From Saratov, Russia to San Francisco, California, former Kirov Ballet soloist Nikolai Kabaniaev shares his philosophies about the art of ballet and teaching classical ballet in America. The Russian original of this interview can be found here.
How did you get started in ballet?
My mother worked in the Makeup, Hair and Wig Department of the Chernishevsky Saratov Theatre of Opera and Ballet, and from the age of two I spent time backstage in the theatre. My mom did the makeup and hair for all of the ballets and operas in the theatre repertoire, spending entire days in the theatre. The situation in our family wasn’t simple: my father died one month before I was born and all of my mother’s relatives were unable to help her. Since there were no babysitters then, my mother had to take me with her to work. The theatre gave us a room in the basement of the theatre dormitories. As I recall it now, it was a small, dark room with a small window under the ceiling and a dirt floor. Later they transferred us to the first floor where musicians, opera singers and ballerinas lived. I remember a long hallway, with about 50 rooms off of it and people spilled out from each door: someone playing the harp, someone rehearsing an aria. The residents met in the kitchen and spoke about the theatre, about performances, about the roles and vicissitudes of backstage. Everyone acted as if they were characters from a film or performance. This “theatricality” was present constantly, and backstage life intertwined into daily life. This was the world of the theatre which for me became real life. When I went out onto the street, everything was different: instead of beautiful sets, grey buildings, instead of sparkling costumes and beautiful wigs, monotone tired faces weary of everyday life and problems. Lines, crowds on public transportation, lack of food and goods… but the theatre, it was a completely different world.
The first time I saw ballet was from the wings. Now I know it was the finale from “Swan Lake” but at the time the grandiose music from Tchaikovsky’s original score and the dramatic rencontre on stage left me speechless. The Prince is fighting with Rothbart and rips off his wing. 
My mother helped take off the hairpieces from the dancing “swans” exiting the stage, and I stood entranced and shocked by what I had seen. When the performance ended and my mom led me by the hand across the stage toward the theatre exit, I looked at the large black bundle of fabric laying at the end of the stage and I thought that Rothbart was laying there, rolled up and dead. Naturally, it wasn’t Rothbart but the backdrop which they let down and roll up after the performance and it lies in the corner. I also remember the Prince in his white costume who embodied the dream of beauty and male strength. It was like a dream. It seems to me that this is when my relationship and love for art was born.
Art for me is when reality becomes a dream, and a dream becomes reality.
Did you ask your mom if you could take ballet classes?
No, it happened in another way. When I was about age 7, my mother was invited to become the head of the Hair Department in the Karl Marx Saratov Dramatic Theatre.
They gave my mother a separate two-room apartment and we moved out of the theatre dormitories, leaving behind theatrical bohemia.
The backstage ballet life was replaced by dramatic backstage life. I still spent a lot of time at the theatre, but now at the dramatic theatre. I loved to watch not just the performances but the rehearsals, to watch the process of creating scenes and the search for new ways to read old plays, to listen to the conversations of actors, stage managers, costumiers, make-up artists and all of the other residents of this special world. I breathed in the theatre’s atmosphere and subconsciously –yet with the experience of a young “spy”– followed the magic of dramatic reincarnation. A man is sitting in a chair and someone is putting make-up on his face (at that time, the make-up was oil based, with a special smell, and I still recall that scent), they put on a wig, powder, and the entire time some commonplace conversation is taking place. 
Gradually, under the effects of the make-up and wig, the man’s face, image and the tone of his voice change and he becomes someone else, although the discussion remains the same. For me, a 7 year-old boy, what happened backstage was no less impressive than what happened on stage. It intrigued me. I felt best when I was in the theatre…
But I will return to your question. I remember when I’d just turned age 10, I was walking down the street with my mother and we ran into a ballerina we knew, who at one point had worked with my mother in the opera theatre and at the end of her dancing career became a pedagogue in a local ballet school. “Will you send your son to us in the Choreographic School? The selection of students was completed a few months ago but we don’t have enough boys.” My mother looked at me and asked, “Do you want to?” The image of the fairytale Prince in the fight with the Evil Genius [Rothbart] floated through my memory, and I said “I want to.” And although the selection was completed and the school was closed for summer break, they took me there to the office of the artistic director to be screened. I undressed to my shorts and they turned me out, lifted my legs and bent me in all directions.
