Introduction
In the finale of Laurencia, a crowd standing in the great hall of their vanquished aristocratic overlord leaps simultaneously into triumphant dance. The hero Frondoso whirls to the front of the assembly, his clothes tattered, and everyone falls away to give the titular heroine Laurencia center stage. She executes a series of turns in time with the staccato of the score, her unbound hair flying wildly behind her. Then all but Laurencia put their arms around one another, subsumed into one mass, and following her lead they kneel, gesturing emphatically, acknowledging the world with triumphant surety as if to say, “Today, our village. Tomorrow, the world.”
While ballet was inextricably intertwined with politics in Soviet Russia and meant to be a tool of the state, to imagine that all ballet was simply propaganda—or artistically worthless—is an unjust and oversimplified view of what was in reality a complicated, contradictory machine. Even under the strict censorship and authoritarianism of the Soviet Union, artistic expression had a way of creeping in wherever it could; every ballet artist was well aware of the demands of their regime, but their own artistic preferences varied far and wide.
In this analysis of Soviet ballet, “content” shall refer to the dramatic plot of a ballet, the action happening on stage which can be gleaned from the libretto; “artistry” shall refer to the artistic expression which made up a ballet, primarily referring to choreographic attempts at artistic expression. In essence, content is the “what” of a ballet, while artistry is the “how” that content is expressed. I propose that the Soviet cultural policy with respect to ballet paid overwhelming attention to content over artistry, which led to various ballet artists expressing their own artistic preferences even amidst the stifling and brutal confines of what constituted Soviet ballet, especially under Josef Stalin but continuing after his death. The Soviet preoccupation with content over artistry led to drambalet—a style of ballet which limited classical dance and emphasized pantomime—but was not able to entirely stifle the creativity of those working at the time.
There are too many influential figures from this period of Russian ballet to name, but the following individuals are the most influential to this discussion, each of them interacting with the relationship between content and artistry as regarded by the Soviet regime. Fyodor Vasilievich Lopukhov was a modernist whose experimental ballets revolted and delighted—though the former more than the latter—by turns in the speculative period directly after the Revolution. Agrippina Yakovlevna Vaganova was quietly ambivalent toward Communism but unwaveringly loyal to the classical ballet tradition, which she successfully fought to preserve against those who declared it irretrievably bourgeois. Vakhtang Mikheilis dze Chabukiani was a towering figure of Soviet drambalet, whose athletic virtuosity influenced every role he choreographed or danced. Most influential to this discussion, Leonid Veniaminovich Yakobson was unapologetically Jewish and uncompromisingly creative under a regime which brutally suppressed both; among the figures listed here, Yakobson’s choreographic innovations demonstrate most clearly a keen understanding of the secondary place artistry took to content in Soviet ballet, which he utilized in his works to express subversive themes.
This paper will discuss the power and controversy of Soviet ballet regarding politics, focusing on the ways in which ballet was used to promote Soviet ideology. The emotive response evoked by the artistry of ballet was what made it an invaluable propaganda source for the regime. However, the Soviet necessity of creating clearly understandable ideological content in a regime where misinterpretation could have dire consequences caused the regime to focus to the extreme on the content and dramatic plot of a ballet instead of the artistry of how that content was expressed. Ultimately, this allowed for subversive identities or affiliations—most notably exemplified by Jewish choreographer Leonid Yakobson—to veil the dissident sentiments expressed in their artistry with content that very literally complied with Soviet ideology. Three prominent examples of Soviet drambalets, Flames of Paris, Swan Lake, and Laurencia, will be analyzed for their promotion of Soviet ideology through both dramatic content and choreographic artistry. This research will also analyze two prominent Leonid Yakobson works: Shurale and Spartacus, which demonstrate his understanding of the Soviet regard of artistry as secondary to ideology-affirming content.
