When a student absorbs this orderly procession from day to day and from year to year, he becomes possessed by its beauty. Without Rossi Street our ballet, it seems to me, would be poorer. The dancing of the finest ballerinas of the city on the Neva is somehow indebted to it and to its inimitable lines.”
-Yuri Slonimsky, on Rossi (aka Theater) Sreet
(congratulations if you actually read that quote)
Wednesday was going to a café near where Tania and Brit live, which was nice.
Tania looks really friendly in this picture:
After that Alisa and I wandered around Nevsky Prospect and tried to do some shopping (more challenging than one might expect). We had a little luck at Gostiny Dvor in the side streets. I was amused when I saw this on one of the walls.
I had brought this apple with me from the Boston airport and had kept it on my desk in my room here, deciding to eat it eventually when I missed home. Granny smiths keep incredibly long. I can’t believe I’m already half way done, only a few more weeks left…
Following that, I decided to try to find the Vagonova School of Ballet, which I knew was not far off Nevsky.
This is actually of the theater school which is right before the Vagonova School. You can see a guy repainting it to the right. I thought it was a funny image with the enormous statue watching this humorously suspended workman:
I finally managed to find it, but unfortunately it is closed for construction. Grr. It felt amazing to be on Theater Street, a place I’ve read about, heard about, seen documentaries about, looked at photographs of. And voila, I just stumbled upon it.
My dad actually called while I was walking past the endless columns, so I had the excuse to sit and talk to him while taking in the street without looking really weird. I was hoping I could get in somehow, and I know there’s a theater museum around there, but I had no luck. I almost expected to hear some ballet master screaming out exercises or the opening chords of an adagio. No such luck. I will need to make a repeat visit.
Thursday afternoon we had a guest lecture by a woman who studies Alexander Blok (she studies his personal letters and manuscripts especially) and who also works over at the Vagonova School of Ballet. After class I was able to talk to her some (in Russian and with Prof Golstein’s help translating) about ballet and my interest in looking around the Vagonova school and maybe checking out archives in Petersburg for future research. She was really nice and responsive, so hopefully something will work out with that.
She asked me if I wanted to meet some dancers from the school too. I wasn’t really sure how to respond, having all my old insecurities come back from when I was a dancer about my body and whatever--now that I have changed quite a bit physically from what I was. It might be interesting to meet some of them though. It didn’t help that I saw her check out my feet (I always had an insecurity complex about my feet). It’s ridiculous, but it took me over a year after quitting to feel ok wearing flip flops or shorts or anything that showed off more of my feet and my knees (I wanted to be more hyperextended) because I was self conscious about them. I used to stretch for as much as 3-4 hours a day to try to improve my line and extensions. Little crazy. So it was a weird feeling when I all of a sudden felt the old insecurities get mixed up in the usual insecurities any normal girl would have at my age (which I acquired after abandoning the ballerina ideal). It really throws your perception of self for a loop after striving after one kind of physical perfection for so long and seeing yourself and others through that particular prism of criticism and beauty. I would even, and still do without realizing it, analyze everyone’s legs and feet I see, judging myself against them. The standards of beauty for normal people is so antithetical to ballet that it was jarring to be thrown into the real world when looking like a prepubescent girl with grotesquely flexible and thin limbs wasn’t the highest standard of beauty anymore. So when I met this woman, I made sure I was wearing a skirt that covered my even less hyperextended legs and shoes that didn’t show my feet that I used to stretch under my dresser or with the various foot stretching contraptions I made for hours everyday. That’s what I call thinking ahead, and I wasn’t at all surprised when she checked out my feet in the same way a normal girl might check out the chest of another.
Thursday night we went to the Mariinsky again to see Legend of Love, a ballet I had never seen before, because it’s only rarely performed outside of Russia. I was running extremely late because of transportation issues with the G8 conference coming up. So I was running around like a madwoman through Petersburg in high heels. Running up the escalator was probably the hardest part. I was lucky enough to bump into Prof Golstein and Prof Evdokimova outside of Sadovaya, and so I walked with them to the theater. I’m so soooo lucky I found them because they knew a faster route (I would’ve gotten lost) and we got there just on time. We had excellent seats for the ballet so I was very pleased.
While running around the city I was reminded of this picture I’d seen in the paper. This is about the only time you’re going to get Russian women to work out (I get strange stares whenever I go running in the park here). There was a high heel race in Moscow with a 10000 ruble prize for the winner. Excellent. I think I would’ve had a chance at winning that.
So anyway, the ballet was choreographed under the Soviet regime by Grigorivich, and has the ending to match (the hero sacrifices his personal feelings and desires for the greater good of the community). The piece is set in the orient, so throw in some stylized poses and flair. The music was not that impressive, especially compared to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade. Legend of Love was way less over the top than Scheherezade, and I think the choreography is better as well. Scherezade, the music, outdoes the ballet, it’s too big to choreograph too, whereas the music in Legend of Love did not outshine or distract from the dancing. Plus, Scherezade is just ridiculous, opulent, voluptuous, decadent, highly erotic, stereotypical (not that Legend of Love wasn’t stereotypical in its depiction of the orient) but Said would have more of a heyday with Scheherezade than with Legend of Love. The choreography was interesting and not strictly, strictly classical. The sets were fairly simple, the costumes were generally ok but sometimes horrid (hard to compare to Bakst, who did the costumes and sets for Scheherezade). The intentions of the two ballets are very different though, seeing as Scheherezade is pretty much about orgies and mass murder, whereas Legend of Love still allowed some indulgence in the eroticism and exoticism of the East but made sure to lace it with a Soviet friendly moral in the end.
We saw an amazing ballerina perform Ulyana Lopatkina, who had the most gorgeous legs and line. Her turns were so-so (she messed up her 32 fouettes, one of the feats every ballerina must learn how to do). Her balance was great though, and she had excellent control. I do feel for these dancers on the raked stages (where the stage is actually tilted forward toward the audience so that the audience can see better, but where the dancers have to perform on a slant). It’s very hard on your legs and messes up your balance. But I won’t bore you anymore, if you’re into ballet and want to know more about it let me know.
Since I’ve been blabbing so much about ballet and a lot of your didn’t know me that well while I was dancing I figured I’d put up a few pictures from back in the day:
This was from some years ago:
This was obviously before my back broke:
Not too long before I quit:
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