina. We were granted the rare opportunity to attend her rehearsals and see these discoveries being made.

The Rule of Unpredictable Failures

The Bolshoi’s legendary stage and its multi-tiered golden auditorium are isolated from the outside world by walls that are two meters thick. It feels like being inside a fortress of art, where no distractions are allowed or anticipated. Performers say that appearing on the stage of the Bolshoi is a critical examination – but one that offers great rewards.

“It’s not about the thickness of the walls, because the Kremlin’s are even thicker,” said Konstantin Ivanov, one of the Bolshoi’s most aristocratic ballet princes. “And it’s not about the legends, because all old theaters have them. The reason is the perception of greatness which makes you stop and ask yourself: ‘Who are you? What are you worth? What have you accomplished your life?’ I had the same feeling in the Vatican. The closer I got to St. Peter’s, the clearer these questions became, and I felt like a little grain of sand. At the Bolshoi, though, this doesn’t overwhelm you – it mobilizes you. You feel that you’re part of something important, no matter which show it is. You understand that this is historic, just because it’s taking place in the Bolshoi. Someone in the audience may be there for the first and only time, having dreamed about it all their life. Your performance forms people’s impressions of the theater.”

Watching stagehands industriously fetching pieces of staircases, walls, ships, and rocks from the hidden depths of the building, it seems as though the performance has already begun – scenery is being put in and taken out, and the lights in the wings create rainbows, highlighting everything around them in color. At performances in honor of the backstage workers, the curtain is sometimes left raised so that the audience can see the scenery being changed – and every time it gets a round of applause.

Now, though, it’s different – as though we are seeing it for the last time. In February 2004, Bolshoi General Director Anatoly Iksanov published the latest detailed timetable for reconstruction of the theater building. In 2005 it will be closed for five months, and in 2006 for the whole year, during which time the company will have to perform on the New Stage or be on tour. Backstage, meanwhile, walls dating from 1853 and even 1825 will be taken down – although arguments are raging about the best way to do this. For all the years of planning, no-one has produced a satisfactory explanation as to why such massive reconstruction is needed.

Theater employees smile when we ask, looking at the peeling paintwork, whether the building is really so decrepit that it needs immediate salvaging. For more than 30 years, people have been saying that the Bolshoi is on the brink of collapse. In the 1970s, for the theater’s 200th anniversary, some wooden beams were replaced in the auditorium. Shortly afterward, it was noticed that the new beams had begun to rot, but that the 200-year-old ones were in the same condition as ever.

“The building has survived thanks to its integrity and the durability of its ‘skeleton’”, says Alevtina Kuznetsova, the theater’s chief architect for more than 50 years. Kuznetsova talks passionately about previous reconstructions and unrealized projects, about acoustic secrets, about how the building’s foundations contain still-unstudied materials, and other marvels. The more she talks, the less clear it becomes why partial demolition followed by reconstruction is being proposed, rather than just the repair of this amazing building.

The official answer is that the stage and the stage equipment are obsolete. But the Bolshoi’s equipment has been being improved and fitted into the original walls – be it introducing electricity, computer networks, etc. – for two hundred years, and nothing prevents this from continuing. The current management thinks that this is not enough, though, and the Bolshoi’s stage is being asked to do things for which it was not designed – such as rapid changes of large amounts of scenery, which needs “pockets” (spaces the size of the stage from which ready-to-go sets can be brought on-stage in three seconds) that the theater does not now have. But such shows are just another form of theater. To reconstruct in this way a building meant for fly scenery is like turning a tape-recorder into a CD player.

Former Bolshoi Deputy General Director Dmitry Rodionov used to be in charge of technical services at the theater, before leaving last year for a more senior position. “The theater has a real communications problem,” Rodionov said. “It has miles of piping and cabling. Also, much of the stage equipment has outlived itself – it is kept going by the inventiveness of the staff, who continually fix things, repair things, adapt things. You can work like that forever, but it’s very risky. We call it ‘the rule of unpredictable failures’ – you never know what is going to fall apart, or when.”

