78 Ezrahi, Swans of the Kremlin, 210.
79 Allen Hughes, “Ballet: Bolshoi Stages U.S. Premiere of Spartacus,’” New York Times, September 13, 1962.
80 Allen Hughes, “‘Spartacus’: Can It Be Understood Though Disliked?” New York Times, September 23, 1962.
81 Walter Terry, The Bolshoi: ‘Spartacus,’” New York Herald Tribune, September 13, 1962.
82 Walter Terry, DeMille Out De-Milled,” New York Herald Tribune, September 16, 1962. The Universal pictures blockbuster Spartacus (1960) was directed by Stanley Kubrick, not DeMille, though it was first shown in New York at the DeMille Theater.
83 W[alter]. T[erry]., “For the Bolshoi, Second ‘Spartacus,’ Warmer Crowd,” New York Herald Tribune, September 14, 1962.
84 Terry, The Bolshoi: ‘Spartacus,’” New York Herald Tribune, September 13, 1962.
85 Bolshoi, in Shift, Cancels 3 ‘Spartacus’ Showings,” New York Times, September 18, 1962.
86 “‘Spartacus’ Taken Out of Ballet Repertoire,” Los Angeles Times, September 24, 1962.
87 Plisetskaya, I, Maya Plisetskaya, 233.
88 Ross, Like a Bomb Going Off, 257–58.
89 Stenogramma zasedaniya khuozhestvennogo soveta. Soobshcheniye Yu. N. Grigorovicha o postanovke baleta ‘Spartak,’” l. 5; June 27, 1967/Bolshoi Theater Museum. Also quoted in Potemkina, “Osobennosti stsenarnoy dramaturgii baleta 1930–60 gg.: na materiale istorii sozdaniya baleta ‘Spartak,’” 138.
90 Stenogramma obsuzhdeniya baleta Spartak,’” l. 12.
91 Ibid., l. 20.
92 Interview, May 5, 2015, Moscow, Russia.
93 Ibid.
94 Gayevskiy, Divertisment, 219.
95 Plisetskaya, I, Maya Plisetskaya, 103.
96 Marina Harss, “Bolshoi Ballet—Spartacus—New York,” DanceTabs, July 28, 2014, http://dancetabs.com/2014/07/bolshoi-ballet-spartacus-new-york/.
97 Gayevskiy, Divertisment, 212.
98 Joan Acocella, “After the Fall,” The New Yorker, August 22, 2008, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/08/22/after-the-fall.
99 RGALI f. 648, op. 12, yed. khr. 45, l. 8 (invitations to the Cuban dance festivals)
100 RGALI f. 648, op. 12, yed. khr. 45, l. 4 (extension of Alonso’s visa from forty days to four months).
101 RGALI f. 648, op. 12, yed. khr. 166, l. 4 (Plisetskaya’s program booklet article), RGALI f. 648, op. 12, yed. khr. 45, l. 40 (Alonso’s financial details).
102 Feifer, Our Motherland, 53.
103 Ibid., 63.
104 Plisetskaya, I, Maya Plisetskaya, 278.
105 M. I. Chulaki, Ya bïl direktorom Bol’shogo teatra (Moscow: Muzïka, 1994), 125–26.
106 Feifer, Our Motherland, 63.
107 Clive Barnes, “Maya Plisetskaya Leads Bolshoi Stars,” New York Times, September 18, 1974.
108 Gayevskiy, Divertisment, 217.
109 Ibid., 216.
110 RGALI f. 648, op. 12, yed. khr. 289, ll. 2–3.
111 Ibid., l. 5. She expanded her criticisms in print: Ye. Lutskaya, “V protivorechii s partituroy,” Teatral’naya zhizn’, no. 15 (August 1970): 15. Her thoughts would, in due course, be echoed by British and American critics, who deplored Grigorovich’s decision to deracinate the national dances. Alastair Macaulay notes that he seems not to have had the courage to pursue the same policy in his 1984 staging of Raymonda, which has an “Oriental” as a villain. Email communication, September 24, 2015.