I. Pre-Revolutionary Ballet
Even as ballet first came into its own as an art form, there were already questions about its legitimacy as a means of expression versus as purely ornamental. The pioneer of such a question, Frenchman Jean-Georges Noverre, first outlined the idea that ballet could be a “dramatic spectacle that expressed dramatic action not in words but in dance and in which virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake had no place” in 1760 with his Lettres sur la danse er sur les ballets.1 Noverre and his adherents believed that the way to dramatize ballet lay in pantomime and gesture as a means of expressing a story. Concurrently, others abstracted ballet into something which possessed spiritual rather than dramatic meaning, leading to the rise of “white ballets” populated by ballerinas on pointe, to give the illusion of weightless floating and pure, ethereal beauty, in which classical movement to music and not narrative exposition was on full display. These schools of thought led to the creation of ballets that alternated between scenes in which dance and pantomime expressed the dramatic plot and dreamlike sequences that showed white-clad ballerinas on pointe floating through an ethereal haze, telling little in the way of story.2
Ballet took on aristocratic prominence in Russia in the eighteenth century. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the immediate future of ballet was one of political, ideological, and economic hardship, with a marked lack of stability and no indication of the prominence it would later embody in Soviet politics. The critics of ballet doubted its ability to contribute anything meaningful or realistic to contemporary life issues; it was derided as an art form which had grown obsolete upon the death of the aristocrats and bourgeoisie from whence it had come. An influential defender of ballet was Anatole Lunacharsky, the first Soviet People’s Republic Commissar of Education. Lunacharsky believed that ballet had the potential to become “a source of revolutionary happiness,” a “quasireligious propaganda tool instilling enthusiastic revolutionary fervor in its audiences.”3 Lunacharsky was optimistic that the element of ballet which could “set the masses on fire” could be redirected into a propaganda force which would invigorate and re-educate the masses, creating a new identity for the Soviet nation.4
II. Experiments in Soviet Ballet: Dance Symphony, The Red Whirlwind, The Golden Age
Fyodor Lopukhov became the artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre in 1922, and theoretically, his experimental style was ideal for an era in which ballet was reforming, leaving behind the backwardness of czarist classical tradition.5 His ballets relied mainly upon dance, not pantomime, for expression; he attempted to expand the expressiveness of classical ballet by introducing acrobatic or characteristic elements.6 Dance Symphony (1923), Le Renard (1927), and Red Whirlwind (1924)—an allegorical triumph of socialism over czardom—were failures, criticized for an overreliance on acrobatic and gymnastic elements and a lack of real ballet.7 1927 also saw the emergence of the doctrine of socialist realism as a model for all Soviet art, including ballet.8 Soviet socialist realism was meant to showcase the victorious struggle of the masses to create an ideal state, one which was far more optimistic than the current state of life in the USSR.9 Carolyn Pouncy’s article “Stumbling Towards Socialist Realism: Ballet in Leningrad, 1927-1937” discusses the characteristics of socialist realism in the context of Soviet ballet.10 There is a “stern but simple hero representing the people” who either has or eventually acquires a “clear political mission” involving mentorship which galvanizes to revolution.11 The hero’s attempt to solve a problem of oppression or labor drives the plot. There is a clearly defined hero and villain likely linked to class and an optimistic ending which endorses socialism as the creator of a happy future.12 By 1932, socialist realism was the official policy of Soviet ballet.13
The Golden Age was one such socialist realist ballet, the libretto written for a competition for a work which was contemporary, revolutionary, without mystical elements, and “developed on the level of a concrete perception of reality” to the exclusion of the symbolism of experimental works like Lopukhov’s.14 At the Mariinsky and under Lopukhov’s supervision, choreographers Vasily Vainonen and Leonid Yakobson choreographed The Golden Age to music by Dmitri Shostakovich as he began his composing career.15 Leonid Yakobson had been born in 1904 in St. Petersburg to a Jewish family and began his career as a dancer before transitioning to choreography. The second act of The Golden Age (1930) was his first widely known work.16 The Golden Age is a satire about a Soviet soccer team that visits Western Europe for an exhibition called the Golden Age. Acrobatic elements in the ballet were set off with Western dances as well, such as the foxtrot and the Charleston, and Shostakovich incorporated jazz elements into the score.17 The regime disapproved of the inclusion of Western dance and musical themes, which was deemed contrary to the government’s ideals.18 Lopukhov departed the Mariinsky shortly after.