Reserved and taciturn, Rodionov argues every point strongly. But even he is enthused when talking about the theater’s technical equipment, which he knows inside out and backwards. He can barely contain his excitement when comparing the impressive and controversial reconstruction – as well as the financial figures being quoted – with the vital everyday problems which the projects ignore. For example, unlike other theaters around the world, the Bolshoi has not reconstructed its set warehouses for many years, and, as a result, many priceless sets and props have been destroyed. To this day, no-one knows how many and which Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Verdi autographed scores are stored in the Bolshoi’s nooks and crannies, or how many recordings – audio and video – there are of rehearsals and performances which could be released to public acclaim and delight.

The Bolshoi has unparalleled workshops which combine old techniques of theater art with cutting-edge engineering solutions. Here they make wonderful sinew strings, the best pointes in Russia, and the best tutus in the world. But the current management neither looks after them nor gives them basic support. The workshops (located next to the Federation Council, Russia’s highest institution of state power) lack ordinary showers and air-conditioning systems. While dancers (including world-famous stars) run up and down staircases and corridors decorated with “picturesque” peeling paint – the workshops produce beautifully-cut handmade costumes to order at one-third the cost of anywhere else in the world.

Sylph Search

These conversations hung in the air as we moved from the old building to the Bolshoi’s auxiliary wing, which opened last year and is home to rehearsal spaces and a warren of offices, including the press service, photo service, administration, and reception rooms for directors and their deputies. The spacious six-story building feels like the corporate headquarters of a company that wants to show off its wealth. One is not supposed to think about how much the silent lifts, marble steps, sliding glass doors, quality furniture, and lamps cost. Men in expensive suits and girls in fashionable pantsuits scurry along the corridors; weary dancers in rehearsal clothes drag bags full of shoes and props, rushing to get to the hall as quickly as they can.

According to the theater’s charter, the Bolshoi is primarily an artistic, not a commercial, foundation, creating productions and performances in order to develop the cream of Russian and global traditions, to educate people, and so on. The Bolshoi is one of Russia’s cultural crown jewels, and as such gets state financing not through the Ministry of Culture, but directly from the Ministry of Finance. It is a line item in the country’s budget. In recent years, however, the Bolshoi’s management has actively pushed for the theater to become a more commercial enterprise.

Why doesn’t the Bolshoi invest its “artistic capital”? This is a question which perplexes many observers, who have watched as the theater puts on expensive, but artistically dubious, commercial productions. Bolshoi legend Yuri Vladimirov – the first man to dance the fearsomely difficult role of Ivan the Terrible and now a ballet coach at the theater – reflects on this with surprise when we speak with him during a break in a rehearsal with Spanish dancer Igor Yebra Iglesias, who has come for coaching in the part of Ivan before an appearance in the Kremlin; the Bolshoi’s new management has sent its production of this ballet – based on Prokofiev’s music and Eisenstein’s film, with stunning choreography by Grigorovich and sets by Simon Virsaladze – to the Kremlin Ballet.

“Nowhere else has the opportunities – the schools, the large troupes, the workshops” that the Bolshoi does, Vladimirov said, and, for him, it is a shame to see the strengths built up in the past being ignored in favor of “wasting our energy on questionable experiments.”

Indeed, the Bolshoi’s main “commodity” is its unique identity. The theater world may change, but this identity can always be sold for the highest price. So why have the businessmen now working as consultants and sitting on the theater’s Board of Trustees ignored this?

The reason is probably that, as board member and former State Duma deputy Professor Konstantin Remchukov put it, they see the Bolshoi Theater as an “international corporation with international ambitions” – and have made themselves “managers of a large enterprise called the Bolshoi Theater with the whole world, not just Russia, as its market.”

But theater management is fundamentally different from business management, because the aims of artists and large producers contradict each other. The concepts of artistic value and originality are inseparable: the more original the artistic “product,” the more expensive it is. In industry, on the other hand, production efficiency is all-important: The larger the factory, the more profitable it is to produce goods en masse. So the logic of conceiving of the Bolshoi Theater as a “corporation” demands a management mindset focused on mass production, not individual artistic pieces. Such an institution does not need artists whose work has to be supported by the managers – this model does not allow for artistic tasks. The clearest formulation that the trustees have come up with for the theater’s future goals is: “Put its income in order, put its expenditure in order, then define its development strategy and find funds to implement it.”