112 RGALI f. 648, op. 12, yed. khr. 289, ll. 7–8. Another learned critic, Nataliya Roslavleva, twisted herself in knots trying to praise the ballet. Grigorovich relied on “Tchaikovsky’s manuscript” for guidance, yet he staged the ballet in an “entirely new way,” yet he also “tastefully respected tradition and Ivanov’s choreographic signature” (“Vernoye i spornoye. Novaya postanovka ‘Lebedinogo ozera’ v Bol’shom teatr SSSR,” Muzïkal’naya zhizn’, no. 12 [June 1970]: 9).
113 According to the recollection of Elizabeth Souritz, who attended the general rehearsal. Email communication, May 2, 2015.
114 Interview, May 5, 2015, Moscow, Russia.
115 RGALI f. 648, op. 12, yed. khr. 289, l. 3.
116 Spartacus came up repeatedly in the discussions of Swan Lake. Leningrad,” Lopukhov declared, has surrendered its position to Moscow; they can’t dance Spartacus there; the soloists are no better than the corps de ballet” (ibid., l. 8).
117 Bernard Gwertzman, “Controversial New ‘Swan Lake’ Given by Bolshoi Ballet in Soviet,” New York Times, December 26, 1969.
118 Ibid.
119 Plisetskaya, I, Maya Plisetskaya, 360.
120 Ibid., 361.
121 “Stenogramma zasedaniya khuozhestvennogo soveta. Soobshcheniye Yu. N. Grigorovicha o postanovke baleta ‘Spartak,’” l. 5.
122 RGALI f. 648, op. 12, yed. khr. 214, l. 4.
123 M. Kapustin, “Uznayem li mï Annu? Novïy balet R. Shchedrina,” Pravda, April 5, 1968, 6; Chulaki, Ya bïl direktorom Bol’shogo teatra, 122–23.
124 Viktorina Kriger, Iskusstvo molodosti,” Pravda, June 6, 1972, 3; Hedrick Smith, “Bolshoi Ballet Scored in Pravda,” New York Times, June 8, 1972.
125 Muzey Bakhrushina f. 737, no. 1613, 1. 2; October 22, 1974.
126 Mayya Plisetskaya, “Baletu podvlastno vsyo,” in Rodion Shchedrin. Materialï k tvorcheskoy biografii: Sbornik retsenziy, issledovaniy i materialov, ed. E. S. Vlasova (Moscow: Mosk. Gos. konservatoriya im. P. I. Chaykovskogo, 2007), 43.
127 Natalya Kasatkin and Vladimir Vasilyov choreographed it for Plisetskaya and her onstage partner, Fadeyechev, in 1967.
128 Information and quotations in the previous paragraphs from Muzïka vmesto sumbura: Kompositorï i muzïkantï v strane sovetov 1917–1991. Dokumentï, ed. Leonid Maksimenkov (Moscow: Demokratiya, 2013), 635–37. The letter is signed “the artists of the ballet.”
129 Laurence Senelick, “‘A Woman’s Kingdom’: Minister of Culture Furtseva and Censorship in the Post-Stalinist Russian Theatre,” New Theatre Quarterly 26, no. 1 (February 2010): 19.
130 Ibid., 18.
131 Galina Vishnevskaya, Galina: A Russian Story, trans. Guy Daniels (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), 303.
132 Senelick, “‘A Woman’s Kingdom,’” 16.
133 A. I. Adzhubey, Furtseva: Yekaterina Tret’ya (Moscow: Algoritm, 2012).
134 Senelick, “‘A Woman’s Kingdom,’” 23. Additional information in this paragraph from Adzhubey, Furtseva: Yekaterina Tret’ya, 198–201.
135 The joke is told by Bill McGuire, Tales of an American Culture Vulture (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2003), 26.
