Three Centuries Of St Petersburg Ballet

Established in 1703 by the sheer will of its charismatic founder, the homicidal megalomaniac Peter the Great, St. Petersburg's dazzling yet unhinged reputation was quickly cemented by the sadistic dominion of its early rulers. This city, in its successive incarnations—St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad and, once again, St. Petersburg—has always been a place of perpetual contradiction.It was a window to Europe and the Enlightenment, but so much of Russia’s unique glory was also created here: its literature, music, dance, and, for a time, its political vision. It gave birth to the artistic genius of Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, Pavlova and Nureyev. Yet, for all its glittering palaces, fairytale balls and enchanting gardens, the blood of thousands has been spilt on its snow-filled streets.It has been a hotbed of war and revolution, a place of siege and starvation, and the crucible for Lenin and Stalin’s power-hungry brutality. In St. Petersburg, Jonathan Miles recreates the drama of three hundred years in this paradoxical and brilliant city, bringing us up to the present day, when its fate hangs in the balance once more.

This book offers something entirely new: detailed scene-by-scene descriptions of the action and dancing of Giselle, Paquita, Le Corsaire, La Bayadère, and Raymonda, bringing the reader far closer to what the audience saw when the curtain went up on these five classic story ballets than has heretofore been possible. Drawing on archival documents, the authors show that these ballets were like today's pop entertainment: funnier, more violent, more spectacular, and with female characters far stronger than one might expect. This rigorously researched book fills huge gaps in dance history and is bound to be of interest to practitioners, scholars, and devotees of ballet and the arts.

'This extraordinary book brings to life an astonishing place. Beautiful prose renders brutality vivid' The Times - BOOK OF THE WEEK From Peter the Great to Putin, this is the unforgettable story of St Petersburg – one of the most magical, menacing and influential cities in the world. St Petersburg has always felt like an impossible metropolis, risen from the freezing mists and flooded marshland of the River Neva on the western edge of Russia. It was a new capital in an old country. Established in 1703 by the sheer will of its charismatic founder, the homicidal megalomaniac Peter-the-Great, its dazzling yet unhinged reputation was quickly fashioned by the sadistic dominion of its early rulers. This city, in its successive incarnations – St Petersburg; Petrograd; Leningrad and, once again, St Petersburg – has always been a place of perpetual contradiction. It was a window on to Europe and the Enlightenment, but so much of the glory of Russia was created here: its literature, music, dance and, for a time, its political vision. It gave birth to the artistic genius of Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, Pavlova and Nureyev. Yet, for all its glittering palaces, fairytale balls and enchanting gardens, the blood of thousands has been spilt on its snow-filled streets. It has been a hotbed of war and revolution, a place of siege and starvation, and the crucible for Lenin and Stalin’s power-hungry brutality. In St Petersburg, Jonathan Miles recreates the drama of three hundred years in this absurd and brilliant city, bringing us up to the present day, when – once more – its fate hangs in the balance. This is an epic tale of murder, massacre and madness played out against squalor and splendour. It is an unforgettable portrait of a city and its people.

There have been wonderful books about dancing, and superbly evocative ones about old Russia: but here the two themes are fascinatingly wedded. For these are the memoirs of the prima ballerina assoluta of the imperial Russian ballet, Mathilde Kschessinska (the Princess Romanovsky-Krassinsky), with whom, at her first appearance, the Tsarevitch Nicholas fell in love. As a dancer she had few rivals: apart from her marvellous technique she had a star personality, and was adored by the public. At the height of her fame she appeared in London with Diaghilev's company and danced with Nijinsky: she preferred, however, to dance in Russia, and for twenty years she was the adored darling of the great world of Petersburg. After the Revolution, when she was living as an emigre in the South of France, Diaghilev begged her to dance for him in his new Paris season, but to no avail. Kschessinska's memoirs fall roughly into three parts: the glittering fairy-story of her life as prima ballerina in Russia; her flight during the Revolution; and the era in which she established herself as a teacher of the highest rank. It is an extraordinary self-revelation of a great dancer and an utterly human person.