Ballet Bastion

Inside the Vaganova Academy

Every little girl dreams of becoming a ballerina — at least for a few weeks after seeing The Nutcracker. In my case, the reverie was Russia-inspired and lasted almost 10 years. For most of the 1970s, I attended a ballet school run by Czech émigrés on the outskirts of Washington, DC. While they didn’t have much love for Mother Russia — they left in 1968 when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague — the couple readily acknowledged the superiority of Big Brother’s national ballet tradition. 

My teacher, Irina Prochotsky, was both a beneficiary and proponent of the dance pedagogy of Agrippina Vaganova, the renowned ballet teacher who developed a formal syllabus that codified Russian dance. The “Vaganova method” —which most American culturati had never heard of at the time — set ours apart from other ballet schools in the Maryland suburbs. Plus, we had Madame Sophie Firsova once a week. In my memory, she was a graduate of the Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg, a direct link to the celebrated school that has turned out almost every major Russian ballet star who ever leaped across a stage, from Anna Pavlova to Mikhail Baryshnikov. 

For almost three centuries, the Vaganova Academy — originally called the Imperial Ballet School — has supplied St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater with world-class dancers. Certain musical passages would transport Madame Firsova back to that institution’s Great Stage, which is to Russian ballet what La Scala is to Italian Opera. For visuals, there was a book. We pored over its black-and-white pictures of uniformed children toiling away in perfect corps-de-ballet unison. Aspiring to a comparable level of discipline and dedication, we eschewed boys, food and “normal” American high school life for a daily regime of Soviet-style ballet training. 

Needless to say, the Prochotskys could not replicate the 270-year-old Vaganova Ballet Academy, which had been established by imperial fiat in the upper floors of the Winter Palace. Today, 10-year-olds from all over Russia compete to get into the program, which trains them free of charge in a boarding-school setting. Of the 500 kids who are invited to audition every year, 60 are admitted. About 40 of those actually make it to graduation – eight years later. In addition to ballet, they learn all the standard academic subjects, plus folk dancing, drama, piano and French – the official language of ballet. In the Soviet era, the chosen few enjoyed state-sponsored status — similar to Olympic athletes — and worked in lavish settings reminiscent of the tsars.

Back in the U.S., we did our best to imitate the Russians with daily classes in ballet and related subjects, including the history of music. We had George Balanchine on our side: the celebrated choreographer who founded the New York City Ballet was a Vaganova Ballet Academy alum. As was Rudolf Nureyev. A leaping advertisement for the academy whose closely held ballet secrets enhanced Russia’s Cold War mystique, Nureyev’s androgynous good looks and raw physicality uprooted all preconceived notions of what a male ballet dancer could be – just like Vaslav Nijinsky, who was an earlier product of the same school.

When Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov defected, in 1970 and 1974 respectively, Americans saw two more jaw-dropping examples of classical ballet perfection. Both VBA grads, they could jump higher, balance longer, turn more pirouettes — and act their parts more convincingly — than their American and European counterparts. U.S. dancers were humbled by the Russians’ superior technique — but for us, their success was a vindication. We, after all, had long known that Vaganova was onto something: she had perfected, documented and institutionalized the best ballet teaching system in the world. Her 1934 Fundamentals of the Classical Dance is still the bible of Russian ballet. 

There was another thing that we envied about the Soviets: Getting through the eight-year training program virtually guaranteed them salaried jobs as professional ballet dancers. Starting in 1738, when the academy was founded, the best of the matriculating class were invited to join the Mariinsky Ballet (renamed the Kirov Ballet during the Soviet era). Those not chosen by St. Petersburg’s premiere company could find jobs at any one of a number of regional dance companies. 

Not so in the U.S., where most ballet companies struggle to survive on grants and donations. Once a dancer’s “training” is over, he or she faces the much harder task of finding a job, which usually involves several income-free years courting a company that might one day have an opening. Even those who “make it” lack job security. Many professional dancers live from contract to contract; some only get paid when their company is rehearsing or performing. An ill-timed injury can end it all.

