Pureness, Beauty and Simplicity – Ballet at Vaganova

The Vaganova Ballet Academy is one of the most famous and influential classical ballet schools in the world. It has been training students in classical ballet for almost 300 years.

I am not a ballerina, although in our old days of communism in Yugoslavia me and my friends were faithfully attending classes of rhytmic gymnastics, wearing soft slippers and black tricos, trying to pursue elegance & balance and lots of elasticity. No, I am not a ballerina, although I wished I was when I saw following images… My visual & emotional fix of the day… This is for you Alma & your mom…

You might also like this slide show at NY Times and/or this video.

The school was established as the Imperial Theatre School by decree of the Empress Anna on 4 May 1738 with the French Ballet Master Jean-Baptiste Lande as its director. The first classes occupied empty rooms in the Winter Palace in St Petersburg and the first students were twelve boys and twelve girls. The purpose of the school was to form Russia’s first professional dance company, which lead to the formation of the Imperial Russian Ballet, the school becoming known as the Imperial Ballet School. The Imperial Russian Ballet is the direct predecessor of today’s Mariinsky Ballet, which remains one of the worlds leading ballet companies to this day, with the Vaganova Academy as its associate school. Established in 1738, the academy is based in St. Petersburg, Russia and is named after the renowned pedagogue Agrippina Vaganova, who cultivated the method of classical ballet training that has been taught at the school since the late 1920s. Graduates of the school include some of the most famous ballet dancers, choreographers and teachers in history and many of the worlds leading ballet schools have adopted elements of the Vaganova method into their own training.
(thank you to Danny Q for the history of Vaganova)