I remember they said, “Yes he doesn’t have the right physical characteristics.” But, since they knew my mother and remembered her from the Opera House, and most likely wanted to help her knowing her difficult situation, they told her “We’ll take him.”
That was exactly 51 years ago and there hasn’t been a single moment in my life that I have regretted it. I saw that most of the boys in my class had physical traits that were much better than mine. I couldn’t yet imagine what path I needed to take in order to become a professional ballet dancer. Subconsciously I felt just one thing – I’m going to be in this fairytale world and I want to be a prince embodying that dream, beauty and strength.
One year later I was the best student in the class and started to receive 5 points (grade A) in classical ballet lessons.
As students from the Choreographic School of the Saratov Theatre of Opera and Ballet, where my mother had worked previously and where I first saw ballet and heard the orchestra reverberating, we were involved in their performances from our first days. We performed in “The Nutcracker,” “La Fille Mal Gardee” and “Ovod” a modern production where I was given the role of the main hero in his childhood. These were my first steps toward my profession and theatrical life which for me had always been beloved and familiar.
I continued to visit my mother in the Drama Theatre and watch performances. For me a live performance — not a movie, but when a person goes out on stage and transforms, the moment when he crosses that line, from the wings to the stage, and the spectacle begins – that is a fantasy, another world. The person crosses this border between reality and fantasy, between normal life and a dream. Since there were few boys at the Saratova Choreographic School, and since all the boys from the older class were dismissed due to their lack of ability, at around age 14 I became the top student in the school, and began to perform pas de deux with the older dancers. During these years, I became aware that I could no longer live without ballet, and that I was going to be in this world my entire life.
You said that during your audition to ballet school you didn’t have enough flexibility and turnout. Don’t you need those traits to become a professional ballet dancer?
They are necessary and I worked on them persistently.
My mother was in the theatre until late at night. At home we had a lot of records from a great number of operas since my mother had loved opera music since the time she had worked in the Opera house. I came home after my classes at the ballet school, turned on my favorite overture from “Traviata”, warmed up and started to stretch to increase my capabilities. Yes, I did it through pain, but I did it myself. Nobody forced me to do it. Because I had a goal. There were no computers, no internet, no Youtube and instagram then. We didn’t have CDs, there weren’t even video cassettes and tape recorders. Living in Saratov, we could only see performances from the Bolshoi or Kirov theaters on television. And that was quite rare. At that time, a magazine called “Ogonyok” was published which included articles and photographs from stars of the Soviet ballet – Plisetskaya, Ulanova, Vasiliev, Liepa and others. I tore all of them out and put them in an album. That album was very valuable to me.
While studying ballet, I gradually began to understand what makes a movement beautiful. Yes – expression, yes, artistry, yes – musicality. But since the art of ballet is visual, the lines of the legs, the possibilities that flexibility and extension give, the length of proportion, the lightness of jumps and turns, generally speaking physical characteristics – all of this is absolutely necessary to create the illusion and fantasy which we call “Classical Ballet.” When I saw dancers with beautifully pointed feet, great flexibility, and a flexible back, I understood that in order to achieve a high level, I had to improve my capabilities.
One night, stretching at home after a long day of classes at school, I pushed too hard and something in my thigh cracked. I felt an acute pain and for two days I could not walk. I didn’t tell my mother or go to the doctor, I just lay in bed – it was a good thing my mom was busy in the theatre the whole day. For several months afterwards, I practiced ballet with a shooting pain in my hip. Then gradually everything got better, but my extension and flexibility were much better. Later when I was already living and dancing in America, I went to the doctor due to my back, and the doctor looked at the X-ray with surprise and asked, “Did you break your hip?” I looked at the X-ray and saw the line of the healed fracture.
Art was always my life. From my childhood I drew well, and once I attended the Choreographic School, I started to study the piano which was required in the program, but for me it became an indelible part of my existence. I even composed music and several times accompanied ballet class. At the School my drawing teacher told me, “Kolya, what are you doing here, go to Art School!” my music teacher said to me, “Kolya, what are you doing here, go to the Conservatory!” But ballet was the most important to me because it demanded that I put in great effort. I don’t recall who said, “In order to achieve a goal, you need great ideals and great obstacles.”