At the same time Lopukhov was experimenting with danced action and abstraction in ballet, a movement sprang up advocating for the exact opposite. While ballet artists primarily divided themselves into modernists or traditionalists who nevertheless both saw classical dance as a central means of balletic expression, theatre and music intellectuals advocated for a “dramatization of ballet where pantomime and danced recitatives would replace ‘empty’ virtuoso classical dance.”19 In agreement with the criticism that classical ballet was a frivolous and empty art form, these intellectuals claimed that the only way for ballet to express serious, realistic topics—as opposed to the bourgeois subjects of imperial ballet—was by relying on pantomime and character dance to express the dramatic plot, leaving aside classical virtuosity as purely decorative and unable to achieve “topical expressiveness... intelligent actions of dramatic order.”20 Nor was this pantomime to be the mime that had been first introduced by Jean-Georges Noverre and codified in nineteenth-century ballets such as Giselle, but a contemporary dramatic pantomime.21 The dancing in this conception of ballet did not rule the action of the plot but rather was fit in around the pantomime action when there was an “excuse” to dance, such as at a wedding or in celebration of a victory. This style of ballet would come to be called drambalet. The Cultural Revolution ended in June of 1931, signaling a return to reverence of the classics of great nineteenth-century artistic achievements such as Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, and Stanislavsky, and also codifying drambalet. 22 Despite reluctance from most ballet artists, including Lopukhov and Agrippina Vaganova, who opposed the idea that classical technique was dramatically worthless and incapable of artistic expression, the political situation of that time gave such credence to drambalet it was soon the regime’s only acceptable means of new ballet production.23
Drambalet gained prominence because it was much better for government purposes than the ballets of Lopukhov and those like him. The use of dance to express content in ballets like The Golden Age was far less clear in its message than the use of mime, which could essentially be verbalized by the libretto. In addition, an excess of virtuosic classical dance where it could not realistically be expected was an affront to socialist realism, and drambalet kept classical virtuosity to a contextualized minimum, focusing instead on the more “realistic” dramatic pantomime and character dance. Drambalet declared “Petipa’s...long, complex classical dance segments...that did not advance a narrative plot” to be “formalism,” artistry without a clear-cut context that could be verbalized.24 Ballet was expected to “reconstruct its language in order to be able to express a verbal text,”25 which would enable the regime to maintain strict control over the themes of ballets—mime and dramatic action were verbal equivalents. This left no room for misinterpretation in the way that action expressed through classical dance could, since classical dance was not verbal but musical.