I gave up my ballet dream at 17, but never forgot about the storied ballet school “behind the Iron Curtain” that forever defined my idea of hard work. When the USSR broke up in 1991, I worried for the Academy. Would a “democratic” Russia see the value of preserving its long-standing ballet tradition, or would it succumb to the capitalist pressure to sell it out? Last summer I went to have a look — something that would have been impossible in the 1970s. The word from Director Vera Dorofeyeva was reassuring: “Absolutely nothing has changed.” 

italian architect carlo rossi designed the neo-Classical building that has housed the Vaganova Ballet Academy since 1836. A dramatic structure with arched windows, second-floor columns and a pale, yellow-and-white color scheme, it occupies an entire city block in St. Petersburg on what used to be known as Theater Street [Teatralnaya ulitsa]. Pedestrians strolling along the sidewalk are dwarfed by its magnificence. 

Closer inspection reveals most of those passersby are lithe young dancers entering and exiting a door located mid-block. There is no big sign advertising the oldest ballet school in the world — just a poorly designed poster detailing hours of operation, unreadable from the street. A smaller notice on the door announces auditions for new students. 

This hallowed repository of unadulterated classical ballet is not open to the public. Visitors must make arrangements in advance —including providing their names, titles and passport numbers — and endure a security check at the entrance. 

Once inside, the first stop is the outer lobby, which accommodates what appear to be mostly waiting parents. The school’s invitation-only museum resides at ground level, but most of the 20-odd studios are on the upper floors. Climbing the winding staircase, I notice that the walls on both sides bear class lists of academy graduates, starting in 1738 and including the “siege” years between 1941 and 1944. History, tradition and perseverance are on my mind as I’m ushered in to watch a class of four adolescent boys. 

The teacher, Yelena Zabalkanskaya, is putting the quartet through its paces. Dressed identically in black tights and white tshirts, the boys have finished the warm-up portion of the class — a series of exercises conducted at the railing-like barre that lines three walls of the room — and moved into the center, right in front of Zabalkanskaya. Seated in a chair with her back against the mirror, she calls out a sequence of steps rather than demonstrating them. The students have clearly done the combination before — repetition leads to mastery — and she’s testing their memories.  

 Her voice booms like a drill sergeant’s above the live piano accompaniment — “passé, plié, bend back, grand plié.” Physically, though, she’s a wisp of a woman who resembles my former ballet teacher. Fiftysomething? It’s hard to say. You can tell she’s a retired ballerina by her trim physique, and also by the fact that her lace-up black sneakers can’t contain her huge, and hugely telling, arches. When this no-nonsense ballet mistress crosses her legs, the toe resting on the ground is en pointe. 

Ballet forensics aside, there’s an easier way to ascertain Zabalkanskaya’s credentials. Every single one of the 62 VBA dance teachers is a graduate of the school, according to Dorofeyeva. “That’s the whole secret,” she confides in her spacious top-floor office.

“They graduate from here. They have a dancing career either at the Mariinsky or Mihailovsky theaters, and they come back here to teach. If you graduated from Perm or Voronezh academies, you don’t teach here. Everything is passed down, from hands to hands, from feet to feet.”

It’s clear from the respect and attention the boys pay Zabalkanskaya that they understand the importance of the student-teacher relationship. She’s their ticket to better battements and grander jetés. While they’re working on a sequence of small jumps, Zabalkanskaya rises from her chair to correct one pupil. She doesn’t like the placement of his arm — the proper positioning of the upper body is a defining characteristic of the Vaganova method — but her verbal instructions don’t produce the change she seeks. So she moves into a position that gives him two choices: do it right or hit her in the face with his errant arm. Looking attentive and a bit nervous, he makes the desired adjustment and delivers a perfect assemblé.