Closer to graduation from the school, the mother of my classmate arranged an exam for me at the Saratov Conservatory, and they accepted me. But naturally I didn’t go. I understood that I could play the piano and continue to practice music while I was a dancer. But I could not be a professional ballet dancer if I went to the Conservatory. Those three muses – dance, painting, and music – have accompanied me through my entire life.
Was this time at the ballet school difficult?
For me “difficult/not difficult” did not exist. I didn’t know what fatigue was, and I’m not exaggerating. The concept just never came into my head that I was tired. I don’t recall now what I ate or what I did at the time. I only remember the ballet studio and when I came home and my mother was at work, how I stretched and could play the piano or draw until 11 p.m.
At school we had a lot of classes aside from classical (ballet technique): character, duet, historical folkdance, solo and group rehearsals and concerts. Among the boys, usually around the age of 10 to 14 or 15 it’s rare that they seriously want to study ballet. Their parents sent them to ballet school usually without asking them. The first years of study based on the school programme can be uninspiring and boring. The boys want to run and jump and compete, and here you’re standing at the ballet barre and moving your legs at a very slow tempo. It’s hard to do something you don’t like to do. Later, after age 14, when your body grows and there are more strengthening exercises, large jumps, turns, the mastery of lifts begins, and you start duet dance with the girls, very often there is a change and the desire to dance develops. But for me everything was always connected with art and performances and the routine side of constant training for me never tired me out physically or morally. I was living on another planet, I was living another life.
In the later years as a grade “A” student, they gave me a greater stipend of about 30 rubles per month. I spent this money on printed musical (ballet) scores. Around the corner from the ballet school there was a music store called “Music”. As soon as I received the stipend, I ran there. I amassed a large collection. I bought musical scores from the ballets “Giselle”, “Swan Lake”, “The Sleeping Beauty”, “The Legend of Love”, “Spartacus” and many others. For me this was the highest level of indulgence. Coming home, I opened the piano and completely submerged myself in the music, in art. Normal life completely did not interest me. I learned how to sight read very well (when you look at the music and play it immediately). Naturally I always received an “A” in music. There was an incident when my History teacher attended my music exam. I was playing Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique and Khachaturian’s main adagio from the ballet “Spartacus”. At the end, she stood up and said, “Kolya, you played so well that I’m going to give you an ‘A’ in History!”
The next day in History class, she told everyone: “I was at the music exam and Kolya played so well that I promised him an A in history. But I know that he also knows History at a grade of ‘A’”. Incidentally, they gave me an A+ in Music, the first time in the history of the school.
Who was your pedagogue in Saratov?
I graduated under Gennady Albert, who was a principal dancer at the Saratov Theatre of Opera and Ballet at the time. He had graduated from the Vaganova Academy in the class of Pushkin in 1968, in the same class as Baryshnikov.
Albert worked with me a great deal and taught me a lot, both in terms of the technical aspect of ballet study, and in understanding what the ballet profession is and what pedagogy is. He was very demanding and strict. He was overly disciplined himself and forced us to approach each lesson and each correction just as seriously and with just as much respect. I will give you one example:
I was 16 years old. Our ballet class started at 8 a.m. and took place in the large studio in the theatre. It was winter, and early in the morning it was still dark and very cold. I woke up a bit later than usual, the demanding schedule and rehearsals were taking their toll. I raced out from my house through the snow drifts in order not to be late for class. I ran to the theatre, arriving 5 minutes prior to the start of class. I quickly changed clothes and ran up the stairs to the top floor where the studio was. I see that Albert is climbing the stars on the last floor of the staircase. I try to catch up to him but, seeing me, he speeds up his step and enters the studio first. The door slams in my face. I will remember this lesson forever. Missing class for me was a tragedy. And although I was the top student in my class, even in the entire school, he taught me a valuable lesson: it’s not important who you are, in our profession you have to have self discipline and a deep respect for the profession itself, and to each day that you devote to it. Yes, as a pedagogue he was strict, but I always felt his care and his aspiration to teach me everything he knew. He was a very introspective and highly educated man, he graduated from the Faculty of Theatre Studies and wrote a book “Alexander Pushkin. The School of Classical Dance.” Sometimes during class he would share his thoughts about pedagogy and the stories of his training in Pushkin’s class in Leningrad. Listening to him, I dreamt of leaving Saratov and going to study in Moscow or Leningrad.