136 Plisetskaya, I, Maya Plisetskaya, 362.
137 Ibid.
138 Ibid.
139 Interview, May 5, 2015, Moscow, Russia.
140 Ibid.
141 Ibid.
142 Ibid.
143 Apparat TsK KPSS i kul’tura 1973–1978. Dokumentï, ed. N. G. Tomilina, T. Yu. Konova, Yu. N. Murav’yev, M. Yu. Prozumenshchikov, and S. D. Tavanets, 2 vols. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2011): 2: 131.
144 Plisetskaya, I, Maya Plisetskaya, 291.
145 Maya: Portrait of Maya Plisetskaya.
146 Arlene Croce, “Folies Béjart,” 1971, in Afterimages, 381.
147 Plisetskaya, I, Maya Plisetskaya, 287.
148 Ibid., 340.
149 Muzey Bakhrushina f. 737, no. 1297, 1. 2; in reference to a January 24, 1977, performance of Ivan the Terrible in Leningrad. According to the complaint, sent to Ulanova from an offended viewer, Soviet ballet had lost its restraint, as evidenced by the love scene between Ivan and Anastasia, which made viewers uncomfortable. Ivan’s suffering after Anastasia’s death, on the other hand, showed Grigorovich at his best.
150 Yuri Grigorovich and Sania Davlekamova, The Authorized Bolshoi Ballet Book of The Golden Age (Neptune City, NJ: T.F.H. Publishers, 1989); and Sergey Sapozhnikov, “Snova zvuchit muzïka Shostakovicha,” Sovetskiy balet, no. 1 (January–February 1983): 5–7.
151 Martin Bernheimer, “Shostakovich Balle
t: Bolshoi Opens with ‘The Golden Age,’” Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1987.
152 Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
153 RGALI f. 648, op. 19, yed. khr. 171, l. 37. The Bolshoi Theater collected and archived its correspondence with viewers; this file includes letters about Lady with the Lapdog as well as Grigorovich’s ballets. The author of the complaint against Plisetskaya boasts his longtime membership in the Communist Party.
154 Alastair Macaulay, “Grand Concerns,” The New Yorker, April 11, 1988, 108.
155 Ibid. Arlene Croce describes the difference between meaningful and meaningless dancing in this sense in “Ballets Without Choreography,” 319–31.
156 The expression comes from Stravinsky. See Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Memories and Commentaries (London: Faber and Faber, 2002), 72.
157 Feifer, Our Motherland, 71.
158 Anna Kisselgoff, “Review/Dance; Seagull’ and Finale End U.S.–Soviet Festival,” New York Times, April 4, 1988.
159 On Plisetskaya as the world’s prima ballerina, see Anna Kisselgoff, “Success Is What Sustains Her,” New York Times, March 22, 1977.
160 V. Kukharskiy, “Vechno molodoy,” Pravda, May 26, 1976, 3. The page, dedicated in full to the Bolshoi Theater, includes a tribute by Tikhon Khrennikov, “Zdes’ tsarit muzïka” (Here music reigns). The tsars did not preside over the theater during the imperial period, composers did, and after the revolution, the Bolshoi found its proper role as “a true center for the building of multinational socialist musical culture.” Yu. Kartashov, a lathe operator at the Kommunar plant, provides the worker-peasant perspective on the jubilee in an article called “Sodruzhestvo” (Concord).
161 S. Davlekamova, “Segodnya nado rabotat’!,” Sovetskaya kul’tura, May 21, 1987; STD.
162 Judith Mackrell, Your Biggest Bolshoi Ballet Moments—Open Thread,” The Guardian, July 29, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/jul/29/bolshoi-ballet-moments.
163 Anna Kisselgoff, “For the Bolshoi Ballet Director, Politics Looms as Large as Art,” New York Times, July 11, 1990. Grigorovich hinted that his time was almost up at the Bolshoi, telling Kisselgoff that he was “trying to get an operetta theater for so-called experimental work,” while also running “a choreographic workshop in an institute called the Dance Academy.” These comments were parroted in the Soviet press; Grigorovich disavowed them. See Yu. Grigorovich, “Pis’mo v rekatskiyu. Dom-to obshchiy!,” Izvestiya, October 20, 1990; STD.
