What is the difference between the Moscovite style of ballet and the St. Petersburgh style of ballet?
It’s a million-dollar question, and the answer differs depending on who you ask.
Here’s what I think: Russia has a unified training system, which means that dancers all over the country are trained the same way, which is why you can usually pick a Russian dancer out of a crowd no matter where they trained. All Russian dancers have the same technical base, however, St Petersburg and Moscow dancers differ in their style of performance. Some (Tsiskaridze) say that this is partly due to the difference in stage size - the Bolshoi stage is much bigger and demands bigger leaps and for the everything to be, well, “magnified”.
Personally, I think that there is a historical distinction in performance styles, which has developed and solidified over many decades: Moscow style is powerful, emotional, fast, with an emphasis on acting skills, while St Petersburg style is lyrical, refined and regal. The best way to illustrate this is to think of the dancers who embody the two styles.
-
Moscow:
Ekaterina Maximova
Maya Plisetskaya
Natalia Osipova
-
St Petersburg:
Ulyana Lopatkina
Yulia Makhalina
Galina Ulanova
As a side note: the lyrical and fluid port de bars is considered the defining feature of St Petersburg dancers.
Now that the Bolshoi is bringing in more and more VBA graduates, the styles are starting to mix a bit, though personally I don’t see it as a problem. In the last few decades, both companies have also produced dancers who have transcend their respective styles, either due to their personal uniqueness or their training (or both). I think that Diana Vishneva and Nikolai Tsiskaridze are two great examples of this.
d i s c l a i m e r
