Vladimir Vasiliev: "The Leningrad and the Moscow School of Choreography both came out of the Imperial Ballet, complete each other and inspire my entire life"

As part of the cultural program of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, "Vladimir Vasiliev. Dance and Destiny" video lecture, timed to the opening of the exhibition of art works by Vladimir Vasiliev in St. Petersburg, was held in the Presidential Library. A ballet dancer and world-renowned choreographer, People's Artist of the USSR Vladimir Vasiliev appeared with a speech before an audience. The event was aired online on the Presidential Library website under its Live Broadcasts section.

The fragments of ballets of the different years accompanied more than two-hour monologue of Vladimir Vasiliev from plasma screens. Vladimir Viktorovich recalled his foodless wartime childhood and that what upraised him over routine and troubles - the books, which he was getting by any means. He brought "War and Peace" out of a small antique store. “The Perrault’s fairy tales had taken me so deeply that I could not force myself to return a book to the library, I physically could not take it away from myself, I was falling asleep embracing it.”

The ballet happened for Vladimir Vasiliev almost by accident: one of the many his friends brought him along to the dance studio of Kirov Pioneers Club in Moscow. The thoughtful teachers at once discovered his exceptional plastic gifts. The eight-year’s from the first attempt had been copying any shown to him movement. Basing on his example, the other dancers after all were practicing their motions. Later, while studying in the Ballet School, the powerful virtuoso jumps of student Vasiliev have not gone unnoticed, as well as his musicality and irrepressible energy that was filling all the scenes’ space and spreading beyond into the audience’s, which complied with an incredible charisma of the young dancer. In 1958 he was accepted into the troupe of the Bolshoi Theater.

An accurate understanding of the music and the figural material, along with a true embodying of a character fascinated and surprised the audience, and moreover - the famous masters of the art of ballet. At the rehearsal room, where Vasiliev practiced, Galina Ulanova began to show up. They became friends for life. "Working together with Galina in “Chopiniana” (or “Les Sylphides”) became for me an invaluable experience, I opened myself as a performer of classical parties. Imagine, I was 18 and my partner 48, and it did not prevent us from "hearing" each other."

He came to Bolshoy from school with his muse and later his wife Ekaterina Maximova, fragile and strong dancer, with distinguishing dance pattern. World fame came to her naturally, because Maximova became an equal to her husband partner, unfortunately, she passed away untimely…

Vigorous energy of Vladimir Vasiliev does not fit into performer’s routine. His first own ballet was staged in 1971, it was the “Icarus”. A plot and a genre was not particularly in focus of the author’s action of choreography, all his attention was taken by a disclosure of the characters through music and dance plastic line. The master embodied his vision in “Fragments of a Biography”, “Nostalgia”, “Swan Lake” and many other performances.

"I do not understand these “museumified releases” and the enjoyment of those who attempts to restore classical ballet strictly "as Petipa worded." I wonder if someone would try to drive into the framework of the canon, I would say - Franco Zeffirelli, with whom we in a new way, with the inclusion of a grand mass of dance, created “La Traviata!” I am absolutely sure: any period of time should have its own Giselle, Carmen and Prince Siegfried."

Among the participants of the meeting with the outstanding ballet master were students and teachers of the Russian Ballet Academy named after Vaganova, the St. Petersburg State Conservatory named after Rimsky-Korsakov, the Boris Eifman Dance Academy, the St. Petersburg State Institute of Culture, the Leningrad Regional College of Culture and Arts, the St. Petersburg State University, the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music. Colleagues and students from other regions of Russia could ask Vladimir the questions in videoconference mode, like in the audience of Khanty-Mansiysk, for example, remembered the fact that Vasiliev pro-bono, without any compensation staged “Cinderella” ballet for children of this distant northern region.

At the end of the meeting, in response to the hospitality and fabulous breathtaking communication through time and across the universe, the choreographer presented the Presidential Library a few books about the Maximova - Vasiliev duo, issued by leading Russian publishing houses.