danceview
a quarterly review of dance

Interviews

A conversation with Elena Kunikova

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2001 by Mary Cargill
Winter 2001

Elena Kunikova studied ballet at the Vaganova Institute, the famous school of the Kirov Ballet, and danced with the Maly Theater Ballet, a company based in Leningrad, for fifteen years. In the late 1980’s she came to the United States where she has been teaching, coaching, and setting ballets. She talked recently about her training and her current work.

Could you talk about your teachers during the years you were at the Vaganova Institute?

I entered the school in the 1960’s. At that time we were fortunate that the Kirov Company used the school studios for classes and rehearsals, so my main teacher was the whole Kirov Ballet, all the dancers and all the ballets. It is hard to overstate the experience of watching that great generation of Kirov dancers like Irina Kolpakova, Natalia Makarova, Yuri Soloviev, Alla Osipenko, Gabriella Komleva, and Barishnikov, who had just graduated—wonderful dancers with very interesting and very different stage personalities. We learned so much from watching them so closely.

The students also participated in lots of ballets, and operas as well, so we worked closely with the company. We saw the dancers being coached by former dancers, who were also our own teachers in the school, dancers like Konstantin Sergeyev, Natalia Dudinskaya, Alexandr Pushkin, Naima Baltacheyeva, Semyon Kaplan, all Vaganova’s students. That was an absolutely incredible experience. We learned the style the way you learn something in the family, the way your parents teach you to talk, to behave.

For example, by the age of fifteen I had danced in The Sleeping Beauty for years and really knew the ballet by heart. I saw many, many casts of Auroras and Princes, and all the other characters, so I had accumulated a wonderful vocabulary of details and nuances you cannot get just by watching from the audience. Fortunately, we have the great medium of video, but people only see one or two performances by one or two casts of dancers. We saw dozens, which enriches you.

What did you dance at the Maly?

Maly means smaller—smaller than Kirov—it had 120 dancers, compared with about 220 at the Kirov, and the company had a very diverse and interesting repertoire. Along with a number of contemporary ballets we had a tradition of reviving and reconstructing older works, including ones by Petipa, Fedor Lopukhov, Alexandr Gorsky, Lev Ivanov, and the Legat brothers, for example. I worked with wonderful teachers and specialists there. I was fortunate to be able to participate in many classical revivals, ballets like the full-length Esmeralda; and Harliquinade and Le Halte de Cavalerie, one-act comedies by Petipa.

The West is not familiar with the one-act Petipa ballets.

I would love to stage them. They really don’t need complicated sets and big casts. Even though Le Halte de Cavalerie and Harliqinade are one-act comedy-ballets, they have all the features of a full-length classical ballet: a classical couple in love, a bunch of character dancers in comical roles, and a classical and character corps de ballet. A funny intrigue is unfolding in both ballets, and both of them have a wonderful classical Grand Pas.

At the Maly, Petr Gusev usually did the revivings of the Petipa ballets. He was a wonderful dancer and a great expert on classical ballet. His demonstrations were amazing—even dancers who weren’t participating in the rehearsals came to watch him. And of course, he was great in the character roles—he had us all in stitches!

How did the Maly go about reconstructing the Petipa ballets?

There were still some dancers who remembered them. For example, when we did Swan Lake, a lot of dancers in their 70’s and 80’s, including Marina Semenova came to help. The Maly Theater is probably the only company which has Petipa’s first act, as close to it as we could get.

Did you see the Kirov reconstruction of The Sleeping Beauty last summer?

Yes, as a matter of fact, I worked on it in New York, helping Sergei Vikharev to set and rehearse the children’s parts. To tell the truth, the sets and costumes came as a surprise. We were used to The Sleeping Beauty as a grand ballet, but these sets and costumes sort of implied a child’s pop-up book. I think the Kirov did a great job at trying to give us a glimpse of what the ballet was in the nineteenth century, even though, for me, there are questions about the accuracy. We don’t really know how accurate Nikolai Sergeyev’s notes were, and how accurate the translation of the Stepanov system was.

I had a lot of questions, because some moments didn’t really look like they were done in Petipa’s style; for example, the combination of steps and the musicality of the cavaliers for the fairies in the Prologue. And the musicality of the Princess Florine variation didn’t look right. Petipa is very square; he choreographed on the music. If a combination of steps is choreographed on sixteen counts, it is usually three time four, so the same steps combination of four counts would be repeated three times, and on the last four counts, it would be used for a transition into the next part of the variation. The Florine variation looked like it was choreographed through the music, in a somewhat Balanchinean style.

