The history of Russian ballet: the emergence and progress

The roots of the Russian ballet, like all kinds of art, lie in dance folklore. Most likely, it was cult (all sorts of dances) and gaming ("Pereplyas", "Kuma, where was" and so on.) Dancing. Russian ballet not only preserved all aesthetic canons, but also became a legislator in the world of ballet.

Origins

In Kievan Rus at the turn of the VIII-IX centuries, the first dancers began to appear, the pros of their business - buffoons ... After a time when Moscow became the capital, skomorokhami were not necessarily men.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the merry spectacles of mummers with faces, hidden masks, the so-called "Mashkars", astonished and amazed visiting foreigners.

In the XVII century the history of the Russian ballet was marked by the opening of the Kremlin Theater in the Potreshny Palace . According to the tradition, every performance in this theater has always ended between the sesennies (special outlets of ballet). These so-called entrée were performed by men dressed in bombastic clothes. The actors showed several elements of ballroom dance.

Royal fun

The first full-scale ballet performance in Russia is a performance staged February 8, 1673. There was this significant event at the court of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich and it was called "Ballet about Orpheus and Eurydice". The history of the origin of the Russian ballet describes it as a change of ceremonial poses, slow dances, bows and transitions. Between them the actors uttered memorized words or sang. All this was little like a real theatrical performance. It was only a king's fun, enticing its obscurity.

In the meantime, I. Gregory, the theater's organizer, invites Nicolas Lim to organize courses in the theatrical mastery for the royal theater. At first, 10 children of notable philistines, then 20, successfully passed the training and showed the ballet production of Orpheus in the French style for the king.

The task is set

Only after a quarter of a century, Peter I, aiming to reform the cultural life of Russia, brings music and dance to the way of Russian society. He decides to instill art into the elite strata of the inhabitants of St. Petersburg. For this, Peter I closes the Moscow theater of Alexei Mikhailovich and publishes a revolutionary decree. This decree on assemblies obliged all state institutions to teach ballroom dancing on a mandatory basis. These reforms have made the position of a dancier unattainably high. It is to these stewards of the assemblies that ballet is due to the introduction of innovations in the form of elements from national Slavic dances in ballet dances that have come from abroad.

Author V. Krasovskaya ("The History of Russian Ballet" - L. Art, 1978) believes that thanks to the energetic and categorical nature of Peter I in the palace halls, performances of ballet troupes, musicians and opera artists invited from abroad began to take place.

In early 1738, the country organized a school of ballet art, which, in fact, became the first. The history of the Russian ballet briefly tells about this period. Graduates of the school worked in ballet groups of foreign theaters by so-called figurants (actors in the corps de ballet). And only much later they were admitted to the main parties.

First professional training

The cradle of modern ballet is considered by the land gentry corps. It was the work of the illustrious Jean Baptiste Lange, who, with his students, staged three court ballet performances. As the history of the Russian ballet shows, they became almost the first ballet performances that corresponded to all the laws and regulations of the Royal Dance Academy in the French capital.

The cadets of the gentry corps took part in the academic, lyrical half-character and at the same time comical ballet performance of Fessano's troupe from Italy.

Elizabeth I, so as not to lose trained ballet dancers, opens Her Majesty's Own Dance School, the first set of which was 12 children of commoners.

And by the end of 1742, the empress signed a decree ordering the establishment of a ballet troupe of Russian dancers. It was her first Russian stars - professional ballet dancers: Aksinya Baskakova and Athanasius Toporkov.

Getting out of the impasse

The death of Batista Lande brings confusion to the choreography in the country. The representations that Fessano leads are becoming one-type and boring burlesque. The audience is not attracted to such productions.

The history of Russian ballet briefly describes that period. At this time and in Europe there is the question of reform of the choreographic case. Rousseau and Saint-Mar require ballet dancers to get rid of lavish clothes and masks with wigs. Diderot strongly recommends changing the storylines of ballet performances. Meanwhile, John Weaver, without waiting for general changes, puts a dance performance with a thoughtful plot, and Georges Nover writes the legendary "Letters on Dance".