So what is to be developed? “Tours must be financially supported, staff have to be found,” Remchukov says. “For example, to entice a star to come here. Maybe there won’t be enough money in the budget, so the businessmen will get together, like in football, and we’ll get, say, Ronaldo at the Bolshoi Theater.” In other words, artists – if there are any left – will be workers to be hired and fired.

Superficially, this looks like the general practice abroad, where most performers work with different theaters on a contract basis – but in substance it is completely different. The Russian theater market is not like, say, the European one, where there is a network of theaters of various categories, each of which encompasses a number of equal performing spaces and companies working in similar conditions. By signing contracts with different theaters in turn, the performers effectively form one large company. Formally, the performers and production team meet anew for every show, but actually each show involves more or less the same performers – which over time creates well-organized companies.

In Russia, however, there are just two important professional centers for opera and ballet – the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky. Directly copying foreign models is therefore not viable. The Bolshoi derives its authority not from borrowing people and shows, but from its own “products”: and not just stars such as Anastasia Volochkova, but its artists, producers, workshop employees – all of whom have unique skills honed inside the theater. As a team united by common goals, they have maintained Russia’s authoritative – sometimes definitive – position in world theater since Diaghilev.

Playbill

The Bolshoi’s success has always been due to its company’s know-how – its ability to perform original, multi-act ballets and operatic shows that don’t just look like a mish-mash of different tricks, but progress in a well-ordered, logical way, allowing for the musical-theater environment and the rules of the dramatic arts.

Looking at the theater’s playbills for the last few seasons, it is clear that the number of performances showcasing the Bolshoi ballet’s individual style is much narrower than it could and should be. Grigorovich’s legendary Spartacus and Legend of Love, those symbols of the Bolshoi – or, if you like, part of its brand – play just three or four times a season. There are two versions of the romantic masterpiece that is Giselle, which saved the Bolshoi from oblivion in the middle of the 20th century, but the better of the two – Simon Virsaladze’s production with its sophisticated pastel sets – is squeezed onto the New Stage, despite being designed for the open spaces of the old building’s large stage. And on the main stage is Vladimir Vasilyev’s version, with its distorted versions of the familiar dances and mise en scene, and Sergei Barkhin’s stage design – all sandy drapes and funny little tassels, and primitivist trees in the second act that are irritatingly careless and turn the action into a tedious parody of itself.

Russian classical repertoire fares better. The emotional Nutcracker is staged as a New Year’s boat journey to a silver star, with showy dance movements and captivating drama for the main and support characters. The Bolshoi’s Sleeping Beauty is one of the best 20th-century versions of this classic ballet, as Grigorovich and Virsaladze stress its musicality, rather than the glitz of the Imperial theater, while keeping Marius Petipa’s basic choreography. The impressionistic design – shot through with sophisticated pearl-colored shading – creates ghostly images of an overgrown castle. The eroded contours of the columns and arches, the patterns traced by the branches and the park’s decorative fences – like ink-prints on silk – carry echoes of Petipa’s intricate dance lines and are just as inventively varied as the themes in Tchaikovsky’s score. Swan Lake, meanwhile, is not a fairy-tale with a happy ending, but a tragic poem with a hero who breaks the laws of natural harmony, inevitably leading to an apocalyptic dénouement.

As magnificent as the film Cleopatra, the old favorite La Bayadere includes stunning scenic dances with fairies, parrots, and fans, wild ritual fire dances with daggers and drums, as well as airy dances of shades in white tutus, descending from the heavens in a long line. It is the Bolshoi’s version that reproduces Marius Petipa’s first St. Petersburg production. The brilliant Don Quixote is loosely based on Cervantes’ great picaresque novel, but showcases all of Alexander Gorsky’s virtuosic dances – a symbol of the bravura Moscow ballet style.

