13 - Russian ballet in the age of Petipa

Summary

On 24 May 1847 Marius Petipa, a young French-born dancer and ballet master, landed in St Petersburg. He was not the first dance artist to brave the long journey to Russia and the rigours of a Russian winter, nor even the only Petipa; only five months later, his own father signed a contract to teach the senior classes at the Imperial Ballet School. Like so many other danseurs, Petipa fils was drawn to the “Venice of the North” because of decreasing opportunities for male dancers in the West and the unusually generous terms of an imperial contract, in his case, 10,000 francs a year and “half a benefit” for the position of premier danseur. He accepted the offer with alacrity, little imagining that he would remain in Russia until his death in 1910, marry twice there (both times to Russian ballerinas), raise a family and rule the Imperial Ballet from 1869, when he became chief ballet master, to his retirement in 1903.

Petipa's long stewardship of the company had an incalculable effect on Russian ballet. He presided over the shift from romanticism to what is usually termed ballet “classicism”, laid the foundation of the modern Russian school by marrying the new Italian bravura technique to its more lyrical French counterpart and helped transform an art dominated by foreigners and identified with the West into a Russian national expression. Petipa choreographed scores of ballets and innumerable dances, codifying their structure while expanding the lexicon of their movements, and created several generations of distinguished dancers.