Russian ballet does not lag behind. The appearance of Hilferding is proof of this. This German specialist fixed plot choreographic performances in St. Petersburg. In Paris, the subject ballet productions appeared only 15 years later. Hilferding was assisted by Leopold Paradiso. Already by the fifties of the 18th century they created independent ballet plays.

The beginning of dramatic productions

The first drama in the Russian ballet belongs to AP Sumarokov. He propagandized laudatory dance performances, composed a literary basis for ballet performances "Sanctuary of Virtue" and "New Laurels".

Gasparo Angiolini, the choreographer invited by the tsar, intensifying the brightness of folk Slavonic notes, puts the ballet act "Fun on Christmas trees". Catherine II greatly praised the performance. In 1779, the Legislative Commission in its entirety approved the ballet, the music for which was written on the basis of Slavic folklore.

After such a colossal success, Anzhilini moved on to entertaining theatrical productions, which ridiculed the topical themes. These were the panegyrics: "Triumphant Russia" (the defeat of the Turkish army under Cahul and Largue was lauded), "The New Argonauts" (glorious ode to the Russian Empire fleet) and "Victorious reasoning" (raised the question of the need for vaccination against rampant smallpox).

A little earlier, the first heroic ballet performance of "Semir" was staged. From this moment the choreographers began to pay great attention to the expressiveness of the ballet dance. For dancers can simultaneously be engaged in amusing operatic performances of non-state theaters, and in pseudo-Russian opera shows, the libretto to which the empress herself composed.

To the new year of 1778 in St. Petersburg (as the history of Russian ballet shows, books Vividly describe this unique event) Waiting for the audience are already two theaters: the commercial "Free Theater" and the court.

The first serf groups

In the second half of the 18th century, the mastery of dance art is in vogue. And already in the beginning of 1773, under the tutelage of Leopold Paradis, the first training center was opened in the capital on the basis of the Educational House, which later became the first public theater. In the first set there were 60 children. About the first choreographic performances, put by the famous Cosimo Meddocs, Y. Bakhrushin tells in his books.

The history of Russian ballet, studied and described in great detail, fully reveals this period of dance art. Medox with a group of young people who learned in Russia, dancers put comic operas, choreographic productions, dedicated to real events (for example, "Ochakov's capture"), and divertissements.

Against this background, the serf theater began to develop rapidly. In the last decade of the XVIII century, large groups of serf actors were already well known. Such collectives were in Zorich, Golovkina, Apraksin, Sheremetyev, Potemkin and other landowners.

The same period was marked by the development and staging of the technique of female dance and stage design for presentation. There is a new tradition to specify on the scene the scene, the scenery to write in a realistic style, to apply the game of penumbra and light.

The triumph of Russian ballet

The history of the Russian ballet of the 19th and 20th centuries is rich and diverse. By the beginning of the XIX century the art of ballet reached that maturity, which is appreciated by the spectator. Russian ballerinas bring airiness, nobleness and expressiveness to the choreography. This is very aptly noticed by Alexander Pushkin, describing the beauty of the dance movements of his contemporary, the stars of the ballet scene, Istomina: "The soul is full of flight" (the phrase became a synonym for the ballet). Her facial expressions and the refinement of dance movements aroused admiration. Most of the audience went to Avdotya Istomin.

No less beautiful were Lihutina Anastasia, Ekaterina Teleshova, Danilova Maria.

Ballet performances are gaining popularity. Ballet dance, like art, becomes privileged, and state subsidies are allocated to it.

By the 60s of the last century the cultural beau monde was embraced by the newfangled trend of "realism". In the Russian theater comes a crisis. With regard to the choreographic productions, it was expressed in the primitivism of the story line, which was adjusted to a certain dance. Ballet dancers who have achieved perfection are offered to dance in realistic productions.