All of these wonderful productions, however, were done many years ago, while today the theater does not have a clear artistic development concept. Over the last few years, the company has brought to the stage French choreographer Roland Petit’s old version of The Queen of Spades – made for Mikhail Baryshnikov, and not considered one of Petit’s great successes – and masterpieces by Georges Balanchine (prompting unfavorable comparisons with the Mariinsky), and revived Petipa’s classic Raimonda, which should be in the repertory of any self-respecting ballet company in any case. And that’s it. Out of respect for the theater we will pass lightly over the management’s pride in Alexei Ratmansky’s comical The Limpid Brook (a parody show with circus-like costumes, but lacking a circus wit and inventiveness), and Romeo and Juliet, dressed up by British director Declan Donellan in jackets and contemporary skirts, with schoolboy exercises and modern dance from Moldovan choreographer Radu Poklitaru.

Of course, no organizational model guarantees artistic discoveries, but the right conditions can be created – in other words, a distinct artistic school can be developed and a strong permanent troupe brought together, with technical support and a repertoire policy allowing the artists to improve their skills and grow from performance to performance. In other words, make the artist lead the sponsor and the administrator, not vice versa.

Semenyaka

We’re now approaching – with some trepidation – the doors of the ballet class where we have a meeting with one such artist, Lyudmila Semenyaka, one of Russian ballet’s most enchanting stars, the 20th century’s best Princess Aurora, a favorite in Europe, America, Argentina, Japan, Australia, and Russia, and now the Bolshoi’s head coach. Semenyaka danced various versions of all the classical leads – Aurora and Princess Florina, Odette/Odile and Giselle, Sylphide, Kitri, Nikia, Raimonda, and many more – and is the only ballerina to have taken main parts in all of Yuri Grigorovich’s productions.

Semenyaka’s style was called ballet bel canto: She executed the most virtuosic of passages with grace and precision, making it look like a theatrical game with whimsical changes of rhythm and unexpected accents slotted deftly into the classical picture of the role. When she came on stage, it was as though an electric shock ran through the audience, illuminating everything around her and daring you to tear your eyes away from her movements. Semenyaka elevated her life force into a key conception of beauty for ballet; a condition of emancipation from human nature more beautiful than the highest high art; beautiful and terrible at the same time. Semenyaka brought a vibrant edge to even the most tranquil scene; when she let rip you could almost feel some awesome forces at work – like when a string speaks from any sound resonating nearby.

In the 1970s, when theatrical types were strictly limited, Semenyaka was one of the first ballerinas to play different types of roles at the Bolshoi. At the beginning of the 1990s, when most dancers got into the custom of performing any role, and performance practice leveled out, Semenyaka was again a pioneer, this time in stylization.

Semenyaka’s career had no downs. She reached her peak in the Gorbachev era, and became a ballet symbol of perestroika at a 1987 gala concert at Kennedy Center in Washington heralding Gorbachev’s historic meeting with Ronald Reagan. In 1989, in recognition of Semenyaka’s status as a Russian ballet symbol, the Culture Fund held one of its first charity events – a benefit concert for the dancer in the Moscow Conservatory’s Tchaikovsky Hall. Instead of the pomp and circumstance traditional on such occasions, there was a tasteful program including the first performance in Russia of excerpts from ballets by Balanchine and Roland Petit.

Semenyaka retired as a performer only a couple of years ago. She performed at the Contemporary Drama School, making the show Fine Medicine for Melancholy – staged for her by Iosif Raikhelgauz – a sell-out every night for two seasons. She is still a favorite guest on a number of radio and television programs and talk-shows about the arts. But her main love is still ballet, whose secrets she passes on in the rehearsal room to new ballet stars, to the corps de ballet, and to students – from graduates to little girls coming in for a consultation lesson before joining the school.

When we open the door at the appointed time, in the middle of the room is a simply yet elegantly dressed lady, animatedly explaining something to a ballerina copying her magisterial gestures. And then, moving to the corner of the room, she executes several light jumps, segues into an impetuous turn, and finishes the phrase with five pirouettes. We break into applause. Semenyaka looks over and bids us welcome: “Come in, sit down. We were just about to go through the whole passage from the start without stopping.”