164 Geyorgiy Melikyants, Razval Bol’shogo teatra—prestupleniye pered russkoy kul’turoy,” Izvestiya, March 14, 1995, 23.
165 Tat’yana Kuznetsova, “Ochen’ nepriyatnïy tsar,’” Kommersant, October 11, 2012, 5.
166 Kuznetsova, Khroniki Bol’shogo baleta, 9–44 (“Epokha Yuriya Grigorovicha 1964–1995”).
EPILOGUE
1 Yuliya Bedyorova, Zerkalo parada,” Moskovskiye novosti, October 31, 2011, http://www.mn.ru/culture/20111031/306530925.html. This paragraph and the following on the restoration of the Bolshoi Theater are adapted from Simon Morrison, The Bolshoi’s Latest Act,” NYRblog, November 12, 2011, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/nov/12/the-bolshois-latest-act/.
2 Alastair Macaulay, “A Transformed Theater in a Transformed Land,” New York Times, April 7, 2014.
3 Anna Gordeyeva, “‘Gospod’ Bog sam znayet, shto delat’ s Bol’shim teatrom’: Interv’yu vedushchey balerinï Bol’shogo teatra Svetlanï Zakharovoy,” gazeta.ru, August 1, 2014, http://www.gazeta.ru/culture/2014/08/01/a 6154185.shtml.
4 Arlene Croce, “Hard Work,” 1975, in Afterimages (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 141.
5 Joan Acocella, “Dance with Me,” The New Yorker, June 27, 2011, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/06/27/dance-with-me.
6 Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet (New York: Random House, 2010), 547–49.
7 Wendy Lesser, “Ratmansky and Shostakovich,” The Threepenny Review, no. 119 (Fall 2009), http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/lesser_f09.html.
8 Valerie Lawson, “The Bolshoi Looks on the Bright Side of Life,” dance lines.com.au, June 10, 2013, http://dancelines.com.au/bolshoi-bright-side-life/.
9 Sarah Crompton, “Flames of Paris, Bolshoi Ballet, Review,” The Telegraph, August 16, 2013.
10 Putin declared 2016 “Prokofiev year,” which freed up funds to mark the composer’s 125th birthday: http://ria.ru/culture/20151209/1339037709.html.
INDEX
The page numbers in this index relate to the printed version of this book; they do not match the pages of your ebook. You can use your ebook reader’s search tool to find a specific word or passage.
Note: Page numbers after 428 refer to notes.
Ablesimov, Alexander, 18
Abramov, Roman, xix Abramova, Anastasia, 204
Acis and Galatea, 20
Acocella, Joan, 369
Adam, Adolphe, 88, 447
Adlerberg, Count Alexander, 122, 164
Afanasiev, Alexander, Poeticheskiye vozzreniya slavyan na prirodu, 168
Aida, 210, 220
Akimov, Boris, 378, 469
Aksakov, Sergey, 84, 88
Aksenova, Natalie, 254–55
Albéniz, Isaac, 355
Alexander I, Tsar, 48, 51, 59, 63, 67
Alexander II, Tsar, 122, 127, 177, 189
assassination of, 130
and ballet, 101, 102, 125, 142, 171, 173
coronation of, 120, 123, 124–25, 191
as Prince Alexander, 101, 102
Alexander III, Tsar, 130–32, 133, 138, 173, 182, 189, 443, 445
Alexandra, Empress, xix, 189–90
Alexei, Prince, Hemophilia of, 189–90
All-Russian Congress of Soviets, 205, 212, 230, 258
Alonso, Alberto, 371
Alonso, Alicia, 371–72
American Ballet Theater, 417
Amkino Corporation, 275
Ananiashvili, Nina, 469
Anderson, Hans Christian, The Little Mermaid, 168