III. Soviet Ballet Under Stalin: Flames of Paris, Laurencia, Taras Bulba
Flames of Paris has been called the birth of heroic ballet, in which drama and character dance took a central place.26 Like all new ballets produced after the Cultural Revolution, Flames of Paris was a drambalet. Consequently, virtuoso classical dancing was severely limited in favor of more “realistic” character dancing, and the plot was expressed though pantomime. This drambalet is one of the earliest examples of what would become the standard for Soviet propaganda ballets under Stalin. It is adapted from a nineteenth-century literary work, in this case a novel by Felix Gras, a fictional imagining of the 1792 storming of the Tuileries Palace by the Marceliers.27 The influence of socialist realism in the content of the ballet is also clearly visible. The ballet is neither symbolic nor abstract; it is set very concretely in 1792 France.28 While it is not a contemporary theme, this is excused by Vaganova in the program: “The Flames of Paris...is comprehensible and precious because it reflects the spirit of our times.”29 Revolutionary Philippe and peasant girl Jeanne provide the requisite uncomplicated, class-conscious, unambiguously good heroes, and the ballet’s focus is not on the inner lives of the principal characters but on the mob itself as the hero of the ballet. The clear villains of the piece are an oppressive aristocracy displayed as both lecherous and cunning, providing the problem by conspiring against the masses. An actress at Versailles, Mireille, is spurred to revolution when she hears of the conspiracy, showing political development. The heroes are victorious in the end with the villains justly punished by the mob. The ballet, which Vaganova called a “genuinely Soviet spectacle,” was a great success.30
Agrippina Vaganova had enjoyed a respectable though not illustrious ballet career—a dancer admired for technical proficiency but with underwhelming beauty and stage presence—before she turned to teaching at the Leningrad Choreographic School in 1920.31 She was without Communist sympathies, a resolute classicist who also clashed with the innovative sensibilities of Lopukhov and Yakobson. When she became director of the Mariinsky, she was determined to protect classical ballet, in its precarious position, from a regime still unconvinced of its ability to shed its decadent imperial skin and produce something truly Soviet in character. Her lasting contribution to the world of ballet was the Vaganova method, which sought to create a truly Russian classical ballet style. Vaganova’s book Fundamentals of Classical Dance, published in 1934, consolidated what Russian ballet had assimilated from the graceful, artificial manner of French ballet and the athletic virtuosity of Italian ballet into a formal system of teaching which could be said to be fully Russian in character.32 The Vaganova method maintained the principles of classical ballet while giving it a national character: “naturalistic and poetic arms” and strong legs and feet, resulting in the “harmonious coordination of the whole body.”33 In a continuation of this great mission of her life, to save classical ballet from Soviet destruction, she went on to demonstrate her understanding of the demands of socialist realism in regards to content over artistry. In 1931 she began to restage the imperial mainstay Swan Lake for a socialist audience.
Vaganova’s version of Swan Lake, which eventually premiered in 1933 at the Mariinsky Theatre, was an attempt to preserve essential elements of what might otherwise have been considered an irretrievably imperial work. The original Petipa Swan Lake, which has been the basis for every subsequent production, is a fairytale. Medieval German Prince Siegfried must choose a bride but cannot find his true love amongst the proffered noblewomen; while hunting he comes across Odette, a beautiful princess cursed to turn into a swan by day, along with her attendants. She can be saved by a kept oath of true love, which Siegfried swears to, but the sorcerer who cursed Odette tricks him by sending his own daughter, Odile, to seduce him in the guise of Odette, meaning that both parts are traditionally danced by the same dancer. Siegfried, having broken his oath to be true, dooms Odette to spend the rest of her life as a swan, and she kills herself. In despair, Siegfried kills the sorcerer and then himself, reunited in death with Odette.34
Vaganova’s understanding of the importance of her production being socialist realist in content is illustrated by her attempts to align the content with the movement’s principles, as well as her numerous insistences that the production was indeed socialist realist. Aware of the regime’s distaste for magical elements, her Swan Lake takes place in an entirely nonmagical nineteenth-century Prussia, where bourgeois count Siegfried is unable to discern dreams from reality due to the corruption of his out of touch, opulent society. The swans he meets are real swans with no ability to turn into maidens. Siegfried’s love for the head swan is a delusion. Odile, who in the name of realism is played by a different dancer than the nameless swan, is simply the daughter of a neighboring duke whom Siegfried spurns in favor of the swan he is in love with; Odile’s father avenges himself by killing the swan, drawing visible blood—another innovation in the name of realism.35 Siegfried stabs himself in crazed despair.36