Listening to Semenyaka’s pithy stories, all interesting details and polished phrases, is almost as engaging as watching her dance. We are interested above all in her biography, in how she combined the Moscow and St. Petersburg ballet traditions in her dance, following in the footsteps of her great predecessors, Marina Semyonova, Galina Ulanova, Nina Timofeyeva, and Yuri Grigorovich. She talks about her regular trips to Moscow as a student at the Vaganova Academy, to participate in concerts at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. There were lots of these concerts as part of various festivals, and these trips worked the children into a state of joyous agitation while still on the platform at Leningrad’s Moscow Station with their parents.

“Usually it was during the winter, with wet snow and frost that made your eyelashes longer,” Semenyaka smiles. “Winter in Moscow was dry, with crisp snowflakes. There was a friendly atmosphere around us – just like Lev Tolstoy described it, with pies, sweets, and all these enticing smells. The adults were mainly concerned with our being warm, and made an effort to buy us something tasty. So in my earliest memories, Moscow is a fairy tale city. Sure, we had come to work, and were well aware of that, but people were so kind to us – we were taken to the Kremlin with its cake-like cathedrals. So, for us, it was a process of getting to know the city, not just work.”

Semenyaka moved to Moscow after the First International Competition for Ballet Dancers in 1969, which changed the destiny of everyone who took part in it. The competition was rich with sponsorships and became a national event, like the first Tchaikovsky Competition. Semenyaka was thoroughly prepared for the competition, and passed a qualifying competition, during which she was spotted by Galina Ulanova. And thus was her fate decided. After the competition, she was invited to the Bolshoi Theater. There was great personal happiness for her too, as she married the leading dancer, Mikhail Lavrovsky. “I got everything at once – the theater and the feeling of a family which had created its history,” Semenyaka said. “And Galina Sergeevna [Ulanova], for whom my husband’s father, the ballet-master Leonid Lavrovsky, had created works, became my teacher.”

As Semenyaka talks, it becomes clear that the chief principle in an artist’s training – and the foundation of the Bolshoi school’s life – was a combination of uncompromising professionalism and warm, familial tenderness and attention. A shining example of this was Semenyaka’s teacher Nina Belikova, who trained several generations of St. Petersburg’s top dancers. “She had a rare gift as an educator and a mentor,” Semenyaka remembers. “From her we acquired not just professional habits, but lessons on how to live our lives. She looked after us like a mother, and solved all our problems; she made sure we were dressed properly, that we ate properly. She was part of her students’ destiny, fought for them, and more than once showed that she had been right to rate their potential so highly.”

This educational style is fundamentally different from accepted practice around the world today, where teachers just give lessons and take no interest in their pupil’s personal or professional destiny. Belikova knew everything about her profession – she was a pupil of Vaganova herself, the founding mother of the Russian classical school, and inherited and developed Vaganova’s system for developing a dancer’s personality. She was able to size up a child’s potential and teach him or her how to work.

In all likelihood, victory at the competition did not turn Semenyaka’s head, but rather inspired her to go on and do more. She confessed that, after being invited to the Bolshoi, she was not nervous so much about the great theater as about meeting with Ulanova. The first show in which they danced together was Swan Lake. Semenyaka’s debut was well-received, and the whole cast applauded her on the stage afterwards. But the most important thing was Ulanova’s approval. “It wasn’t frightening – it was important,” Semenyaka explains. “Galina Sergeyevna represented for me the very peak of ballet, and here I was approaching her. I was conscious that, in any case, I had come out of the same school as she had, and I think this helped her to start a conversation with me that we could both understand. We began work on imagery, and, in fact, on personal development. Ulanova for us was an entire ballet universe that raised ballerinas – who in turn became for a new generation of audiences what she had been for her audiences.”

Although Semenyaka has always been interested in stylistics, she said that the current fashion for authenticity is not her sphere. Clearly, whatever text she studied – whether Sylphide with Elsa-Marianna von Rosen, Balanchine, or parts for Grigorovich’s ballets – she studied in microscopic detail; but above all for her it was important to convey the image and idea of the style, the dramatic foundations of the production. When preparing Michel Fokine’s Swan Lake, she said she wanted to create an independent artistic space – to find out what could be done in that miniature after Maya Plisetskaya. Semenyaka rehearsed with Ulanova, studied various versions, and attempted to imagine the quintessence of her concept of this miniature – not to reproduce an antique costume, but to make a contemporary tutu resemble it; not to overdo the details, but emphasize key bodily moments; the pas de bouree of the dying swan; the hand movements typifying the image and the era when the number was created.