Such tweaks may be too subtle for non-dancers to detect in a classroom setting. But when you’ve got dozens of girls in white tutus lined up on stage, as they were the night before at the Mariinsky in Swan Lake, every non-conforming movement stands out. Throughout the story – a ballet in three acts, with music by Peter Tchaikovsky, the Russian corps lived up to its name: like the graceful birds they portrayed, the dancers moved as one. 

dorofeyeva informs me that 98 percent of those synchronized swans I saw the night before are VBA grads. But in the future, they may not all be Russians. For about 20 years, the academy has been accepting qualified students from other countries for 10-month periods, after they’ve completed their formal training at home. Up to 30 win admission each year, an honor that comes with a $15,000 price tag. Today, two Japanese students — a boy and a girl — can be found among the soon-to-be-graduates stretching between classes in one of the academy’s cozy lounge areas.

In contrast to the orderly lines they display in the studio, here the young dancers relax in a tangle of wool-wrapped bodies. One ballerina-to-be props her leg on a couch to stretch beyond the 180-degree spread of a standard split. From this contortionist pose, she happily carries on a conversation with another girl.

Dorofeyeva concedes that foreign students are a growing revenue source for the academy. Dancers from former Soviet republics, such as Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, are also considered visiting students, yet unlike those beyond the “near abroad” countries, they only have to pay their food expenses. The Russian government covers all the other operational expenses of the academy, including teacher salaries and maintenance. “We have a wonderful building,” Dorofeyeva exclaims, pointing out the obvious. “Can you imagine it for a second — 26,000 square meters! We have to heat it, to clean it, to keep it in order.”

“We couldn’t do it without the state,” she adds, lighting the first of several cigarettes. Another vital part of Dorofeyeva’s job is reminding Russia’s politicians that the country’s ballet is a precious cultural resource. “And they agree with me,” she says, noting that former Russian President Vladimir Putin recently attended a performance celebrating the Mariinsky Theater’s 225th birthday. “Putin was sitting in the fifth row. We were sitting in the sixth.” 

The rehearsal room for the senior class is not as elaborate as the multi-tiered light blue and gold Mariinsky. But it’s the most beautiful ballet studio I’ve ever seen. Like all the other practice rooms at VBA, it has floor-to-ceiling windows with diaphanous curtains and a special Marley floor designed for dancers. Four chandeliers, a wrap-around wrought-iron balcony and a portrait of Vaganova enhance the elegance of the high-ceilinged space. 

The students here — all girls dressed in maroon, skinny-strapped leotards with matching sheer skirts —are days away from their culminating concert at the Mariinsky, which doubles as a job interview. The theater will most likely snatch up the best grads; last year, 16 VBA seniors joined the Mariinsky. Two other local ballet companies — the Mikhailovsky, aka Maly, and the Eifman — will compete for the rest. In Russia, the demand for young dancers exceeds the supply.

Long-legged Svetlana Sivlatova hopes she will “have a choice” of local ballet companies to join. The 21-year-old is three years her classmates’ senior; she had already completed her ballet studies in Belarus when she found an opportunity to extend them at Vaganova. “I wanted to learn the correct form, because in other schools where they don’t have their own method, it’s very difficult,” says Sivlatova, noting that the Bolshoi trains its own dancers. “This school is considered the best school in the world,” she notes diplomatically. “When there is a specific method, you know how to move correctly because there are certain rules.” 

Judging from her form at the barre, Sivlatova has benefited from the extra years in St. Petersburg. Like many tall dancers, she has remarkable extension — she holds her leg steady, right next to her ear, for what seems like an eternity while instructor Irina Sitnikova corrects a girl on the other side of the room. But Sivlatova can also turn and jump — skills that tend to come easier to smaller dancers. More importantly, even when she’s doing exactly the same steps as the other young women around her, she stands out. You can’t help watching her. 

That special something could net Sivlatova a career as a soloist, which is more lucrative than a spot in the corps de ballet. The Mariinsky pays better salaries to its entry-level dancers than do the other companies in St. Petersburg. Yet, gone are the days when the government took care of its artists, Dorofeyeva laments. Unlike in Soviet times, when “the theater could arrange apartments, everything else, now they have to arrange housing themselves — earn money for it, just like in the West.”