After graduating, I was invited to work in the Saratov Theatre where my mother had worked previously, but fate had a different plan. As the best graduate of the school, I was invited to attend the Class of Perfection at the Vaganova Academy in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). I auditioned and they accepted me. My dream had come true.
Of course, when I entered the magical building on Rossi Street with the long hallways and walls filled with hanging pictures and photos of practically the entire history of Russian ballet, I felt like I had entered heaven.
My pedagogue was Konstantin Vasilievich Shatilov. He had graduated from the Vaganova Academy in the class of Shavrov in 1946 and became a principal dancer with the Mariinsky, at that time called the Kirov Theatre. He was about 58 or 59 years old, slightly younger than I am now. He always taught class in nice shoes, a suit and tie. He would remove his jacket and tie, hang them on the chair, loosen his shirt collar, glance at us with his youthfully mischievous eyes, give a compliment to the pianist and start the lesson. He was a very classy man – noble, handsome. A man with an aristocratic style and manner although by descent he came from a simple family. I remember he always looked as if he’d stepped off of the pages of a men’s fashion magazine. Conservative, but elegant. I never saw him in tennis shoes or jeans. He was always freshly shaven, with his hair combed. He also taught beautifully and stylishly.
He imparted to me and gave me what I still consider to be the unique Leningrad-Petersburg ballet training and style of performing, a style that is easily recognizable and at the same time elusive. A style that combines the finesse of the refined manner of the Imperial Theatre with a fresh, revolutionary, constantly developing approach to teaching that is imbedded in the Vaganova method. Something bygone and yet timeless. Shatilov was the embodiment of this style. He was the Prince in “Sleeping Beauty”, “Swan Lake”, and “Cinderella” in his older age and in the modern world. But a prince is a prince.
Our class of perfection comprised students from various countries and republics. I became the best student. I was immediately sent to rehearse and dance with a student from Natalia Dudinskaya’s graduating class, Margarita Kulik. We danced the main roles in “Nutcracker”, “Grand Pas Classique” and Sergeev’s “Cinderella” together. I was happy to work and rehearse with Natalia Mikhailovna Dudinskaya and Konstantin Mikhailovich Sergeev, legends of ballet, whose photographs I had seen not long ago in the textbooks on the History of Ballet while studying in Saratov.
How were you invited to join the Kirov Ballet?
In 1982, after completing my training in the Class of Perfection, there was an audition at the Kirov Theatre upon invitation for selected graduates. I was on the list of the recommended students. The audition took place in a studio at the Vaganova Academy. There was a large committee including the administration and rehearsal coaches from the Kirov troupe along with the Academy’s administration. A considerably large number of graduates were looked at as I recall, since in addition to several classes of girls there were three classes of boys graduating. In addition to Shatilov’s class, Kaplan and Zimin also had groups of boys graduating. I don’t remember exactly, but it seems that there were about 30 people auditioning. After the audition and a long discussion, the committee invited us to Sergeev’s office. Of course I didn’t want to go back to Saratov. And of course everyone who had auditioned dreamed of entering the Kirov. I remember how we all stood in Sergeev’s office awaiting the verdict. I had the sensation that I was standing on a precipice: either I will fly or I will fall. After a short speech, Sergeev started to list the names of those invited to the theatre into the main troupe. At first he listed the girls, they accepted 5 or 6, I don’t recall exactly. Then Sergeev said that they would accept 3 boys into the main troupe. He listed my name last. I cannot describe my feelings when this happened, but I can say that it was one of the happiest moments of my life.
So I joined the theatre. As someone from another city, they gave me a room in the theatre dormitories. I rehearsed with Nikolai Lazarevich Morozov. He had graduated from the Academy in 1944 in the class of Pisarev and before he became a rehearsal coach at the Kirov, he had performed at the Maly Theatre (now known as the Mikhailovsky).
Morozov was a unique pedagogue and had an approach that was specific only to him for developing and refining movements. He was to some extent an innovator from the point of view of ballet pedagogy. We prepared all of my roles and performances together.