“This approach came about as a result of the understanding of the ballerina in the original sense,” Semenyaka says. “A genuine ballerina is not just mistress of her art, or a sparkling personality. She is above all a channel for harmony and the highest sense of her profession. A ballerina is like a priestess whose gestures are sacred, because they show the secrets of the universe – which is played out in lots of ballets, for example Bayadere. The ballerina has no right to execute even one step that does not have a whole set of conditions for the existence of her art behind it. This set of conditions should be as obvious in the ballerina’s dancing as generations of magnificent ancestors are in an aristocrat’s family tree.”

So how does this understanding of the ballerina’s “mission” fit with the conditions in which ballet exists today – thrown into the harsh world of business and competition? Semenyaka’s answer is measured, but optimistic. “Dance is not music and not philosophy: Only in a certain culture can it be raised to the status of a spiritual height,” she said. “And if these conditions disappear, then dance can be kept at this height only thanks to individual, auspicious moments or significant figures. For example, Petipa convinces me that ballet is great art, but, let’s say, many fashionable contemporary stagings will be unwatchable after a while. But dance will always keep developing, and ballet must be protected. Ballet for me is on the same level as the art of the word, because it can express thoughts, create harmony and an integral map of the world. It’s a language, an artistic system.

“Business and all its categories are now taking root in ballet – but in Russia theater, including ballet, is not just entertainment. Here it takes on the role of a vital space for the human soul, permanently pulsing, struggling, searching. I am not used to typifying the theater as being ‘in crisis’, ‘fractured,’ or ‘in turmoil’. It’s not economics, where you have crises. In theater you have spiritual ups and downs, reflecting the era it is living through. But so much has been done by our theater throughout its history that it seems to me that it has enough spiritual strength to last forever – to feed generations to come.”

Semenyaka cites her pupils as an example – contemporary young artists, well adjusted in life but no strangers to such an interpretation of the ballet world. Closest to her is obviously Svetlana Zakharova, who, despite her tender years, is already a master and has achieved much. Semenyaka says that, for her, working with Zakharova is the same as playing on a Stradivarius for a violinist. But just as she is preparing to tell us how this is so, Zakharova walks into the room for the rehearsal we have come to see, and the conversation breaks off – or, more precisely, it becomes a professional dialogue between the two ballerinas.

The New Face

One of a new generation of performers developing new dance aesthetics, Ukrainian-born Svetlana Zakharova graduated from the Vaganova Academy in St. Petersburg, and gained recognition for her interpretations of lead roles in various Mariinsky Theater productions, including Giselle, Serenade, and Sleeping Beauty. In choreography from different eras and demanding different stylistic approaches, she bewitches her audience with the flowing lines of her dance, her phenomenal virtuosity, and her aristocratic style. No wonder, then, that she is an established favorite with audiences around the world, in demand at top theaters everywhere. But although Zakharova is now a reference point for other professionals in global performance practice, she continues to develop her own style. In the rehearsal we saw, Semenyaka helped Zakharova to hone dance phrases, pushing her to make a statement as a superb interpreter.

Zakharova made her first Moscow debut as the Egyptian princess Aspicia in French choreographer Pierre Lacotte’s production of The Pharaoh’s Daughter, based on Marius Petipa’s ballet of the same name. The ballet tells the story of a British explorer who hides from a sandstorm in a pyramid. He falls asleep, and dreams that the mummy in the pyramid has turned into the pharaoh’s beautiful daughter, and he himself into an Egyptian. The various personages in the resulting magnificent court show do not so much dance as parade in luxurious costumes and jewels.

Lacotte filled out Petipa’s original work with virtuoso combinations of fiendishly difficult little steps, and, just before Zakharova’s debut and the filming of the shows, he came to Moscow and edited her part to account for her individuality and phenomenal technique. The result was that an experiment in theatrical stylization became a living, breathing performance.