Despite the hardships looming ahead, none of the young dancers to whom I spoke planned to leave St. Petersburg. Sivlatova doesn’t expect to return to Minsk. Her classmate, day student Kseniya Romashova, is also staying put — “for now,” says the 18-year-old St. Petersburg native. Even Rieka Suzuki of Japan hasn’t written off Russia, although her long-range plan is to dance in Western Europe.

Dorofeyeva has mixed feelings about the globalization of Russian dance. “I get very upset that the state invests so much money in them, and they go to the West and dance there,” she says with obvious emotion. Although she acknowledges that some VBA grads leave because they want to dance in “modern style... which is not very developed in Russia yet,” Dorofeyeva makes her own preference clear. Those who seek greener pastures “are not professionally or morally satisfied, since there isn’t such a classical repertoire anywhere else.” 

A mention of Baryshnikov puts her on the defensive: “He would have risen to the top here, too,” she maintains. But even Dorofeyeva has to concede that Misha was good for public relations. “There is not one company in the world that doesn’t have Russian ballet graduates,” she asserts. “Those who left — like Baryshnikov, Makarova — were the best publicity for the Russian ballet. Everyone understood what Russian ballet was.”

the ballet repertoire at the Mariinsky Theater hasn’t changed much since the dramatic departures of Nureyev, Baryshnikov and Makarova. In contrast to Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet, which is breaking new choreographic ground under the direction of Alexei Ratmansky [see Russian Life, July/Aug 2001], St. Petersburg’s premiere ballet company has a reputation for lovingly preserved and perfectly executed story ballets of a certain age — especially Russian ones. Although VBA students now learn some “modern” dance, classical is the company’s undisputed niche. 

Speaking for what she calls “the most pure Russian ballet school,” Dorofeyeva admits that “We are a bit conservative.” She extends that assessment to the entire city of St. Petersburg, describing it as a “patriarchal” place that loves its “beautiful traditions.” Like many residents, Dorofeyeva opposes the construction a new Mariinsky Theater that will host contemporary drama, opera and ballet in the historic center of the city. (In the tradition of Russia’s most European burg, the new theater’s architect is French.)

A plethora of other building projects around the city suggests there’s no shortage of rubles flowing in. Shouldn’t that be good for cultural life? Not according to Dorofeyeva. She’s wary of how market forces might alter Russia’s unique method of training ballet dancers — a system that sets it apart from every other country in the world. 

“We educate and train for free, so we have the right to select, the right to expel. That’s why we have such ballet,” she says matter of factly. 

Dorofeyeva believes any commercialization of the system would have disastrous consequences for a national treasure that has enjoyed the full support of the tsars, commissars, democrats and oligarchs. “After the breakup of the Soviet Union, there was also a breakdown in sports, like hockey,” she observes. “But that did
not affect us; we are the same as before.” 

“As long as the state pays attention to the school, then the ballet will be alive,” Dorofeyeva continues. “If the ballet is at the mercy of commercial organizations, you will not have ballet like this. When the money interferes with the ballet, the ballet dies out.” 

 Downstairs, in the chandeliered classroom, the next generation of Russian ballet dancers is rehearsing Le Corsaire for their upcoming Mariinsky performance. Although the Adolphe Adam-scored ballet debuted at the Paris Opera in 1856, the great choreographer Marius Petipa reworked it substantially for the Russian ballet in 1899, creating the canonical version. The graduating dancers are rehearsing the third act, known as “Le Jardin Animé,” which features a large, all-female ensemble. The girls pull on long tutus over their leotards to better simulate the on-stage experience. Years of exertion and determination have brought them to this moment of graceful expectation. As they rise and fall in unison, following precisely in the footsteps of their predecessors, I have to agree with Dorofeyeva about the importance of continuity. 

“We are not hiding anything. We have our doors open for everybody,” she warns young foreigners who dream of embodying the body and soul of the Russian ballet, “But understand me correctly: You will never dance like our children.”  RL