Andreyanova, Elena, 105–9
Andropov, Yuriy, 349
Angara, 403
Anisimov, Alexander, 468
Anna Karenina, 381–85, 401, 402
Appian of Alexandria, The Civil Wars, 356
Arbatov, Ilya, 302
Arensky, Anton, 241
Arkanov, Boris, 279
Armenian Philharmonic, 305
Arnold, Mikhaíl, 144
Arshinina, Avdotya, 109–11, 112, 439–40
Asafyev, Boris, 233, 290, 301, 354, 356
Ashton, Frederick, xxvi Atovmyan, Levon, 282–83, 301, 322
Auber, Daniel, 85
Auber, Lavrentiy, 149–50, 443
Bach Prelude, 385
Bad Ems, Germany, spa in, 90–91
Bakhrushin, Yuriy, 48, 139
Balanchine, George, xxvi, 345, 377, 417
The Prodigal Son, 370
“Water Nymph Ballet,” 357
ballet:
authorship, 375
ballet d’action, 22
claques, xxvii, 96, 101, 106, 108
classicism, 47, 50, 60, 234, 261, 299–300, 375, 379–80
corps de ballet, 164, 214
coryphées (character dancers), 48, 214, 418
creative spirits of ballerinas in, 182, 197–98, 239–40
divertissements, 62
drambalet, 236, 261–62, 269, 290, 297, 298, 300, 317, 318, 321, 325, 350, 360, 377, 380
en pointe, 82, 86, 435, 440
épaulement, 299–300
evolution of, 185, 197, 198–99, 234–35, 261, 417
expressionist, 325–26
folk dances in, 50, 59–60, 61–62, 214, 233, 235, 253, 420
formalism in, 274, 296, 304, 401
fouetté turns in, 184–85, 186
government oversight of, 43, 223, 253, 261, 328–29
mickey-mousing” in, 274<
br />
notation, 183, 195, 199
original ideal sought in, 198, 223, 260
photography as tool in, 199
physical characteristics of dancers, 241, 262–63, 264, 351
plot-free dance, xxvii popularity of, 118, 261
resurrecting the past of, 417–21
reviewers of, 88, 196–97, 243
Romantic, 82, 105, 375, 378, 379, 408
Russian, see Russian ballet storytelling and mime in, xxvii, 236, 261–62, 376
see also specific ballets
ballet-féerie India, 194
Ballet Nacional de Cuba, 371
Ballets Russes, 193, 199, 208, 216, 240, 241, 297
Balmont, Konstantin, 207
Balzac, Honoré de, 398
Bantïshev, Alexander, 106
Barclay de Tolly, Prince Michael Andreas, 51
Bartók, Béla, The Miraculous Mandarin, 325–26
Baryshnikov, Mikhaíl, xxvi, 402
Battle for the Commune, The, 124
Battle of Borodino, 50, 52
Battle of Stalingrad, 309
Bayard, Jean-François, 106
Bazhov, Pavel, 322
BBC, 401
Beauty and the Beast (Disney), 364
Bedyorova, Yuliya, 411
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 274
Eroica Symphony, 231
Begak, Dmitri, 363
Begichev, Vladimir, 167–68, 443
Béjart, Maurice, 333, 387, 396–97
Belinsky, Vissarion, 88
Bellini, Vincenzo, 152, 414
I Puritani, 123–25
Bellucci, Monica, 411
Benda, Georg, 40
Benois, Alexandre, 199
Benoist, François, 113
Berg, Alban, 266
Beria, Lavrentiy, 294
Bernhardt, Sarah, 237
Bessmertnova, Natalya, 398, 407–8
Bessone, Emma, 240
Betskoy, Ivan, 23, 24–25, 28–29, 35, 44
Bias, Fanny, 82
Bismarck, Prince Otto von, 124
Bizet, Georges, Carmen, 155, 371, 372
Black Shawl, The, 67
Blasis, Carlo, 142–43, 164
Blyum, Vladimir, 251–52
Bogdanov, Alexei, 134–35, 193, 237, 328, 443
Bogdanov, Konstantin, 89
Bolero, 396–97
Bolsheviks:
and the arts, 242, 243
Bolshoi pillaged by, xiii, 121, 205–6
conflicts in era of, xviii, 201, 206
Bolshoi Confidential Page 51