Zakharova executed Lacotte’s dance hieroglyphics with great artistry and calligraphic precision, prompting comparisons to the coloratura soprano parts in which goddesses and priestesses express their passions in bel canto opera. Rather than being the prima donna of common imagination about the stage manners of the stars, Zakharova emphasized the sophistication of the St. Petersburg style. Tall and slim, she turned the dance now into captivating lines reminiscent of the contours of Nefertiti, now an Egyptian beauty in flowing clothes, now an exotic flower waving in the breeze. Her princess was a romantic heroine, and Zakharova herself a promising actress, able physically to convey shades of amorous trembling, fears, and doubts.

In other words, Zakharova had the authentic, subtle Imperial Ballet Style which Lacotte was looking for. Fused with Muscovite emotionality, this style provided the Bolshoi Theater with creative breakthroughs throughout the 20th century, from Marina Semyonova’s manifestos and Galina Ulanova’s psychological discoveries, to Lyudmila Semenyaka’s exquisite stylistics.

In La Bayadere, Zakharova brings the spirit of classical high tragedy – which Petipa made great use of when creating the work – to the festive atmosphere of a sumptuous work based on a fairy tale. She plays the story of the dancer’s love for the warrior Solor and her rivalry with the king’s daughter not as a daily conflict, but as an insoluble contradiction between human passions and the calling of a priestess, who must dedicate all of her energies to sacred mysteries. The result of the tense dramatic scenes in the first two acts, when Zakharova combines austerity and emotion in a regulated series of expressive poses, is just as important and compelling as the renowned Dance of the Shades, when the heroes converse with the next world like in Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Zakharova’s debut in Yuri Grigorovich’s Swan Lake was understandably eagerly awaited: Who else could discover something new if not a ballerina who had triumphantly danced the role of Odette/Odile in just about every other version of the ballet? Interest was stoked further by the fact that Grigorovich’s decidedly tragic version differs fundamentally from most other interpretations – fairy tale, festive and gay, occasionally affecting, but far from conceptual.

Zakharova attempted to fit in to the Bolshoi’s production, while retaining where possible the bodily movements she found for other versions. While emphasizing Odette’s victimhood and uncompromising nature, in individual scenes Zakharova gave her the naiveté and charm of a fairy tale princess, combined with the nervousness and ethereal nature of a beauty from the decadent Symbolist era. To Odile’s phantasmagoric appearance, Zakharova added the manners of a seductive high-society lady. Many of her movements during the performance were so beautiful in themselves that they could be admired regardless of whether or not they were had any interpretative basis. And although connoisseurs noted the unusual accents with rapt attention, it was clear that even when Zakharova performs a repertoire role without changing anything, the usual mise en scene takes on a new interpretation, seemingly dreamed up just before.

Zakharova has had the opportunity to work with many of the world’s ballet companies, but has preferred to stay in Russia, going abroad only on tour. In breaks during the rehearsal, we asked Zakharova what she particularly values in the Russian theatrical atmosphere and the way in which Russian theaters work. She said that, above all, she loves the possibility to “live” each performance, not just work through them. In Europe, there is a widespread tendency to put on shows in blocks, with, say, 20-30 performances of Swan Lake in a row. This is convenient for the ballet company, but if the dancer puts all her emotions into the performance and does everything she planned, then she doesn’t want to touch that role again for some time afterward – the part should be approached at a different stage, with different feelings. Then it will be a revelation.

We asked Zakharova if she, like Semenyaka, felt that the theater was like home. She took up the theme eagerly. “Home is where my family is,” she said. “We’ve all moved to Moscow now – my parents, my brother, who have nothing to do with ballet, but have learned what’s what over the years. And home is also where I can work with people whom I trust and who become as dear to me as my relatives. In St. Petersburg this is my favorite coaches, Olga Moiseyeva – to whom I owe my formation as a ballerina – and Yuri Fateyev, who mainly works with male dancers but worked on the Balanchine ballets with me. In Moscow, of course, this is Lyudmila Semenyaka, whom I’m working with now. We met last season, when I came to dance Giselle, and then the Shades from La Bayadere for Marina Semyonova’s birthday concerts. I asked Lyudmila to help me prepare for these performances, and realized that this is the person at the Bolshoi who is closest me as a teacher and mentor. She is a wonderful professional, and a great ballerina. Not long ago, I watched a video of her dancing at about the same age as I am now, and I was stunned. It was filmed thirty years ago, but looks completely contemporary. She thinks in a contemporary way, but most importantly feels what the dancer wants but cannot always express. She doesn’t dictate the interpretation, but helps to bring out the individualism in it.”

