How Did Russia Influence Ballet

When one thinks of Russia, ballet often comes quickly to mind and vice versa. Russia has produced some of the greatest dancers in the history of ballet. From Vaslav Nijinsky to Rudolph Nureyev to Mikhail Baryshnikov to Svetlana Zakharova today, many of ballet’s greatest stars hail from Russia. Moreover, many of the most well-known classical ballets were created in Russia, including The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Don Quixote, and La Bayadere, among others. How did Russia create so many great ballet dancers? How did it come to play such an integral role to the development of classical ballet? And how did the Russian style of ballet become so distinct?

The massive influence of Russia on the development of ballet commonly leads people to believe that

In 1761, a Russian ballet troupe performed the first purely Russian work of ballet, “Iarbas, or Dido and Aeneas.” While belonging to the Russian school entirely, the work, like many other pieces of Russian high-culture, followed the foreign tradition and utilized the Western story based on Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid. Unfortunately, the prominence of foreign artists was just too great for Russian ballet to compete with. Thus, for the first 20 years of Catherine II’s reign, little attention was paid to Lande’s school. In 1783, General P. A. Soimonov became the school’s manager and employed Italian ballet master Canziani. Canziani introduced the Russian dancers to Noverre’s theory of the ballet, emphasizing the importance of mimicry and natural expression. Nonetheless, throughout the remained of the 18th century, Russian ballet made minimal contributions to the art form’s development. Starting at the time of Peter’s reforms, the Russian aristocracy greatly preferred foreign culture to their own, believing that Western European high culture was more advanced than that of Russia and lacked confidence in the ability of Russians to contribute anything of worth to the cannons of high art. Most notably, the elite read almost exclusively French literature. Russian ballet through the 19th century, accordingly, simply mimicked the Western style and technique. However,

Those who “claim that he was an inflexible traditionalist oblivious to the new,” do not understand that Petipa operated in fear of disappointing his patrons who could have fired him at any moment. It follows that Petipa’s great works were heavily influenced by the tastes of the Russian elite. The writings of dance writers in Russia, the thought leaders of Russia’s upper echelon, were characterized by their “conservatism and connoisseurship… they saw themselves as defenders of tradition they owned” (Scholl 2). This sense of conservativism and self-image of a defender has been pervasive throughout much of Russia’s history, from the fall of the Byzantine Empire and Russia’s Orthodox