During the first year of my work in the Kirov, I had to contend with the reality of Soviet life. The ballet company was preparing for yet another tour abroad and again the dancers who were newcomers were called one-by-one to a meeting in the office of the ballet director’s office. I was rehearsing the Peasant Pas de Deux from “Giselle” and they “fished me out” of rehearsals. I remember I entered the room wet and still flushed from working. Maybe they had told me about the purpose of the meeting, but at that time I was only interested in what I was doing in the ballet studio. Everything else was beyond the limits of my attention.
Shreiber was the ballet director. Entering his office, I was surprised by the large number of people sitting there. Some of them I knew – these were the Komsomol and Professional union leaders, people of that type. There were also people sitting whom I had never before seen in the theatre. They asked me to walk into the middle of the room and the first question was “Have you read Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev’s latest report?” I honestly answered “No.” The faces of everyone changed as if an explosion had occurred in the center of the room. They could not believe that someone could blurt that out. They all got angry and began to hiss at me like snakes: “How can you say that? You’re a young ballet dancer. You have to represent the face of the Soviet people when the theatre travels abroad…” and so on.
When I told other young dancers who had also had their “meetings”, they said to me with bewilderment, “Kolka, are you an idiot? Nobody read it. You just have to say that you read it. They haven’t read it themselves and don’t ask details about what it says.” Of course, this report, in the fully rolled-up newspaper “Pravda”, was hung on the wall where the rehearsal schedule was and covered the entire wall. And naturally nobody ever read it except Brezhnev himself. Sometime later after that meeting, someone approached me and told me that I should read it in full and learn this report for the next morning. One of those who approached me was the stage director at the time who handled the performances. I won’t name him, but there were rumors that he worked for the KGB. He looked me closely in the eye and hissed, “Be careful boy. We’ve had others like you.”
After that I was not taken on foreign tours for 6 years. I understood that, for these people, foreign tours were much more important than art and work in the studio. Unfortunately this existed in the theatre atmosphere of that time.
Of course it devastated me. But I was tenacious. For me the most important thing was to dance. When part of the company went on tour, the other performances continued at home, and I got to dance more. I liked that.
How did life change when you shifted from the Academy to work in the theatre?
In both the Saratov and Leningrad schools, I was a top student and the first in my class. Coming to the theatre, I encountered this political bureaucratic “wall” and I had to learn how to behave in that atmosphere. I was stubborn and naïve, it seemed to me that the theatre should have been a continuation of my childhood dream and everything there should have been founded on the love for art in first place. My entire life until then, all of my former pedagogues in school had fostered my love for the profession, hard work and discipline. Recalling this time in the theatre, Mayakovsky’s words come to mind: “The love boat was founded on daily life.”
It helped that I’d always followed my personal credo, which was not to love yourself in art, but to love the art in yourself. No matter what happened, I will always recall my years at the Kirov with warmth and gratitude. It is a magical place through which so many people have passed, which has experienced and undergone so much, and which will still undergo a lot in the future. Under all of these layers of intrigue, tours and the daily routine, a world of high art and fairytale beauty has always lived and will always live, a world that unites the souls of true artists.
At the end of the 1980s, perestroika began, the borders opened, and the chance to go abroad arose. At that time, I was recovering after an operation for a torn cruciate ligament in my knee, and I had 1 year to rehabilitate. By invitation, I moved to San Francisco and continued to rehabilitate in a local hospital. My knee healed, but I understood that it would never again withstand my prior workloads. I was 26 years old. I faced the question whether to return to the Kirov or remain in America.
I chose to make a change.
You grew up in the Soviet Union, but have been teaching in the USA for more than 30 years, so you know “both sides of the coin” so to speak. What is the difference between Petersburg and the USA concerning how ballet is taught?
They are two different planets. Two different mentalities. Two different views on what art is as a whole and what place it holds in a person’s life. One thing unites both sides: the universal commitment to what is beautiful.
As we know, there is no absolute and everything has its plusses and minuses.
If there is a student standing before me, for example, a young man, what do I do as a pedagogue? What should I teach him, poses and movements, or a profession? They are two different things.
In Leningrad –now Saint Petersburg—for example, there is a strict selection of students and confirmation of the teaching program. At the age of 9 or 10 the child goes there to receive a profession, and everything is directed at achieving this goal. The student is immersed in a unique atmosphere, a special world where every component lives and breathes ballet. He becomes a part of this world, feeling the connection of the generations and he aspires to be worthy of his place in it. That is a plus.
