Tsiskaridze, Head of the Academy of Russian Ballet: “I can stand up and make 32 fouettés”

The Presidential Library hosted a video lecture on the "Russian Ballet School: Past and Present", timed to the 135th anniversary of the birth of the greatest ballerina of the 20th century Anna Pavlova and the 80th birthday anniversary of Maris Liepa-Rudolf, People's Artist of the USSR. The lecture for the students was delivered by a ballet dancer and ballet teacher, People's Artist of Russia, Head of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, Nikolai Tsiskaridze. The event was broadcast online on the Presidential Library website under the "Live broadcasts."

Tsiskaridze began his reflections about the ballet with the fact that the Russian school, based on classical dance, has no equal in the world. It is nearly three hundred years old. The ballet was introduced in Russia by the French, who then enriched it with the Italians, and still the Russian ballet classics, airy and incomparable, remains the pinnacle. As to the modern, according Tsiskaridze, we are definitely behind. The situation is not catastrophic, but for a few decades we wer cut off from the world trends in this field, did not see the productions of Béjart, Neumeier, Hades.

Now we are making up, in which connection the whole world is following this Russian "new wave". Boris Eifman's Academy of Dance uses a completely new methodology, "without pointe" or without orienting on it completely. And yet, according to the lecturer, to reach the heights in the art of dance one needs to go through "stepmother of exercises" based on the honed skills of Russian classics, the dance "on the toes."

Figurative speech of the lecturer was supplemented by a professional impulse: "I can stand up now and make 32 fouettes - this is the level of training, the school, which could be the basis for anything."

Ballet is an art understandable without translation. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the Russian audience has always been interested in choreography and teaching "kitchen" of one of the oldest, and currently the elitist art. As you know, two Russian capitals have always argued for the right to be trendsetters in the field. Therefore, one of the giants of the dance, who first headed the "Moscow" ballet school and then the fundamental "St. Petersburg" one, was asked by the audience the follower of which school he was?

"You know, the lecturer replied, once at a show in Moscow I made one difficult element having earned a replica of one of the masters of the ballet: "That, colleagues, is a true school of St. Petersburg." I then had to correct the distinguished master: "This is not a "St. Petersburg" or "Moscow” school - it's just an element of dance learned thoroughly and polished at the barre."

Gradually, the lecture of Nikolai Tsiskaridze transformed into a kind of master class, which he gave via video conference to his colleagues and students of ballet schools, who gathered in front of plasma screens at a branch of the Presidential Library in Tyumen Region, in the libraries of Novosibirsk, Pushkin, Kirov, Chita, as well as in the Russian Centers of Science and Culture in Baku, Brest, Yerevan, Kiev, Chisinau, Ulan Bator, and others. There were many of those wishing to ask the maitre a question, there were also some requests.

Some of them Tsiskaridze fulfilled without shelving. For example, colleagues from Chisinau authorized Nikolai to petition before the President of Russia in order to establish the Year of Ballet; Yekaterinburg teachers thanked the head of Vaganova Academy for his contribution to the opening of a ballet school in such a remote place as Sverdlovsk Province; teachers of Vyatka College of Culture asked Tsiskaridze, whether he would like to revive one of the performances of Marius Petipa the year of the 200th anniversary of his birth…

A lot of questions concerned the procedures of selecting talented children for ballet schools and colleges. In response, Nikolai Tsiskaridze repeated the answer of one of his teachers: "When a child puts his hand on the barre, one can immediately understand whether he will be a soloist or an artist of the corps de ballet."

It seems that the lecture at the Presidential Library fully answered the questions not only about Tsiskaridze as a ballet dancer, but also as a zealot and organizer of the St. Petersburg school of dance, which innovations he finds acceptable, and whether Russian ballet will keep the leading position in the world.