But altogether, I think it was a very interesting experience, and I salute it and am very happy I got to see it. But if I staged it now, I would probably do a lot of editing. I think that Konstantin Sergeyev did a very good job of setting The Sleeping Beauty in the 1950’s; his was a very cohesive staging. Even though he changed certain things, he changed them in the right style. He kept the spirit of Petipa and the musicality, unlike so many other stagings, where choreographers are trying to make everything more intricate or different and don’t care whether their new choreography fits into the old ballet.

Time goes on, of course, and dancers do more pirouettes now, but everything should be done with taste and musicality. Baryshnikov is a great dancer, but not just because of his technique. He put meaning into every step. Every jump and every turn conveyed his emotional state. His technique was always justified, he didn’t dance just for the sake of a pirouette—for instance the phenomenal multiple turns at the end of a variation were an emotional, not just a technical, climax. Some things can be changed and they have to be changed to make it more interesting for contemporary audiences, but the structure and the musicality of Petipa, or any other choreographer for that matter, should be respected.

For instance, the first act of too many Giselles is becoming too technical. The beauty of Giselle is its simplicity. Often the charm of the peasant pas de deux is just spoiled by too many steps or too many participants. And recently I saw a version of Giselle where men were involved in the first act’s waltz. The intimacy of the scene was destroyed; it’s supposed to be Giselle introducing Albrecht to her girlfriends. There should be no other men here. The whole sense of the scene was changed just to let more men dance.

Do you think any of the Fokine ballets can be revived?

I have to agree with Clive Barnes article in the November Dance Magazine called “Whatever happened to…” He is talking about those treasures of Fokine, Massine, and Ashton. I think we have to work to save them. They would enrich the repertoire so much. There still are people who knew those masters, who danced in their ballets, who can and must pass them on.

That is why the Balanchine Trust is so important, to keep Mr. Balanchine’s ballets alive through the help of those who danced them, who learned them from Mr. Balanchine himself. It is not possible to properly revive a classical ballet from just watching a video.

Is the issue of emploi still valid for today’s companies?

I think emploi is sort of dissolving, since right now dancers are very strong technically and everybody can do everything, or at least they think they can. Here I’d like to quote from my translation of an article by Mr. Balanchine which appeared in a Russian tribute to Marius Petipa: “He [Petipa] had great knowledge of which steps were most suitable to various artistic personalities. Al dancers are different. The greatest attention a choreographer can show a dancer is to ascertain his or her potential before insisting upon a pas that can conflict with a dancer’s physicality and temperament.”

Unfortunately, today we are witnessing a lot of “conflictings”, miscastings or simply lack of coaching: an ingenue (cute, coquettish, quick) dancer playing a seductress; or an older dancer not looking the age of his or her character; or a mature ballerina cast with a very young looking partner. You know, ballet, like no other art form, has a lot of conventions, and disregard for them does not ring true on the stage.

Could you talk about the differences between working in Russia and in the West?

I work with a lot of professionals and the biggest problem with coaching in America is lack of time. Now I realize how fortunate we were in Russia. For example, when preparing a leading role, a dancer was given two or three months to rehearse. That is a sensible amount of time to get to know the role, not only technically, but to do some emotional research, to try it on yourself, to get to know your partners.

In America we have to work fast, which means often the details and the individuality get smoothed out. Both leading companies in New York do a lot of different ballets in a lot of different styles, and they often don’t have enough time to prepare. Also during ABT’s season at the Met, they often have up to five casts for every ballet, and the dancer might get to dance the role twice at most, so it is hard to grow into a role, to develop it.

Another problem I see with staging classical ballets in America is that dancers, especially in the corps, don’t dance as many years as they did in Russia, which makes it hard to develop a tradition of performance. The classical ballets are not danced on a regular basis, just done for a couple of seasons and dropped from the repertoire. When they are danced again, there is often a completely new cast, including the corps, and there is no historical memory. When I entered the corps, I learned the ballets from the dancers that had danced them for many years, I learned steps and counts, and many details.

As to coaching—a problem I come across pretty often is lack of knowledge of character and historical ballroom dance among American dancers. At the Vaganova Institute we had four years of character and historical dance. Let me clarify that character dance is not just national folk dance, but a refined form of it. Refined specifically to be danced in classical ballets and it is as exact a science as classical ballet. Character port de bras are very intricate; one needs time to learn to do them freely and elegantly. Historical ballroom dances—the minuet, the sarabande, the quadrille, the waltz—knowing them is also very enriching for a ballet dancer. Besides different styles they teach you proper manners, dignified presence, and courteous behavior. This can be taught—though in some ways it is easier to teach someone to do a pirouette than to be a princess!

