The Fountain of Bakhchisarai

The "star hour" of the drama ballet was heralded by the appearance in 1934 at the Leningrad Theatre, then not yet known as the Kirov, of the ballet The Fountain of Bakhchisarai. In it the desire to combine choreography with the themes of high literature and the defence of new Soviet art for the sake of realisticity crystalised the new direction of ballet's development.
The Fountain of Bakhchisarai emerged in an atmosphere of creative discussions of the progressive cultural elite of Leningrad: Professor Boris Asafiev of the conservatoire, an authoratitave composer and music historian, stage director Sergei Radlov who defined the theatre's artistic policy at the time, conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, designer Valentina Khodasevich, librettist Niklai Volkov and the critic Ivan Sollertinsky. The twenty-seven-year-old choreographer Rostislav Zakharov found himself at the epicentre of artistic and theatre life. He, as a debutant in grand ballet and as a graduate of the stage-directing faculty of the Leningrad Institute of Stage Arts who had recommended himself with his productions of dances in operas and plastique in productions at Radlov's Youth Theatre, was invited to stage the choreography of the new ballet.
Inspired by the recently-published Letters about Dance by Noverre with an introductory article by Sollertinsky about the dramatic effect of dance, in his new ballet the young choreographer introduced well-learned lessons from stage drama to the ballet stage. The dance at times remained on the periphery of the choreographer's attention, the ballet was born not from the dance but from the plot, the cleverly enacted mise-en-scènes. In reaction to the stage director's preferences there was also the inclusion of the acting cast. The expressiveness of Galina Ulanova and Konstantin Sergeyev, who were allocated the lead roles, was to prove an essential element of the production's success. The once-and-forever chosen artistic path of The Fountain of Bakhchisarai and the production of ballet plays brought great acclaim to Zakharov. The literary centrism was to become the "main song" of Zakharov and the mainstream of Soviet ballet for the next twenty years. The poetic nature of ballet, oriented exclusively towards truly the emotional (real or unreal) were interminged with everyday prosaic elements. What remains unsaid in Pushkin's poetry demanded logical explanations, and in The Fountain of Bakhchisarai a new character appeared - Vaslav, Maria's beloved, was included in the plot in order to underscore the difference between the world in which the Polish princess Maria had a happy life and the world of her Tatar captivity. Zakharov taught his dancers to work as actors on their roles, to prepare them for that previously unknown "table-chat" with the director to deal with the characters and the conflicts. And it is not by chance that of performers of the era of drama ballet it was said that "the ballerina is an actress and the danseur an actor." Embodying on the stage the characters of Pushkin's heroes and thus laying the foundations of the traditions of acting expressiveness in Soviet ballet became the mission of the generation of the 1930s-1940s. And Zakharov and his comrades-in-arms who reigned on the Soviet stage throughout the period of so-called drama ballet taught the audiences to ask the question "What are they dancing about". Wishing to be understood, the choreographer forced audiences to think and, at times, thus to forget the eloquence of the dance unburdened by a lexical word-for-word through dance. Olga Makarova