On the other hand, the program is based on what “was” – on the rules and textbooks, traditions and practices that are preserved and handed down over hundreds of years from hand to hand and leg to leg. The students and pedagogues become the “links in the chain” pulling through the century where the rules must be strictly followed. But at the same time, if before you stands a student who is capable of developing faster and skipping ahead in this program, if he has a special talent and he doesn’t need to wait – this could be a minus.
In America there is no unified programme for ballet schools. There is also no all-encompassing artistic education, including lessons in music, the history of ballet, the history of theatre, acting classes and many other disciplines. No one fosters the understanding that a ballet dancer’s profession is not just enjoying doing the technical components and enjoying yourself onstage. As a whole, each school and each teacher teaches what they want and as they are able. This is a minus, especially if the pedagogue does not possess the knowledge and experience needed, and if he did not himself go through the path in this profession “from A to Z”.
But if a pedagogue with a huge amount of experience in ballet falls into this arena, someone with a deep understanding of what a ballet dancer’s profession is and if they also have the talent to be a mentor, if they are not bound hand and foot to what should be taught according to a programme, then the approach to teaching can be more artistic, individual and productive. That is a plus.
I have been teaching for the last 11 years at City Ballet San Francisco. Galina Aleksandrova, the director of the school, is from a Moscow ballet family herself, she graduated from the Moscow Choreographic Academy, danced at the Bolshoi and then in San Francisco Ballet. We teach genuine Russian classical ballet. We have both tread a long path through school, the theatre, and many years of teaching. It isn’t just our views and devotion to the art of ballet that coincide, but our aspirations to future pedagogical development. We are not bound by a programme and dogma. The profession of a pedagogue must remain artistic. It is a huge plus for the pedagogue when this freedom exists, but again, the pedagogue needs to know what he is doing.
I spoke earlier about my students and mentors, Albert, Shatilov and Morozov. I will never lose what I received from them. The ballet world does not stand in place. Everything is developing – including performing levels and the training itself. No one will ever create a second Rossi street, and no one needs to. Rossi Street has created not just dancers but numerous teachers, choreographers and methodologists. It has created many devoted professionals, including myself. I’m in a position where I can continue to develop as a teacher and as a mentor. I teach my students everything that I know, both the old and the new, and no one tells me *how* to teach them. And this is a huge plus.
Can you explain a little bit about your approach to teaching?
For me this is an expansive, serious topic about which I can speak for a long time, but I’ll single out two main components: technical and artistic.
We’ll start with the technical aspect, which includes everything associated with the external side: shape, the mechanics of movement, strength, coordination and so forth. Henore the main task is to develop a beautiful line and the student’s understanding of what is beautiful and what is not, and at the same time to impart and explain the correct positioning of all body parts and the strength-work of the muscles. I constantly explain to them the logic of the combinations, the development of the technical components and the goal which follows in refining this or that movement. In parallel, the development of coordination from an early age is absolutely necessary. Usually in childhood, as I noted at the start of this interview, boys find it painfully boring to stand in uncomfortable positions and perform slow barre movements. There’s no freedom in this.
As I see it, I have a two-pronged approach to this. It’s as if you are digging a tunnel from two sides in order to meet in the middle. I developed special exercises to develop the coordination of turns, jumps and to help them in older age with all of the virtuoso technique. Here I give them the freedom and physical indulgence of movement. There’s a playful component to this. They like it. But it comes at the end of class and you have to earn it.
Gradually they get used to the barre routine and start to critically and meaningfully work on their form, to understand the connection between the exercises at the barre and the technique of large jumps and turns.
In short, that’s my approach to technique and the mechanics of class, my approach to the “skeleton”.
Now we’ll talk about what’s “inside”, the soul.
I start to impart artistic development and the understanding of the profession immediately, but for young people a conscious understanding of this and my emphasis on awakening the art from within of course comes later.
In Russia they taught us the history of the theatre, the history of ballet, the history of painting, and the history of music. That does not exist here in the USA. And I feel this disconnect and vacuum.
In order to be capable of saying something on stage, the dancer has to have something to say. That is, as a person he has to have something interesting and deep inside himself, as well as the knowledge and understanding of what the art of ballet is. How can you express depth if you do not have it?