The choreography of Swan Lake is overwhelmingly classical in nature, preserving much of the Petipa choreography which Vaganova herself danced in 1913.37 To emphasize the aspects of socialist realism which had been so effective in The Flames of Paris, Vaganova utilized military-precision synchronicity and prominence of the corps de ballet, reminiscent of the feeling of mass unity important in socialist realism, and eliminated nineteenth-century mime scenes. While the ballet adhered to some extent to the confines of drambalet, the choreography is genuinely classical ballet. Vaganova’s awareness of the importance of compliant content over artistry is revealed in her efforts to argue that the plot, not the movements themselves, were socialist realist. Boris Asafev, composer of The Flames of Paris, defended the new production’s claim to socialist realism in a forty page pamphlet entitled “K novoi postanovke baleta ‘Lebedinoe ozero’ v GOTOB,” in which he explained that they had sought to create a “psychologically real” world based on the work of socialist realist Maksim Gorsky in which the downfall of the count is brought about by his bourgeoise corruption landing him in a world of delusion, and the duke who kills the swan in revenge is spurred to do so out of “capitalist desire.”38 Vaganova knew that by changing the content of the ballet to something that satisfied socialist realism and with some small changes to the artistry, she could justify the preservation of much of Petipa’s choreography, because the regime was primarily focused on the content of a ballet being clearly and unambiguously supportive of Soviet ideology. Swan Lake was a success, praised for making the classic relevant to modern times.39
In spite of these successes, Soviet ballet could be dangerous. While at the smaller Mikhailovsky Theatre, Fyodor Lopukhov was still experimenting with dance as a conveyer of action, reluctant to accept that the future of ballet was mimed drama. His pastoral ballet about Soviet collective farmers, The Bright Stream, had been enjoyed by audiences for a year when it was suddenly and harshly denounced in a Pravda article which condemned it as “Ballet Falsity,” accusing Lopukhov of Western sympathies, a trite storyline, and unrealistically using classical dance, bucking socialist realist principles.40 The consequences were strict and dire; Lopukhov and Shostakovich, who had composed the score, saw their careers dashed.41 Adrian Piotrovsky, who had written the libretto alongside Lopukhov, was sent to a gulag and shot.42 A few months later, Vaganova was dismissed from her position as artistic director of the Mariinsky, likely for political reasons.43 Once again the restrictions on ballet artists were more stringent, and classical ballet was limited even further in its artistic expressiveness.
After Vaganova’s departure came the choreographic rise of Vakhtang Chabukiani, Georgian-born dancer and choreographer who had premiered the leading roles in The Golden Age, The Flames of Paris, and Vaganova’s Swan Lake. 44 Chabukiani would also work within the confines of drambalet and socialist realism to express his artistic vision. In 1939, Laurencia premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre, choreographed by Chabukiani, who also premiered the lead role of Frondoso and wrote the libretto.45 Laurencia is the story of Spanish peasant girl Laurencia, whose flirtation with peasant boy Frondoso is interrupted by the arrival of the Commander, back from battle and taken with Laurencia himself. He arrests the pair at their wedding, and when Laurencia is released in tattered clothes she shames the men for their cowardice, inciting both the women and the men to take up arms against their oppressors. They storm the castle, free Frondoso, and all together, kill the tyrannical Commander before celebrating their victory through dance. Frondoso in particular—a vehicle for Chabukiani’s temperamental virtuosity—executes a rousing variation replete with leaps and lightning-fast multiple pirouettes, with Spanish folk dance elements. The socialist realism master plot is here in full force: Frondoso and Laurencia as the simple heroes and the unambiguously evil Commander as the aristocratic oppressor who dies at the hands of the mob, mobilized to revolution by Laurencia’s mimed entreaties to rise up and fight. Most importantly, the ballet is not symbolic or abstract in any way but situated in a specific time and place.
