Integration of Cultures: The art of Russian ballet in European culture

By Tatiana Bushmina

 

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Undoubtedly, the melody with which Swan Lake Ballet (Lebedínoye Ózero) begins is familiar to everyone. It brings us forth into a world where on the banks of a mysterious lake, romantic feelings arose between the beautiful Queen of Swans, Odette, and the young Prince Siegfried. The malicious wizard Rotbart and his daughter Odile try to ruin their love. Princess Odette is transformed by the charms of the malicious wizard into a swan. Odette can only be rescued by a person who will love her, swear fidelity, and keep his oath.

The Russian Ballet Theatre is the most interesting sphere of Russian art. It has become one of the prides of the national culture. At the same time, it is difficult to understand the characteristics of Russian ballet without a detailed study of the ballet of Italy, France, Austria and Germany.

Ballet is a magnificent miracle that comes about through various cultures. Russian music is set to a fairy tale written by the French, and that performance is embodied in the dance by a Spaniard or an Austrian or a dancer from any other nation. It is an example of that integration of cultures we talk so much about, is it not?

In the 19th century, Russian ballet reached a creative maturity; it developed into a national school. In Russia, ample opportunities for creativity were opened for foreign choreographers. Some of them were already well-known and were invited by ballet masters; others were invited as dancers and dance teachers. In Russia, the whole galaxy of outstanding masters from Italy, France, and Austria were active, promoting the ascension of Russian ballet to its highest level.

The Austrian dancer, teacher, composer and ballet master Franz Anton Christoph Hilferding was born into a theatrical family and received a fine arts education. He studied dance in Paris under M. Blondie. In 1742, he created ballet transpositions of three French tragedies, but he also used traditional plots, mythological, and allegorical ones. However he reconsidered their contents according to the requirements of classicism. He was drawn towards lyrical elements and moved the audience with emotion rather than astonishing his spectators. He presented ballet comedy on the stage, combining themes from opera plots and from modern rural and city life. Hilferding co-operated with Austrian composers Ignaz Jacob Holzbauer and Josef Starzer, who wrote music by himself. He arrived in Russia as an illustrious master and teacher, working in St.Petersburg from 1759 - 1764. One of the founders of effective drama ballet, Hilferding aspired to make ballet stand out from other genres, to merge dance and pantomime into a single whole, to eliminate distracting qualities. In St.Petersburg, Hilferding wrote music for about 20 ballets for Bernhard Raupach, Josef Starzer, and Vincenzo Manfredini, including in honour of the crowning of Empress Catherine II.

For the educated European, music expressed emotions much more precisely than words, and became an absolute need. In libraries of the Czech and Austrian castles, there were musical folders on the shelves: musical texts of Franz Peter Schubert, George Frideric Hendel, and Franz Joseph Haydn were read here.

The Austrian composer Christoph Willibald Gluck was a reformer of the European music theatre, one of the greatest representatives of Classical music of the 18th century. He wrote 107 operas, often including dance numbers and also some ballet-pantomimes which were key landmarks in the history of ballet theatre. His music was notable for dramatic expressiveness and laconism. Don Juan or the Stone visitor, was a performance in the Viennese Burgtheater in 1761, which is considered as the first ballet daction in the European theatre.

However, music played a secondary role in ballet performances. It gave the dancer the possibility of accurately and rhythmically dancing.  The ballet-master, the director of dances in ballet, was the main manager of music.  He defined how many steps of music and what rhythms are necessary for each scene. He demanded from composers, first of all, a simple and clear melody, not caring especially about the quality of music.

The problem of development of choreography in Russian ballet, its movement to higher forms of expressiveness of dance is one of the important problems of the history of ballet. The facts testify that the principle skills of dancing belong to great masters of choreography. The perfection of Russian ballet could not be reached without European choreographic experience.

Today Swan Lake is one of the most famous and beloved ballets. It has been performed on ballet stages throughout the world. What was the composer P. Tchaikovsky thinking about when he was writing the music of Swan Lake? Perhaps he recollected those Russian fairy tales where beautiful girls-lebyodushki lived that he heard in his childhood, or the verses of his favorite poet Pushkin. But the whitest swan born by imagination of the great composer always remains a symbol of Russian ballet, a symbol of its cleanliness, greatness, and its noble beauty. In this context, a new understanding and estimation of ballet history is urgent. The developed cultures, having their own history and traditions have formed a qualitatively new union of art.

 

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