I think about this constantly and try to find “levers” and “instruments” to develop artistry and expression in my students.
For example, I teach them De Grieux’s variation from the first act of “Manon”. We work on the movements, musicality, style and so forth. I say “Write me a two-page essay about De Grieux’s character, I’ll give you three days.” Some of them copy something off of the internet. I say, “No, write me something yourself, about this character’s personality, about this role. Watch the entire performance on YouTube and write.” I understand that maybe it’s a bit over their heads, but it opens up a new world to them, a world about which they have never heard and never thought. I push them to think and intellectualize. I push them to feel. This is the process of developing an actor.
Recently I saw a video of the 15-year-old Alexander Malofeyev, performing Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto. I could not tear myself away. The expression on his face, touching his fingers to the keys, as if his existence is interacting with the piano, is communicating with the composer’s soul and with the souls of the public. Even visually it was high art. I sent this video to my students and wrote, “I want your opinion about this, please watch it and write me an essay about what you see and hear.” And what do you know, some of the answers really surprised me with their depth! That means, there’s something inside these students. It means I’m not doing this all in vain. It means we will continue to develop.
Ballet is a unique form of art that combines music, painting, drama and poetry and all of this is emitted in movement form from the body without words. And this body has to have a soul. And this soul of the dancer has to be cultivated.
The selection of students in Russia is very strict, there are limited spots at the Vaganova Academy each year and they accept only ideal bodies. How does the selection take place in your school?
I can’t allow myself the luxury of accepting boys into class solely based on their physical traits or age. I accept almost everyone: let’s say you have 2 legs and you are burning with a desire to dance, you can adhere to the discipline that’s needed and work – I will take you. Because not many boys enter ballet, especially at the age when they should begin professional training. If they work and want to do it, I can help them achieve their dream. Naturally I have various types of boys in my classes.
I had a case when an 18-year old boy came to me without any prior preparation or practice and without physical traits suited for ballet. Honestly speaking, he would never have been accepted into the ballet school in Russia. I explained to him and his mother that in his case it’s going to be very difficult to achieve results, but I still took him. First I put him in class with 10 and 11 year-olds. He tried and worked so hard, as they say “came out of his skin”, and in my long life in the world of ballet I’ve rarely seen such a thing. Of course, when you see this, respect and an aspiration to help the person just fills you. After 6 months, I transferred him to the class with older boys. Now he’s 22 and he received a contract with a professional ballet company. There are many different companies in the US, maybe not the main ones, but if a person dreams of entering this profession and devoting his life to ballet, then my goal is to help him do so.
At the same time, if a boy is very talented, quickly progresses and is capable of withstanding a heavy load in the older classes, I push him forward and give him a chance to work alongside the older boys. That is, I have an individual approach to everyone. I don’t set the goal for myself of just teaching them how to correctly perform the exercises. I look at each student separately and I think about what company he could join and in which country. If he could become a genuine classical ballet dancer or if he’s more suited to modern or contemporary. But the most important thing is to infect them with the love of work, the understanding of self-discipline and a critical approach to themselves. I’m the only pedagogue for men’s classes at our school and my students literally grow up in front of me from childhood. There’s a boy who began with me when he was 5, and now he’s 16 and is gradually turning into a professional dancer. So I answer for each one of them and am always open to them and their parents about their perspectives and their professional future.
For me as a pedagogue the most important thing is seeing the results of my work. I always try to cultivate the kind of dancer who I myself dreamt of being.
The dancer’s career is short. You’ve danced on the best stages of the world and now give your knowledge to your students. Now your students are performing at the Mariinsky and Mikhailovsky theatres, in the Royal Swedish Ballet, New York City Ballet, Joffrey, and many other companies. What do you wish for your students?
As you said correctly, the dancer’s career is short. I wish for all of my students that they will love each day in this profession, with its successes and failures, lucky and not so lucky moments. In the end, we’re all servants to the same wonderful art form, where love always vanquishes evil, and the grandeur of human fantasy conquers the world. My favorite poet Alexander Blok wrote, “A treasure lies in my soul, and I alone am entrusted with its key.” To paraphrase that line, I will say: A treasure lies inside the soul of a genuine artist and he is entrusted with “gifting” it to the world. Carry this mission with pride.
Photographs from Mr. Kabaniaev’s personal archive.