Well, sometimes I have just a couple of rehearsals to teach all that if I am setting a variation, or one or two weeks if I have to stage, say, the Grand Pas from Paquita. It’s a challenge, but I am not afraid of it, I know how to break every step out, how to explain it, how to bring my student to the desired result. And my students—they keep coming back to me for help and advice. Those who can’t come—who are dancing in other cities or countries—they call or write and ask how to do this and how to do that, and even “what could possibly go wrong?…”—its’ funny but very gratifying for me.

Mime, too, helps develop individuality. I teach my younger students the same way I was taught at the Vaganova Institute. For instance, we were taught to say “I love you” in many different ways—sweetly, as a question, as an exclamation, or dramatically. It is the same gesture, but there is so much variety. Dancers should know how to say things in different ways, and which type of gesture is proper for your character. Unfortunately the differentiation between types of characters, between nobles and peasants, seems to be disappearing, and everything seems to be done in the same way.

Are you familiar with the Bournonville ballets?

Yes, I have danced some Bournonville. The Maly Theater was I think, the first company in Russia to dance Bournonville. Elsa Marianne von Rosen and Allan Fridericia came to teach us La Sylphide, and it was wonderful to work with them, they were so detailed and specific. I did miss some of that detail when ABT danced it last spring. Fridericia and von Rosen were very careful about our posture, having the sylphs tilt forward at a bit of an angle, and having the arms soft and low. The ABT sylphs seemed to stand so straight, with stiff arms.

And some dancers’ reading of the role of James seemed too cheerful to me. James is true hero of Romanticism of the 1830’s, searching for an ideal. Sometimes it looked like James was chasing after the Sylph like she was just another girl.

Bournonville’s one-act ballets are similar in structure to Petipa’s but the choreographic language is different, even though they were both French trained. Bournonville’s memoirs mention that he was very impressed by what he saw in St. Petersburg, that he thought Russian ballet had achieved great heights at the end of the nineteenth century, and it was very nice for me to read that from such a great choreographer.

Are there specific differences between Bournonville and Russian mime?

The differences are in the characters doing the mime. Bournonville created a lot of grand historical ballets, which have disappeared, unfortunately, and so all we have are his more entertaining ballets. The characters in most cases are common folk, trolls, characters from fairy tales, and their mime is very expressive. The vocabulary of Danish mime is very rich, and the characters are very individualized. What we have left of Russian mime is grander because the characters in Russian classical ballets are very often royalty, so the vocabulary is not as diverse. Of course, when mime is done well, it is very powerful.

What do you think of the influence of the increasing number of ballet competitions?

I really think the value of winning is much less these days because there are so many of them now. There are pros and cons to competitions and one has to consider what kind of competition it is. Some are not of a very high standard and let dancers participate who are not really at a professional level. But for some people competitions work. Of course it can help a dancer get into a company; everybody wants to get in a good company, and this is one way of getting exposure. But dancing on stage shouldn’t become a competition in jumping and turning. When dancers ask me for help preparing for a competition, I always tell them that the most important part is the preparation period. Learning is so much more important to them than winning. It is so important that the young dancers learn the part, not just the steps of the excerpt they are doing for the competition.

One of the characteristics of the Russian style is to make steps meaningful, to convey emotion. The audience always appreciates this. Of course, the audience likes pyrotechnics, it is exciting, and I certainly try to make my students as strong technically as possible, but not for the sake of pirouettes, but to express something. Even in a competition, dancers have to learn to be artists, how the technical skills serve the artistic demands. Whether you watch a competition or a ballet in a theater, you can see who is doing steps and who is dancing. It always shows.

Speaking of dancing, I know you have worked with the Trockaderos. What else are you working on?

Yes, I have worked a lot with that company. They are absolutely wonderful to work with because they are very interested in the proper style, in the details, because that is what feeds their comedy. They invited me to work on their classical pieces, so they would look different from their Balanchine or their contemporary works. Before you exaggerate a style, you have to really understand it, and they work very, very hard on it.

Besides coaching, I have staged a number of ballets for other companies, like Paquita, Les Sylphides, The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, and others. I would love to stage some lesser-known ballets like Harliquinade, Le Halte de Cavalerie, or the Underwater scene from Alexandr Gorsky’s The Little Humpbacked Horse. I also teach at Steps studio on Broadway, and I have taught repertoire classes at Barnard College, which I really enjoyed because I had a chance to go into the stylistic and historical background of classical ballets. It is so wonderful to be able to pass on what was given to me.