Performing Arts & Music
By late tsarist Russia the performing arts had evolved into grand and refined spectacles of ballet and opera created to entertain the nobility of St Petersburg and Moscow. These still delight audiences of all means around the world. But it's not all about the classical in Russian performing arts – rock and pop music are just as popular here as they are elsewhere; Chekhov's plays are staged alongside experimental theatre; and circus is revered as a great night's entertainment.
Dance
Birth of Russian Ballet
First brought to Russia under Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich in the 17th century, ballet in Russia evolved as an offshoot of French dance combined with Russian folk and peasant dance techniques. The result stunned Western Europeans when it was first taken on tour during the late 19th century.
The official beginnings of Russian ballet date to 1738 and the establishment of a school of dance in St Petersburg’s Winter Palace, the precursor to the famed Vaganova School of Choreography, by French dance master Jean-Baptiste Landé. Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre dates from 1776. However, the true father of Russian ballet is considered to be Marius Petipa (1818–1910), the French dancer and choreographer who acted first as principal dancer, then premier ballet master, of the Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg. All told, he produced more than 60 full ballets (including Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake).
At the turn of the 20th century – Russian ballet’s heyday – St Petersburg’s Imperial School of Ballet rose to world prominence, producing a wealth of superstars including Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Mathilda Kshesinskaya, George Balanchine and Michel Fokine. Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, formed in Paris in 1909 (with most of its members coming from the Imperial School of Ballet), took Europe by storm. The stage decor was painted by artists such as Alexander Benois.
Soviet Era to Modern Day
During Soviet rule, ballet enjoyed a privileged status, which allowed schools such as the Vaganova and companies like St Petersburg’s Kirov (now the Mariinsky) and Moscow’s Bolshoi to maintain lavish productions and high performance standards. At the Bolshoi, Yury Grigorovich emerged as the leading choreographer, with Spartacus, Ivan the Terrible and other successes that espoused Soviet moral and artistic values. Meanwhile, many of Soviet ballet’s biggest stars emigrated or defected, including Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, artistic feuds at the Bolshoi between Grigorovich and his dancers, combined with a loss of state subsidies and the continued financial lure of the West to principal dancers, led to a crisis in the Russian ballet world. Grigorovich resigned in 1995, prompting dancers loyal to him to stage the Bolshoi’s first-ever strike. The company ran through a series of artistic directors before finding stability and renewed acclaim under the dynamic direction of Alexey Ratmansky from 2004 to 2008. Dreams of Japan – one of the 20-plus ballets that Ratmansky has choreographed – was awarded a prestigious Golden Mask award in 1998. Under his direction the Bolshoi won Best Foreign Company in 2005 and 2007 from the prestigious Critics’ Circle in London. In 2017 the Bolshoi and London’s Royal Ballet debuted Strapless, their first coproduction.
Scandals have dogged the Bolshoi in recent years. In 2011 the troupe’s director Gennady Yanin was forced to step down following the release on the internet of erotic photos of him. In 2013 the former prima ballerina Anastasia Volochkova claimed that the Bolshoi was a 'giant brothel’ with dancers forced to sleep with wealthy patrons. The same year Sergei Filin, the Bolshoi’s artistic director, suffered damaged eyesight and a burned face in an acid attack orchestrated by Pavel Dmitrichenko, a dancer in the company.
In 2017 the Bolshoi was back in the headlines again following international shock at the last-minute cancellation of a new ballet based on the life of Rudolf Nureyev. The company's director general said the quality of the dancing was bad, but the rumour mill had it that the production's open portrayal of the dancer's homosexuality had fallen foul of a government that promotes conservative values.
Meanwhile in St Petersburg, charismatic Valery Gergiev is secure in his position at the Mariinsky, where he has been artistic director since 1988 and overall director since 1996. The ballet troupe reports to Yury Fateyev, who has pushed the dancers to embrace more than the classical repertoire for which they are most famous, staging ballets by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins as well as Ratmansky, whose Anna Karenina (based on the Tolstoy novel) premiered in 2010.
Native Folk Dancing & Music
Traditional Russian folk dancing and music is still practised across the country, though your best chance of seeing it as a visitor is in cheesy shows in restaurants or at tourist-orientated extravaganzas such as Feel Yourself Russian (
MAP
GOOGLE MAP
; 
%812-312 5500; www.folkshow.ru; ul Truda 4, Nikolayevsky Palace; ticket incl drinks & snacks R4900; 
hbox office 11am-9pm, shows 7pm; 
mAdmiralteyskaya) in St Petersburg. Companies with solid reputations to watch out for include Igor Moiseyev Ballet (www.moiseyev.ru), the Ossipov Balalaika Orchestra (www.ossipovorchestra.ru/en) and the Pyatnitsky State Academic Russian Folk Choir, all offering repertoires with roots as old as Kyivan Rus, including heroic ballads and the familiar Slavic trepak (stamping folk dances).
