8 things about Agrippina Vaganova
Agrippina Vaganova was only promoted to ballerina from the corps a year before her retirement. But in her prime, she was called by critics as the “queen of variations.”
Prima ballerina Lisa Macuja-Elizalde attributes her 30-year career in classical dance to the Vaganova technique which she learned in Russia. Believing in its system of classes that molds the dancers gradually, she chose to abide by it when she and her Ballet Manila co-artistic director Osias Barroso founded Ballet Manila in 1995 and again when she opened her ballet school two years later.
In her memoirs, Ballerina of the People, Macuja-Elizalde’s direct link to Agrippina Vaganova, founder of the technique named after her, is explained. The Filipino ballerina was, after all, coached at some point by Kirov prima ballerina Natalia Dudinskaya while a student at the Leningrad Choreographic School (now the Vaganova Ballet Academy) in the 1980s. And Dudinskaya in her prime had trained under Vaganova herself.
Ballet Manila co-artistic director Osias Barroso (third from left) paid homage to Agrippina Vaganova in 2016 along with (from left) BM dancers Joshua Enciso, Nicole Barroso, Marinette Franco and Alvin Dictado who were in St. Petersburg to participate in the Dance Open Festival. The bust can be found in the museum of the school now named after Vaganova.
Macuja-Elizalde extolled the virtues of the Vaganova technique and its founder in a column she wrote about both in her newspaper column in 1995. “The system slowly builds the vocabulary of classical steps as well as the strength and technique of each dancer. It emphasizes the strict use of the head and upper body to enhance the intricate foot and leg work.
“Various exercises have been placed in logical order which is followed in every class designed to slowly prepare the body for more difficulty combinations and prevent injury. Agrippina Vaganova made rules that have to be strictly followed as to how a temps lie is done, how both arms are coordinated in a sixth port de bras and, with little ballerina figures, she draws how a jete renversé en dehors is supposed to be done.
“Professor Agrippina Vaganova continues to reign as the foremost authority in classical dance. Her system has developed the traditions of the Russian ballet that continues to be the international standard of classical excellence.”
Lisa Macuja (fifth from left) studied ballet under Tatiana Alexandrovna Udalenkova (center) from 1982-1984 in the same room where Agrippina Vaganova taught decades before. Vaganova’s portrait hangs in that room, an indication of her profound influence on generations of dancers using her Russian technique.
Indeed, Vaganova’s ballet manual, written in 1934, is still considered the ultimate reference when it comes to Russian ballet technique. In fact, the final version of the book which was published in the USSR in 1948 will have a new, complete and unadbridged translation – for the first time in English –to be released in paperback on June 30, 2021.
A new English translation of Vaganova’s ballet manual, the ultimate reference on the Russian ballet technique, is being released soon.
The Vaganova Ballet Academy points out in its website, “Through the thirty years she spent teaching ballet and pedagogy, Vaganova developed a precise technique and system of instruction. Vaganova’s system synthesized what she had learned from her masters with her own concepts of the possibilities of movement and technique. The result was a brilliant, clean technique combined with an amplitude of movement and a suppleness of the upper body that are the hallmarks of the Vaganova style.”
But just who was Agrippina Vaganova beyond the legend she came to be? Here are eight interesting tidbits we learned from available materials on the internet:
Agrippina Yakovlevna Vaganova was born on June 26, 1879, in St. Petersburg, Russia, to an Armenian family. Her father was an usher at the Maryinsky Theatre, explaining her early exposure to ballet. At age 10, she was accepted into the Imperial Ballet School. She was given free board and lodging which helped ease her poor family’s burden.
She did not have a ballerina's body. One source describes her as being of small height and heavy. A documentary on Vaganova is even more harsh, listing her limitations thus: not very beautiful feet, awkwardness in movement, a big head and not very pretty features. Aware of her shortcomings, she worked hard to make up for them. She is supposed to have possessed willpower in abundance and trained hard. In 1897, at age 18, she was taken into the Marinsky corps de ballet.
According to the Vaganova Ballet Academy website, so brilliant were her solos in such ballets as Coppelia, Don Quixote and The Little Humpbacked Horse, that she became known to the critics as the “Queen of Variations."
Young dancers Joshua Enciso, Marinette Franco, Alvin Dictado and Nicole Barroso pose with a portrait of Agrippina Vaganova whose teachings they have followed as Ballet Manila students and artists.
Curiously, while the famed choreographer Marius Petipa is said to have recognized her talent, he became very critical of her performances. In the documentary on Vaganova, it is cited that he even wrote in his diary when the ballet Raimonda was performed and she was cast in it: “A very unfortunate choice. Madam Vaganova is dreadful. I am not going to the ballet!”
The main parts in the ballets Stream by L. Delibes (Nail), Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky (Odette-Odile), Humpbacked Horse (Tsar-maiden), Giselle by A. Adana (Giselle) were said to have been entrusted to her only shortly before the end of her performing career. In 1915, she finally received the title of ballerina, but in 1916 she made her farewell performance.
She found new life at the ballet as a teacher. She initially taught at Akim L. Volynsky’s private School of Russian Ballet. Later, she moved to the Leningrad Choreographic School where, from 1921 until her death in 1951, she taught senior students completing the last three years of ballet training. Many of Vaganova’s students would become brilliant ballerinas. Irina Kolpakova and Marina Semeonova, both named People’s Artist of Russia, are among the two who talk about what they learned from their mentor in the documentary Agrippina Vaganova: The Great and the Terrible. In the same documentary, another People’s Artist of Russia, Maya Plisetskaya, claims how Vaganova changed the way she danced after only two months of being under her tutelage.
From 1931 to 1937, Vaganova also held the position of artistic director of the Kirov Ballet. During this period, she staged her versions of both Swan Lake and Esmeralda. Along with Rostislav Zakharov’s The Fountain of Bakhchisarai and Vasily Vayonen’s The Flames of Paris, the ballets of the Vaganova period are still considered a part of the classical heritage.
Postscript: Vaganova passed away on November 5, 1951 at the age of 72, her contributions to Dance already secure and well-established. During the farewell, the adagio from Swan Lake is said to have been sounded. In 1957, the Leningrad Choreographic School was renamed as “Vaganova Ballet Academy” in recognition of Professor Vaganova’s achievements. The grave of Vaganova can be found at the Novo-Volkovskioi Cemetery in Saint Petersburg, showing a seated ballerina sculpture holding what looks like a ballet manual.
Lisa Macuja writes about the Vaganova method and its founder in her newspaper column in 1995, shortly before Ballet Manila’s debut.
