Did you know that he’s given his archive to the Library for the Performing Arts?
It includes an incredible trove of silent home movies of the Kirov and the Vaganova Institute during the 1960s and early ’70s.
I was watching footage of Sleeping Beauty. There’s that little duet Sergeyev made to replace the pantomime dialogue between Lilac Fairy and Desire–before the Vision scene. It’s performed by Alla Osipenko and Vladilen Semyonov–just great. Gosh that woman’s legs and line were something. All she has to do is take an arabesque or stand in a pose and you’ve gotten a glimpse of balletic nirvana. It’s a silhouette that moves no matter if she’s at rest.
There is extensive footage of Kolpakova, Sizova, Menchyonok, Vikulov, Soloviev, et. al., et. al. That extraordinary corps de ballet. Everyone at every level absolutely confident in what they did on stage because they were trained and rehearsed to perform these old classical ballets. They may have been bored doing these same few works over and over again, but they certainly don’t show it here. Everyone on stage seems to be living through a peak experience.
There’s a memorable look at Baryshnikov himself in the 1971 premiere Creation of the World. But the footage preserved here doesn’t seem to be mostly about him. Did he take the footage himself? Acquire it?
A lot of the dancers are so far unidentified in the catalogue; I want to look at everything.