The Universe of Pirouettes
By Marina Kochetova
“Ballet is a serious art,
in which not only jumps should prevail,
but also plasticity and beauty.”
(Marius Petipa)
Ballet is always beautiful! The elegance of forms, the perfection of lines, the grace of poses—there are no other criteria. Ballet is an entire universe! It is no accident that the endless diversity of dance art is crowned precisely by ballet.
Ballet is a courtly, elite art, for the King himself danced (the first “dancing King” was the French Louis IX in the 13th century). The conventionality of ballet gestures was, for him, the conventionality of an architectural structure. The body appeared as a “temple of the soul.” Like a military parade, ballet was a micro-model of the state. Time passed. Yet ballet remained strictly metropolitan in terms of geography, elite in terms of audience, and official in terms of status—an art of power’s self-presentation. Refined and difficult to perceive, it turned into a kind of “toy” for intellectuals.
The classical ballet legacy is far from unambiguous and far from homogeneous. It was shaped over centuries, losing some things and gaining others. The features of each historical period enriched it with new discoveries, developed choreographic thinking and the education system. The ballet school of the 19th century differed greatly from that of today. Both the dancers’ “physics” and the aesthetics of dance changed; the repertoire changed, as did the “chemistry” between performer and audience. Dance is an art whose visual image cannot be reproduced, because it exists only at the moment of performance. Ballet exists in real time, here and now, because the grammar of the ballet language possesses neither future nor past tenses, nor narration in the third person. This is precisely what immerses the viewer in a kingdom of action.
My attitude toward ballet is reverent. I can watch it endlessly. Such a need will never be fully satisfied. I always experience fresh delight—甚至 ecstasy—when it is a flawlessly performed ballet by a professional choreographer. With every new encounter, I understand that my personal journey into its magical world, into the universe of arabesques and pirouettes, becomes deeper, more wondrous, more mysterious.
Since childhood, I had a dream to plunge into the world of real ballet, not its imitation—exactly to plunge in, not merely to touch this enigmatic realm. If a person has a dream, it means they also have all the necessary inner resources to fulfill it. When the time comes to follow what you truly love in this life, you must not say “No.” And the time came for my dream to come true. In 2011, during the Mariinsky Ballet’s tour in Canada, I was lucky not only to get to know it more closely, but gradually to become a small part of it. There are people and events that influence us so deeply that they remain in our lives and memory forever. That is what happened to me.
St. Petersburg ballet is more than three hundred years old. The so-called Mariinsky Ballet (the ballet of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg) can, by its very name alone, stir admirers of high choreography in every corner of the globe. For many decades, this legendary troupe and its performances have been linked to the finest traditions of Russian ballet—carefully preserved and developed by many generations of dance masters. Mariinsky dancers can do anything! And not only the soloists and coryphées! And not only stars of worldwide stature! The troupe as a whole is capable of creating dance dramas, balancing at the limit of physical speed and the intensity of passions, and playing with geometric lines that become “human” through the performers’ mastery. The individuality of a ballet artist depends on many qualities: appearance, the character of plasticity (the purity of lines, for example), and natural temperament. In North America, unfortunately, the importance of natural physical attributes in selecting promising dancers is not properly appreciated. And appearance in ballet is no less significant than, say, the stiffness of ligaments or the curve of the foot. Undoubtedly, bodily proportions affect the beauty of poses, the specificity of contour… Physical attributes define one’s plastic timbre. In the best Canadian companies, alas, even leading soloists have leg and body lines far from ideal. They also уступают their Russian colleagues in torso mobility, in the elegance of arm and leg positions… In my view, their flexibility and technique are limited, their lines lack polish and refinement. Therefore, what is called ballet in Canada is, rather, a spectacular theatrical show with elements of ballet—nothing more.