The history of the creation of the Russian ballet is entering a new stage. The revival began with Peter Tchaikovsky, who was the first to write music for a choreographic production. For the whole history of the ballet, for the first time the music has become as important as the dance. And even appeared in the same line with opera music and symphonic compositions. If before the Tchaikovsky music was written for dance elements, now the ballet actor with plasticity, movement and elegance tried to convey the musical mood and emotion, thus helping the viewer to unravel the plot transferred by the composer to the notes. The world still admires the famous "Swan Lake".

Choreographer A. Gorsky introduced the elements of modern direction into the productions, began to pay great attention to the artistic framing of the scene, believing that the viewer should completely immerse himself in what is happening on the stage. He forbade the use of elements of pantomime. M.Fokin radically changed the situation . He revived the romantic ballet and made the body language in the dance understandable and speaking. According to Fokine, every production on the stage must be unique. That is, the musical accompaniment, style and dance figure should be inherent only in a specific representation. In the first years of the 20th century, his productions were shot full of "Egyptian Nights", "Dying Swan", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Acis and Galatea", etc.

In 1908, Diaghilev SP invited Fokine to become the chief director of the Parisian "Russian Seasons". Thanks to this invitation, Fokine becomes world famous. And Russian ballet artists began to perform in triumph every year in the French capital. The history of the Russian ballet glorifies the dancers of the Russian troupe, whose names the whole world knows: Adolf Bolm, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Vaclav Nijinsky and others. And this is during the decline of the European ballet!

Diaghilev ventured and won. He assembled a troupe of young and talented ballet actors and gave them freedom of action. He allowed me to act outside the well-known framework set by a well-known but already quite old Petipa.

Freedom of action allowed the dancers to reveal and express themselves. In addition to these revolutionary innovations, Diaghilev drew artists (J. Cocteau, A. Derain, P. Picasso) and composers (K. Debissi, M. Ravel, I. Stravinsky) to the decoration of his most famous contemporaries. Now every ballet production became a masterpiece.

After the October Revolution, many dancers and choreographers left a rebellious Russia. But the skeleton remained. Gradually closer to the people becomes the Russian ballet. Pages of history for the period of becoming seen much ...

After the middle of the XX century dancers and choreographers of the new generation returned to the scene forgotten dance miniatures, symphony and one-act ballet. The number of studios and theaters has steadily increased.

"Triumph", ballerina, ballet critic

The famous Russian dancer Vera Mikhailovna Krasovskaya was born in the Russian Empire on September 11, 1915. After secondary school she entered and in 1933 she successfully graduated from the Leningrad Choreography School. She studied with the famous Vaganova Agrippina. Since that time and until 1941, Krasovskaya has been serving in the Theater. Kirov. She is engaged in ballets of the academic repertoire.

In 1951, Vera Mikhailovna graduated in Leningrad graduate school of the Theater Institute. A. Ostrovsky, after basic training at the Faculty of Theater Studies.

The school of professionalism, first received by Krasovskaya in the class of Agrippina Vaganova, and later in the ballet posters of the Mariinsky Theater, together with the luggage of knowledge of encyclopedic scale, aristocratism, cultural traditions and tremendous mastery of languages (French and English), allowed her to become a brilliant and uniquely the largest ballet art critic.

In 1998, the joyous news spread throughout the theater world. The prize "Triumph" was awarded to Vera Mihailovna Krasovskaya. The history of the Russian ballet, which she told in books (some of them translated into foreign languages) and articles (more than 300) as an art critic and critic, made Vera Mikhailovna a laureate of the free Russian award "Triumph". This award is awarded for the highest achievements in art and literature.

In 1999 Krasovskaya Vera Mikhailovna was gone.

Epilogue

The history of the Russian ballet with gratitude stores the names of the masters of dance art, who made a tremendous contribution to the formation of Russian choreography. These are the notorious S. Didlo, M. Petipa, A. Saint-Leon, S. Diaghilev, M. Fomin and many others. And the talent of Russian artists attracted and today attracts a huge number of spectators in different countries of the world.

To this day, Russian ballet troupes are considered the best in the world.