Zakharova picks out La Bayadere as one of her particular favorites. She first performed in the ballet at the Paris Grand Opera, after which she was acclaimed as a star of world standing. Many years before, it had been her first show at the Academy, and she danced the Shades for her graduation exam. “When I arrived at the theater,” she says, “Olga Moiseyeva asked me, ‘What do you want to dance?’ Without thinking, I said, ‘La Bayadere’. She looked at me all surprised – ‘Really? Well we’ll see.’” The three acts of this ballet – so varied in terms of their emotional content, acting demands, and dance character – requires great balletic skill and artistic maturity. Zakharova has virtually all the versions of La Bayadere in her collection, including the Natalya Makarova version, which she danced triumphantly in New York.

But her collection has even more versions of Swan Lake, from Russian and European to Chilean and Brazilian – probably a couple of dozen in total, the most extravagant of which, by ballet-master Derek Dean, was in London’s Royal Albert Hall, which holds an audience of several thousand. The audience is seated in a kind of amphitheater formation around the stage, on which there are not 32 swans like in normal theaters, but 64. Watching these equal, synchronized dancing lines from above is unbelievably impressive. The soloists have to dance around the edge, trying to face all of the audience in equal measure. Even the duets are constructed so that the dancers turn 360 degrees and face the whole audience during them. The orchestra is placed above, and the conductor sees you on a television. And when this whole “stadium” applauds, it is a wonderful feeling.

Zakharova confesses to having been afraid, as it was her first appearance abroad with the Bolshoi Theater. But when it became obvious that the performance was a success, she felt unbelievably proud that the performances had been of such a high class. One month later, Zakharova returned to Paris to dance Giselle with the Grand Opera’s own ballet company, and was again well-received.

Zakharova laughs when asked whether the Grand Opera’s stars are jealous of her success. “No, we all learn from each other,” she says. “They were all curious and supported us when we did The Pharaoh’s Daughter, which French ballet-master Pierre Lacotte choreographed using very difficult small steps that are not typical for Russian ballet. And after the show they came and were amazed: ‘How do you manage it? It looked so beautiful!’ That’s the best thing – your colleagues recognizing that you have mastered their style.”

The ballerina said she tries to master the company’s style – to fit in and not look like an “outsider” – everywhere she goes, and she says that this is due to her Russian training. The Paris version of Giselle is different from Russian versions, and Zakharova’s partner, Laurent Hilaire, one of the Grand Opera’s established stars, suggested that she “do it your own way, like you usually do” – but she learned the French version anyway. But Zakharova also has to blend in with unfamiliar shows at the Bolshoi Theater; the most challenging, but also most rewarding, was Grigorovich’s Swan Lake. Odette remained the same, with just a few tweaks to subtleties – Zakharova always dances this part as she was trained in St. Petersburg. But Odile is different everywhere. At the Bolshoi she is ambiguous, many-faced, mysterious; attractive and repellent; acting not of her own accord, but by the will of some evil genius. “I want her dance to be as bewitching as Mona Lisa’s smile,” Zakharova says. “Recently, in the Louvre, I spent ages looking at this picture again, and now I’m working out how to make the same associations on stage.”

Zakharova talks about her work so enthusiastically that the break comes to an end all too soon. As we leave, we ask whether she feels she has become part of the Bolshoi Ballet after one season. “I felt that from the very start,” Zakharova smiles. “Everyone accepted me with genuine good feeling – from the stars to the stagehands. They understood that I had come to work hard. And I hope that my performances bear out my right to dance here.”  RL