In Siberia and the Russian Far East, it’s also possible to occasionally catch dance and music performances by native peoples. In the Altai, minstrels sing epic ballads, while in Tuva khöömei (throat singing) ranges from the ultradeep troll-warbling of kargyraa to the superhuman self-harmonising of sygyt.
Music
Classical, 19th Century
Mikhail Glinka (1804–57) is considered the father of Russian classical music; he was born in Smolensk, where an annual festival is held in his honour. As Russian composers (and other artists) struggled to find a national identity, several influential schools formed, from which some of Russia’s most famous composers emerged. The Group of Five – Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin, Cesar Kui and Mily Balakirev – believed a radical departure from traditional Western European composition necessary, and looked to byliny (epic folk songs) and folk music for themes. Their main opponent was Anton Rubinstein’s conservatively rooted Russian Musical Society, which became the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1861, the first conservatory in Russia.
Triumphing in the middle ground was Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840–93), who embraced Russian folklore and music as well as the disciplines of the Western European composers. The former lawyer first studied music at the St Petersburg Conservatory, but he later moved to Moscow to teach at the conservatory there. This was where all his major works were composed, including, in 1880, the magnificent 1812 Overture.
Among his other famous pieces are the ballets Swan Lake (Lebedinoye Ozero), Sleeping Beauty (Spyashchaya Krasavitsa) and The Nutcracker (Shchelkunchik); the operas Eugene Onegin (Yevgeny Onegin) and Queen of Spades (Pikovaya Dama), both inspired by the works of Alexander Pushkin; and his final work, the Pathétique Symphony No 6. The romantic beauty of these pieces belies a tragic side to the composer, who led a tortured life as a closeted homosexual. The rumour mill has it that rather than dying of cholera, as reported, he committed suicide by poisoning himself following a ‘trial’ by his peers about his sexual behaviour.
Classical, 20th Century
Following in Tchaikovsky’s romantic footsteps were Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) and Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) – who both fled Russia after the revolution. Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring – which created a furore at its first performance in Paris – and The Firebird were influenced by Russian folk music. Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953), who also left Soviet Russia but returned in 1933, wrote the scores for Sergei Eisenstein’s films Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, the ballet Romeo and Juliet, and Peter and the Wolf, beloved of those who teach music to young children. He fell foul of the fickle Soviet authorities towards the end of his life and died on the same day as Stalin.
Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–75), who wrote brooding, bizarrely dissonant works, as well as accessible traditional classical music, was also alternately praised and condemned by the Soviet government. Despite initially not being to Stalin’s liking, Shostakovich’s Symphony No 7 – the Leningrad – brought him honour and international standing when it was performed by the Leningrad Philharmonic during the Siege of Leningrad. The authorities changed their minds again and banned his music in 1948, then ‘rehabilitated’ him after Stalin’s death.
Progressive new music surfaced slowly in the post-Stalin era, with limited outside contact. Symphony No 1 by Alfred Schnittke (1934–98), probably the most important work of this major experimental modern Russian composer, had to be premiered by its champion, conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, in the provincial city of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) in 1974. It was not played in Moscow until 1986.
Opera
Russian opera was born in St Petersburg when Mikhail Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar, which merged traditional and Western influences, premiered on 9 December 1836. It told the story of peasant Ivan Susanin, who sacrifices himself to save Tsar Mikhail Romanov. He followed this with another folk-based opera, Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842), thus inaugurating the ‘New Russian School’ of composition.
Another pivotal moment in Russian opera was the 5 December 1890 premiere of Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades at the Mariinsky. Adapted from a tale by Alexander Pushkin, the work surprised and invigorated the artistic community by successfully merging opera with topical social comment.
In March 2005 the Bolshoi premiered its first new opera in 26 years, Rosenthal’s Children – with music by Leonid Desyatnikov and words by Vladimir Sorokin – to a hail of protests over its controversial plot about cloning. In 2006 the unconventional production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin by Bolshoi opera company’s director Dmitry Tcherniakov split public opinion in Russia but wowed critics abroad.
Even so, contemporary opera in Russia continues to gain popularity. In 2012 Vasily Barkhatov produced four new operas written by Russian composers, in collaboration with the Laboratory of Contemporary Opera, an initiative of the Ministry of Culture. Marevo (Mirage), the first opera from Provmyza, a Nizhny Novgorod–based art collective, was nominated for the 2014 Innovation award in the visual-art category.
Rock & Pop
The Communist Party was no fan of pop music. Back in the 1960s, Vladimir Vysotsky (1938–80) was the dissident voice of the USSR, becoming a star despite being banned from TV, radio and major stages. Denied the chance to record or perform to big audiences, Russian rock groups were forced underground. By the 1970s – the Soviet hippie era – this genre of music had developed a huge following among a disaffected and distrustful youth. One of the most famous groups of this era is Mashina Vremeni (Time Machine), who formed in 1969 and are still going strong with the original lead vocalist Andrei Makarevich.