Following the anti-formalism campaign of 1936, choreographers were wary of putting too much classical dance into their productions. Chabukiani, though, was a born virtuoso, which was reflected in his choreographed works. He had an imprecise but vivacious technique that brought an “uninhibited male energy” to his dancing.46 His technique and even his elevation were not extraordinary, but the spirit he brought to his dancing was impossible to ignore. In order to achieve a dance-rich production without using too much “unrealistic” classical ballet, Chabukiani combined classical ballet with many elements of Spanish character dance.47 Socialist realist principles were inherent in many aspects of the ballet, from the increase of character dance to the many corps de ballet scenes in which the whole crowd moves as one, signifying their unity and their power. However, Chabukiani also enacted his artistic vision amidst the confines of drambalet. Despite the regime’s wariness of ballet as an expressive force, Chabukiani enjoyed success because his style of dancing emphasized the idea that Soviet ballet was meant to promulgate: a strong, heroic figure celebrating victory over oppression. His artistic vision was actually beneficial to the promulgation of socialist realism as an ideology. Chabukiani’s success, however, could not last forever. He was accused of having incorrectly played the role of a villainous Polishsympathizer in an anti-Polish, anti-Semitic ballet Taras Bulba, inadvertently turning the propaganda piece on its head by outshining the hero with his dazzling stage presence, and this resulted in trouble with the government.48 In 1941, Chabukiani returned to his native Georgia. He became soloist and choreographer at the Tbilisi Theatre of Opera and Ballet, where he would remain for the rest of his career.49 This was the state of Soviet ballet under Stalin, one in which the emotive power of ballet had transformed it into an influential tool of the state, but wherein the same artistry which was able to inspire such nationalistic devotion was also capable of expressing contrariness to the regime, even inadvertently.
After the failure of The Golden Age, Yakobson had only staged student work until Shurale. Yakobson himself heavily rewrote the original libretto and devised the main plot and much of the action.50 Shurale is significant both as an example of quintessential Soviet ballet and as an example of Yakobson’s somewhat unconventional artistry; this artistry would become integral to his later works as he toyed with the expression of compliant content through subversive artistry. In discussing the libretto before his revision, Yakobson dismisses divertissements of classical virtuosity which contribute nothing to the story or central theme of the ballet. His dissatisfaction with how the original libretto seemed to him to invite the staging of “a fabulous divertissement performance with short pantomime scenes” led him to completely rewrite it.51 He was firm in his belief that plot should be expressed in ballet by ballet, not pantomime, and in Shurale he primarily uses classical ballet to do so, although there are hints of the more naturalistic choreographic language which he would come to rely on for expression, instead of classical ballet. This was a sentiment which had had dire consequences for the creators of The Bright Stream, but Yakobson refused to compromise his artistic vision.
Shurale is based loosely on Tatar fairytales. Shurale attempts to imprison Syuimbike, a beautiful bird-maiden, by hiding her wings, but dashing young Tatar hunter Ali-Batïr comes to her aid by knocking Shurale unconscious. Unable to find her missing wings, Ali-Batïr takes Syuimbike away with him to his village. Wedding preparations, in traditional Tatar style, commence for AliBatïr and Syuimbike, despite the bride’s lingering sorrow over the loss of her wings. At the wedding, Shurale appears and returns Syuimbike’s wings, capturing her in the woods where her betrothed rescues her and sets the forest aflame. Trapped in the raging fire with Syuimbike, Ali-Batïr gives his bride her wings so that she may escape the flames. However, his selflessness inspires such love in Syuimbike that she cannot abandon him, so she throws the wings into the flames. This act of love extinguishes the fire, and Syuimbike and Ali-Batïr return to the village, where everyone celebrates the marriage anew.
Shurale is in some ways a conventional example of Soviet ballet, with its fairy tale basis, its use of character dance and traditions from an ethnic group under the umbrella of Soviet rule, and its heroic theme. It breaks from the conventions of drambalet, however, to express action through dance. Yakobson succeeded with Shurale in using “dancing action,” and his writings on this process encapsulate how he sought to express the themes of his work not only in clearly understood, unambiguous pantomime, but also by using the actual movements of ballet as a way to emphasize the dramatic plot as well as the themes of the libretto.52 This use of balletic movement to express action and theme would also be used to great effect when Yakobson choreographed Spartacus. Although little significance is paid to it by those searching for the more controversial themes of Yakobson’s later work, Shurale is an essential demonstration of Yakobson’s talent to express not only dramatic plot through dance, but also artistic themes, which imbued his works with meaning beyond what was outlined in the libretto. Its compliance with Soviet convention where it counted most, the plot, while eschewing traditional drambalet norms, shows his awareness of the importance of compliant content without allowing it to hinder his artistic expression. In not confining dance to scenes of virtuosity, Yakobson demonstrates a movement style less clearly defined as dramatic plot as pantomime and more able to lend itself to ambiguity.
