These are unsettling but intoxicating times for the Kirov, a ballet company prized throughout the world as a living museum of the classical tradition. Its home, the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, is a shrine for ballet lovers: there the swan-maidens of “Swan Lake” first fluttered their wings, Nijinsky first sprang into the air, choreographer George Balanchine learned the elements of his art and Mikhail Baryshnikov dazzled his first audiences. But the changes sweeping through the former Soviet Union are sweeping through the Maryinsky, too. Earlier this month the Kirov launched a three-month tour of North America, and although the company has been here in recent years, this is a tour with a difference. Like the Forbes corporate jet that zipped Mikhail Gorbachev around the United States, today’s Kirov might well be inscribed “capitalist tool.”
Like Western dance companies, the Kirov must take to the road just to pay its bills. The Soviet state once provided 95 percent of the Kirov’s budget; that subsidy, now paid by the Russian government, has been slashed to 35 percent. The company is touring at least eight months this year, more than twice as much as in previous years. “That’s where we earn the money to live in our own country,” says artistic director Oleg Vinogradov. “We have nobody to lean upon.”
According to Vinogradov, a production of “Swan Lake” that cost 200,000 to 300,000 rubles to mount a few years ago costs 10 million rubles today (about $83,000). With inflation skyrocketing and supplies scarce, tour producer John Cripton, executive director of Satra Arts International, had to ship just about everything but the pirouettes from the United States to St. Petersburg, including buttons, fabric and cans of paint. Even the American publicist lugged costume materials on a flight to Russia. Once on the road the Kirov’s troubles begin to ease. The company runs no financial risk, receiving a flat fee for each performance-in hard currency.
Dancers, too, are paid in hard currency on the road. Salaries range from $150 to more than $1,000 per performance, and each dollar is stretched as far as it can possibly go. Soloist Dmitry Korneyev says it makes more sense to spend his money in the West than to bring home the cash. “You won’t be able to find things at home,” he says. “Buy things here.” And the dancers do, descending on discount stores and sending home everything from fruit to baby clothes to underwear. The company supplies breakfast and lunch at the hotel or theater, so that the dancers can save precious dollars; many cook dinner in their rooms, to save even more.
Along with capitalist-style financial problems, the Kirov has also entered an era of capitalist-style competitiveness. In the past, its relatively infrequent tours made each visit to the United States a triumphant occasion marked by massive publicity, enthralled critics and big box office. But this is the third American tour in six years. The novelty is wearing off, homegrown companies are looking better than ever and the Kirov has to win its audiences the old-fashioned way-with great performances.
Judging from opening night in Vancouver, that’s going to be harder than finding buttons and paint in St. Petersburg. Leonid Lavrovsky’s 1940 “Romeo and Juliet,” a pompous old warhorse, left the audience cold. The Kirov does have the sumptuous 19th-century classics as well as works by Balanchine and Jerome Robbins in its repertoire–but so do a lot of other ballet companies. With open borders and tempting opportunities in the West, the Kirov even has to compete to keep its own best dancers and choreographers. But if the company’s artistic future is uncertain, its past remains as powerful as ever. For dancers like Lezhnina, hard currency 12 months a year might be wonderful but two centuries of tradition are the reason she became a ballerina. Why stick around the Kirov when the rest of the ballet world is beckoning? When she answers simply, “It is the Maryinsky,” ballet lovers know exactly what she means.