Although bands initially imitated their Western counterparts, by the 1980s there was a home-grown sound emerging. In Moscow, Leningrad (St Petersburg) and Yekaterinburg, in particular, many influential bands sprung up. Boris Grebenshikov and his band Akvarium (Aquarium) from Yekaterinburg caused a sensation wherever they performed; his folk rock and introspective lyrics became the emotional cry of a generation. At first, all of their music was circulated by illegal tapes known as magizdat, passed from listener to listener; concerts – known as tusovka (informal parties) – were held in remote halls or people’s apartments in city suburbs, and just attending them could be risky. Other top bands of this era include DDT, Nautilus Pompilius and Bravo, whose lead singer Zhanna Aguzarova became Soviet rock’s first female star.
Late Soviet rock’s shining star, though, was Viktor Tsoy (1962–90), an ethnic Korean born in Leningrad, frontman of the group Kino; the band’s classic album is 1988’s Gruppa Krovi (Blood Group). Tsoy’s early death in a car crash sealed his legendary status. Fans gather on the anniversary of his death (15 August) to this day and play his music. His grave, at the Bogoslovskogo Cemetery in St Petersburg, has been turned into a shrine, much like Jim Morrison’s in Paris. There is also the ‘Tsoy Wall’, covered with Tsoy-related graffiti, on ul Arbat in Moscow.
Contemporary stars of the Russian rock scene include Mumiy Troll, formed by Vladivostok-born Ilya Lagutenko. The band regularly plays international festivals such as SXSW. Also gaining traction outside Russia is Tesla Boy, a synth-pop band led by Anton Sevidov. Roma Litvinov, aka Mujuice, is considered one of Russia's most innovative electronic musicians; his composition includes elements of jazz. Miron Fyodorov, better known by his stage name Oxxxymiron or Oxxxy, is a hugely successful hip-hop and rap artist with an English degree from Oxford University.
Theatre
Drama lover Catherine the Great set up the Imperial Theatre Administration and authorised the construction of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre. During her reign Denis Fonvizin wrote The Brigadier (1769) and The Minor (1781), satirical comedies that are still performed today.
Nineteenth-century dramatists included Alexander Pushkin, whose drama Boris Godunov (1830) was later used as the libretto for the Mussorgsky Opera; Nikolai Gogol, whose tragic farce The Government Inspector (1836) was said to be a favourite play of Nicholas I; Alexander Griboedov, whose comedy satire Woe from Wit was a compulsory work in Russian literature lessons during the Soviet period; and Ivan Turgenev, whose languid A Month in the Country (1849) laid the way for the most famous Russian playwright of all: Anton Chekhov (1860–1904).
Chekhov’s The Seagull (1896), The Three Sisters (1901), The Cherry Orchard (1904) and Uncle Vanya (1899), all of which take the angst of the provincial middle class as their theme, owed much of their success to their ‘realist’ productions at the Moscow Art Theatre by Konstantin Stanislavsky, which aimed to show life as it really was.
Theatre remained popular through the Soviet period, not least because it was one of the few areas of artistic life where a modicum of freedom of expression was permitted. Stalin famously said that although Mikhail Bulgakov’s White Guard (1926) had been written by an enemy, it still deserved to be staged because of the author’s outstanding talent. Bulgakov is perhaps the only person dubbed an enemy by Stalin and never persecuted. The avant-garde actor-director Vsevolod Meyerhold was not so fortunate.
Today both Moscow’s and St Petersburg’s theatre scenes are as lively as those in London and New York. Notable directors include Kama Gingkas, who works with the Moscow Art Theatre; Pyotr Fomenko, who heads up Moscow’s Pyotr Fomenko Workshop Theatre; and Lev Dodin at the Maly Drama Theatre in St Petersburg. Dmitry Krymov, who began his career as a stage designer, heads up the Krymov Lab at Moscow’s School of Dramatic Arts, where he crafts incredible, visually dramatic productions that have toured internationally. These include a version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Opus No 7, which in its two acts pays homage to the Jews lost in the Holocaust and the classical composer Shostakovich.
CIRCUS
While Western circuses grow smaller and become scarce, the Russian versions are still like those from childhood stories – prancing horses with acrobats on their backs, snarling lions and tigers, heart-stopping high-wire artists and hilarious clowns. They remain a highly popular form of entertainment.
The Russian circus tradition has roots in medieval travelling minstrels called skomorokhi, although the first modern-style circus (a performance within a ring) dates to the reign of Catherine the Great. The country’s first permanent circus was established in St Petersburg in 1877, and in 1927 Moscow’s School for Circus Arts became the world’s first such training institution. Many cities still have their own troupes and most at least have an arena for visiting companies. Best known is Moscow’s Nikulin Circus.
In recent years, most major troupes have cleaned up their act with regard to the treatment of animals. At Moscow and St Petersburg circuses it is unlikely you will see animals treated cruelly or forced to perform degrading acts.