The performing arts
The 19th century
Ballet was first introduced in Russia in the early 18th century, and the country's first school was formed in 1734. However, much of Russian dance was dominated by western European (particularly French and Italian) influences until the early 19th century, when Russians infused the ballet with their own folk traditions. The dramatic and ballet theatres were entirely under government control until the end of the 19th century. Actors and dancers were government employees and often were treated badly. Nevertheless, theatrical life was quite active throughout the century. Famous Russian actors and dancers of the early part of the century included the ballerina Istomina and the actor Mikhail Shchepkin (Shchepkin, Mikhail Semenovich). From an international perspective, however, the greatest success of the Russian theatre was in the area of classical ballet. Since the 1820s Russian dancers have reigned supreme on the ballet stage. Many great choreographers, even those of non-Russian origin, worked for the Russian Imperial Theatres, including Marius Petipa (Petipa, Marius), who choreographed Tchaikovsky's ballets Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty.
The 20th century
Producer Sergey Diaghilev (Diaghilev, Sergey Pavlovich) and directors Konstantin Stanislavsky (Stanislavsky, Konstantin Sergeyevich) and Vsevolod Meyerhold (Meyerhold, Vsevolod Yemilyevich) dominated Russian theatrical life in the first decades of the 20th century. Together with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir Ivanovich), Stanislavsky founded the Moscow Art Theatre (later called the Moscow Academic Art Theatre (Moscow Art Theatre)) in 1898. Stanislavsky's insistence on historical accuracy, exact realism, and intense psychological preparation by his actors led to a string of successful productions from the beginning of the century into the 1930s. The theatre was known particularly for its productions of Chekhov's plays, including The Seagull (1896), the hit of the theatre's inaugural season.
Meyerhold was one of Stanislavsky's actors, but he broke with his master's insistence on realism. He welcomed the Russian Revolution and put his considerable talent and energy into creating a new theatre for the new state. Throughout the 1920s and into the '30s, he staged brilliant, inventive productions, both of contemporary drama and of the classics. However, his iconoclastic style fell out of favour in the 1930s, and he was arrested and executed in 1940.
Diaghilev was a brilliant organizer and impresario whose innovative Ballets Russes premiered many of the most significant ballets of the first quarter of the century. Although the legendary company was based primarily in Paris, Diaghilev employed major Russian composers (particularly Stravinsky), artists (e.g., Alexandre Benois (Benois, Alexandre), Natalya Goncharova (Goncharova, Natalya), and Mikhail Larionov (Larionov, Mikhail Fyodorovich)), and dancers (including Vaslav Nijinsky (Nijinsky, Vaslav) and Tamara Karsavina (Karsavina, Tamara Platonovna)).
Ballet (Bolshoi Ballet) enjoyed great success in the Soviet period, not because of any innovations but because the great troupes of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and the Kirov (now Mariinsky (Mariinsky Ballet)) Theatre in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) were able to preserve the traditions of classical dance that had been perfected prior to 1917. The Soviet Union's choreography schools produced one internationally famous star after another, including the incomparable Maya Plisetskaya (Plisetskaya, Maya), Rudolf Nureyev (Nureyev, Rudolf) (who defected in 1961), and Mikhail Baryshnikov (Baryshnikov, Mikhail) (who defected in 1974).
Another extremely successful area of theatrical performance was puppet theatre (puppetry). The Obraztsov Puppet Theatre (formerly the State Central Puppet Theatre), founded in Moscow by Sergey Obraztsov (Obraztsov, Sergey Vladimirovich), continues to give delightful performances for patrons of all ages. The same can be said for the spectacular presentations of the Moscow State Circus, which has performed throughout the world to great acclaim. Using since 1971 a larger building and renamed the Great Moscow State Circus, it excelled even in the darkest of the Cold War years.
Theatrical life in post-Soviet Russia has continued to thrive. The Moscow and St. Petersburg theatres have maintained their leading position, but they have been joined by hundreds of theatres throughout the country. Liberated from state censorship, the theatres have experimented with bold and innovative techniques and subject matter. The repertoire of the theatres experienced a shift away from political topics and toward classical and psychological themes. Since the late 1990s the Bolshoi Theatre's dominance has been challenged by the Novaya (New) Opera Theatre in Moscow. Among other successful theatres in Moscow are the Luna Theater, Arbat-Opera, Moscow City Opera, and the Helikon-Opera. (For further discussion,see theatre, Western and dance, Western.)
Motion pictures (motion picture)
The Soviet cinema was a hotbed of invention in the period immediately following the 1917 revolution. Its most celebrated director was Sergey Eisenstein (Eisenstein, Sergey Mikhaylovich) (a student of Meyerhold), whose great films include Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Ivan the Terrible (released in two parts, 1944 and 1958). Eisenstein also was a student of filmmaker and theorist Lev Kuleshov (Kuleshov, Lev Vladimirovich), who formulated the groundbreaking editing process called montage at the world's first film school, the All-Union Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. Supported by Lenin, who recognized film's ability to communicate his revolutionary message to illiterate and non-Russian-speaking audiences, the school initially trained filmmakers in the art of agitprop (agitation and propaganda). Like Eisenstein, who incorporated the Marxist dialectic in his theory of editing, another of Kuleshov's students, Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin (Pudovkin, Vsevolod Illarionovich), made his mark on motion picture history primarily through his innovative use of montage, especially in his masterwork, Mother (1926). Similarly important was Dziga Vertov (Vertov, Dziga), whose kino-glaz (“film-eye”) theory—that the camera, like the human eye, is best used to explore real life—had a huge impact on the development of documentary filmmaking and cinema realism in the 1920s.