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RUSSIAN BALLET

The Saint Petersburg Ballet dates from 1738, when French master of ballet Jean-Baptiste Landé requested students from Empress Anne (1730-1740) to form a school in Saint Petersburg that promoted the skills of Russian dancers. Tsar Paul I (1796-1801) later invited French choreographer Charles Didelot to head the company. In 1828 Didelot laid the first foundations for a distinctly Russian style with his ballet based on the poem Kavkazsky plennik (The Prisoner of the Caucasus, 1822) by Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin. With the exception of Ivan Valbergh, who served as ballet master from 1766 to 1819, the company was led by foreign choreographers and ballet masters. Most famous among these was French ballet master Marius Petipa, who in the late 19th century developed the company into a great performing vehicle, presenting his elaborate, formulaic ballets for the entertainment of the court. He developed a classical technique that, by the late 1890s, was comparable with the techniques of the best foreign dancers. In the 1890s Petipa produced the first symphony ballets with the music of Russian composers Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Aleksandr Glazunov, such as The Sleeping Beauty (1890), Swan Lake (with Acts I and IV by Lev Ivanov, 1895), and Raymonda (1898). His masterpieces, now known as Petipa classics, have become standard ballets performed throughout the world.

The company survived the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the 1920s were a period of hardship and experimentation. The 1930s saw productions of ballets on Soviet themes, such as Soviet dancer and choreographer Vassily Vainonen's Flames of Paris (1932); also during this period, director Agrippina Vaganova developed her system of teaching classical technique. Later productions included Laurentia (1939) and Romeo and Juliet with Galina Ulanova in 1940.

Under the direction of Konstantin Sergeyev and Natalia Dudinskaya, the company made its first tours of the West in the 1960s. With Rudolf Nureyev and, later, Mikhail Baryshnikov representing a new generation of dancers, the purity of the Vaganova school won international acclaim. The subsequent defections of Nureyev and Baryshnikov to the West had political repercussions on the policies of the company, though emphasis continued to be placed on restaging the classics and lengthy tours to the West.

Due to changes in the political arena, the company and the theater that was its home went through many name changes. Originally called the Maryinsky Theater (1886-1917), the theater was later named the State Maryinsky Theater (1917-1920) and then the State Academic Theater for Opera and Ballet (1920-1935). In 1935 the state government changed the company's name to the Kirov Ballet, after S. M. Kirov, a Communist Party leader assassinated that year. In 1991 the theater's name reverted to Maryinsky Theater, and the title of the company officially became the Saint Petersburg Ballet.