Italy birthed ballet, France helped codify its terminology, but it’s Russia that
made this style of movement synonymous with its identity.
If you look at a lot of the principal dancers a lot of the dancers in the company, they're either
had Russian teachers. They had Russian training. Russia has been en pointe when
it comes to fanciful footwork. While in the United States ballet is seen as
entertainment for the elites, in Russia it's mainstream culture. During the Cold
War, America used popular culture to spread its views with things like movies
and television. The Soviet Union countered with high culture in the form
of music and ballet. The role of ballet in Russian culture has always been one
that's connected to the government. It's not just something people do
or companies have done, but rather that this has become something that's seen as
deeply connected to political power.
Hey, fam. I'm Imaeyen and this Sunday we're strutting to beat outside of our regular studio
and telling you how Russia forever changed ballet.
Why has ballet become synonymous with Russia and Russians? Because we are the great.
Anton Pankevich knows ballet because it's been his entire life.
There's literally a book on him. The Russian-born Stanford University
instructor has spent a lot of time on his toes, using relevé, rond de jambe,
and plié to have his body articulate what words cannot. In the neoclassical ballet
we tried to make of figures that not necessarily human. You can portray an
animal. You can portray a tree. You can portray many different things. Pankevich
put on his first pair of ballet shoes at age 10, and in doing so he stepped into
Russia's decades-long tradition of ballet dominance. They always put so much
emphasis on culture. Culture was extremely important to Russia -- culture
and sport. Those are the ones that were their bread and butter, and they always
succeeded in culture. So many think of ballet as a Russian art form, but it was
actually the Italians who invented the dance in the 15th century during the
Renaissance period. Ballet was how the European royalty entertained itself, says
dance historian Lynn Garafola. They were not public performances. There were no
stages. There wasn't a public theater, but rather it was something that's exclusively for the court.
The first dancers didn't wear the tutus or the pointe
shoes we've come to associate with the art today. And the language, words like
Barre, Pirouette and port de bras. It comes from the French who adopted ballet
shortly after its creation.
Ballet didn't arrive to the United States until the 1900s, which is centuries after it began.
Its arrival coincided with a large wave of Russians immigrating to the U.S. after the Russian Imperial government was
overthrown, and years of civil war followed. Russia nearly abandoned ballet
following 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. That upheaval eventually birthed the
Soviet Union and a communist party that would rule the nation for decades.
In the revolt's aftermath, the powers that be tried to destroy what they saw as the
trappings of the aristocracy. Revolution leader Lenin had
originally intended to close the theaters, but peasants and farmers kept
filling the audiences for the ballet. After the Revolution the number of
Russians from the ballet world of Moscow and St. Petersburg but also many other
places increased enormously.
Since the Russian people wanted ballet and opera, the famous Bolshoi Theatre was saved. As the Russian Empire died and the Soviet
Union began more than two million people fled the country, and that number
includes more than 30,000 people who came to the United States to escape
repression and the police state. Many of those people were aristocrats and professionals.
In fact the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg lost a huge number of people after the Revolution and many of
them later turned up all around the world from San Francisco with a huge valley-
centered community in Paris. New York also had any number of people. Those
artists may have escaped Russia, but they didn't escape her very watchful eye. You
have to realize this was during the height of the Cold War. The U.S. and the
Soviet Union were two world powers with drastically differing ideologies. And the
close watch the Soviets kept on their dances is just one example of their
contrasts. You were being constantly watched, then you had to worry about what
happened afterwards. And the parents, the colleagues, the fellow dancers, family --all
of these would be subjected to surveillance and threats by the secret
police and by the political authorities, sometimes years before a dancer would be
able to talk to his or her mother, for instance, or someone close. But even
when you did you knew that someone was listening to the phone conversation.
Coming to America wasn't easy for Soviet ballet dancers, but the outcome of all of
Russia's unrest did forever change the art in the United States. It's Russian
choreographer George Balanchine who became the father of the American ballet
when he co-founded the School of American Ballet in 1934. Russia's Ballet
Russe tour sparked an American interest in the dance and Russian
defectors began to share their training. Today you can enroll in ballet class
just about anywhere in the U.S. If it wasn't for Balanchine
I don't think ballet would have been as popular
in America. Russian ballet has influenced pretty much I believe all of
American dancing. The Soviet connection is clear - it's in the execution where Pankevich
says you'll see the difference. He compared the two styles to a car race.
It's like watching Indy 500 versus Formula One. Which one's Indy, which
one's Formula One? Indy is American. Formula One is the European. So Formula
One, you have the fastest technology in the world and you have the most amazing
races, what they have. In Indy they just go in a circle. Look at the
difference in the speed of the footwork. On the left is the Russian way and on
the right is the American way. The Soviet Union is also the reason
ballet saw an increase in the quality of male dancers. The Soviet early on had
decided had put a premium on the quality of male dancing. And so many of the roles
were increased, augmented, new variations, new solos would be added and it was this
tradition of male dancing that the Soviets brought to the west and
electrified people. Mikhail Baryshnikov is one of the Soviets most famous male
dancers. He's considered one of the greatest ballet dancers in history and
he's actually the pre-eminent male dancer of the 1970s and the 1980s. At a
time when one of the only ways Soviets could see the world was through touring
with the arts, Baryshnikov wowed international audiences with his ability.
And in June 1974 he wowed them with his defection from the Soviet Union. It was a
big deal. Yes, ballet is about strength and beauty, but
for the Soviets it was also about power. Their art was a way to try and persuade
people to the Soviet worldview without force or coercion. In this way Soviet
dancers introducing their style to a global audience was a sort of propaganda --
in the same way the West also used soft power, like having the CIA back abstract
expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock, or producing movies like James
Bond which cast the Soviets as the bad guys.
[movie excerpt] "As he pits his murderous talents against the Iron Curtain."
I believe the Soviets felt that this was one way of encountering
what was the vast American influence abroad and what essentially America
exported, although certainly didn't do so consciously, and
this led of course to a wonderful period of touring by Soviet companies.
So this couldn't have happened in the U.S. without the Soviets because they essentially
created the American version of ballet. Pankevich believes Russia will continue to
dominate ballet because of the amount of monetary resources the government
contributes to sustain the art. And for him, the most difficult part of ballet isn't
securing the funding. I would say the most difficult thing about ballet is
letting go. You have certain memories that you remember how you look. It's hard
to let it go because you have a certain memory. Just don't dwell on the past
and try to share your memory with the dancers.