Even in everyday life, ordinary people constantly change the position of their bodies in space. In ballet, however, movement is the main thing: it is movement and the beauty of lines that attract viewers, not the plot—though the plot can strengthen the poetics of dance by giving rise to emotion. To celebrate the astonishing breadth and variety of connections with the surrounding world, ballet masters and choreographers immerse ballet in a certain cultural context, creating a festival of sensations. The laws of ballet are dictated by music, which in its own way распоряжается stage time and space. In my personal perception, even a good drama loses to ballet because it lacks movement and offers feelings in a single plane, depriving characters—especially lyrical ones—of the musical, multi-meaning expressiveness prescribed by the poetic text of the role. My opinion is shaped by a unique viewing experience: repeatedly watching the greatest ballet masterpieces performed by the best dancers in the world. For ten years, until the pandemic, I regularly accompanied the Mariinsky Theatre’s ballet troupe on tours in the USA and Canada (in Washington alone I was with them ten times), not to mention my repeated visits to Russia with the right to attend not only performances, but also rehearsals and classes of Mariinsky artists. To see the same performance in the rehearsal hall and on stage, with all casts, from the wings or from a good seat in the stalls—this is an invaluable, incomparable gift of fate for a ballet lover, a reward for many years of devotion to ballet.
Despite its “doll-like” appearance, ballet is a tough art. Hence the myths that dancers are tough people—soulless “narcissists” and brainless egoists: airy and noble on stage, but crude swearers beyond it. I dare assure you that this is not so. There are, of course, exceptions. However, the overwhelming majority of ballet people are refined— in the best sense of the word. They are very musical (by the way, required subjects in elite choreographic schools have always been and always will be art history, solfeggio, and piano). They are very tactful, delicate, sensitive, and vulnerable. At the same time, they are extraordinarily hardworking and strong—physically and emotionally. They know how to be friends and highly value attention and support…
Dietitians, cosmetologists, and fitness specialists speak and write a lot about love of life and respect for the body. But the ability to maintain impeccable control over one’s body is characteristic only of ballet dancers. In ballet, the body is an instrument; in ballet, the body is the “face.” Every top-class dancer—and there are dozens in the Mariinsky troupe—demonstrates perfect mastery of the body, changing flight trajectories in the air, adorning jumps with sparkling twists and beats. Ballerinas string shimmering passages of partnered movement and every kind of turn onto an invisible yet truly existing thread that binds them to the potential auditorium… Watching this, I feel such bliss each time that the energetic impulse emanating from these seemingly unearthly beings charges me with positivity for many months ahead.
Attending Mariinsky Ballet classes—and I had such an opportunity dozens of times—I never stopped marveling and admiring what unfolded before my eyes: seemingly a banal class, merely an hour-long technical warm-up at the start of the workday, everyday routine. Yet it is in class that poses and “living” arms with wrists completing the motion are honed… You can only wonder what memory is needed to hold in one’s head complex, multi-stage combinations! What a pleasure to watch, from an arm’s length away, the swift tours, the instantaneous takeoffs with a suspension on outstretched arms! Contemplating this, I forget everything in the world, even that before me are “stars.”
Once again I want to note that stage stars do not “act like stars” in ordinary life; leaving their emotions on stage, beyond it they are modest and gallant. I am deeply convinced that every ballet artist must be a good person, otherwise the audience will sooner or later feel the falseness. The significance of an artist’s творчество, as we know, is determined not only by the number of roles danced and performances given, but also by the depth and originality of the images created—images that must be passed through oneself again and again in the process of work. And that takes a colossal amount of physical and emotional strength from every dancer and from all participants in the performance as a whole. In some ways consciously, in some ways intuitively absorbing rhythms and movements, ballet art keeps within itself a hidden knowledge encoded in choreographic signs, so that, merging with music, it can gift the viewer richness of feeling and a deeper understanding of life.
Not everyone can become a connoisseur of ballet, because not everyone understands ballet. Not everyone sees meaning in it. But why not simply enjoy beauty, without obsessing over meaning?! Do not fear the whirl of spontaneous sensations that arises in the soul upon meeting the beautiful! My meeting with Ballet belongs to that unpredictable category that people call a gift of fate.