In March of 1951, Shurale was awarded one of the highest civilian honors possible, the 1950 Stalin Prize in Literature and Arts, intended as the Soviet equivalent to a Nobel Prize. Just weeks afterward, however, Yakobson was formally fired from the Mariinsky Ballet due to rampant antisemitism, and, for the next few years, he choreographed small works around Leningrad, all while writing librettos for ballets he had no guarantee he would ever be allowed to stage.53 Yakobson’s widow believed that it was only Stalin’s death which saved him from execution.54
IV. Soviet Ballet Post-Stalin: Spartacus
Spartacus had become an important figure to Communists since the Russian Revolution. Leonid Yakobson was the originator of the Spartacus ballet concept and the uncredited rewriter of the Spartacus libretto.55 Everything proceeded in favor of Spartacus easily following the socialist realist master plot. At the same time, Spartacus is neither the strictly classical ballet espoused by previous decades of Soviet choreographers, nor is it character dance driven or dominated by pantomime. It is in a language that belongs solely to Yakobson, which expresses without artifice or virtuosity or even pointe shoes, the female dancers instead in flat sandals. “There isn’t a single nondance movement, not a single pantomime,” he would say later in response to the critique that Spartacus did not have enough dance by those who had expected classical ballet.56
In Spartacus, Yakobson imitated the socialist realist aesthetic of large corps de ballet numbers, just as in Flames of Paris, Swan Lake, and Laurencia, but Yakobson takes this staple of Soviet revolution ballets and uses it as a juxtaposition between “massive authoritarian power” and “the personal scale of suffering.”57 The ballet opens with a staggeringly grand scene of soldiers marching in unison into the city, a display of strength and power which does not limit itself to dramatic pantomime as soldiers in a play might utilize, but unabashedly uses innovative balletic movement to further the characterization of the scene. Crassus is returning from a victorious battle in Rome, the triumph of his spirit echoing that of the successful mobs at the very end of Laurencia or Flames of Paris, but the audience cannot align themselves with these victors; the slaves enter, including Spartacus, his wife Phrygia, and Harmonious. The degradation of these slaves stands in stark contrast to the grandeur of the scene before them; few revolutionary ballets belabored their villainous aristocrats with such material and choreographic triumph, maintaining them as purely dramatic pantomime roles with no dance at all. The scale of power that is displayed—and maintained throughout the ballet—by the villains, the oppressors, is what prevents Spartacus from sharing the ideals of socialist realist ballets despite its historical content. It is instead a bleak look at the horrors of life under authoritarian rule.
Also at the slave market, Spartacus and Phrygia are separated when Spartacus and Harmonious are purchased to be gladiators, and Phrygia is purchased by wealthy courtesan Aegina, resplendent in a sedan. The ability of authoritarian rule to “replace humanity with savagery” and destroy and corrupt human relationships is again displayed in the next scene, which sees various gladiators fight to the death.58 Violence is part and parcel of Soviet ballets, of course, but the fighting of the heroic ballet protagonist popularized by Chabukiani is of the swaggering, swashbuckling variety, like Frondoso easily besting the Commander in Laurencia or Philippe’s fighting with the aristocrats in The Flames of Paris. Furthermore, this revolutionary violence is possessed of a strong sense of unity; while Frondoso fights with the Commander, he actually meets his end as the entire ensemble converges onto him, whirling around him, a writhing mass which completely obscures the Commander from view until he is dead, and his body is dragged away. In this way the people as a whole and not as individuals are responsible for the death of their oppressor; the will of the mob is what is victorious. Such a sentiment is crushed in Spartacus as the oppressed are forced to kill one another just to survive, destroying the idea of total unity of the masses, “suggest[ing] how political systems eat into the souls of their citizens.”59 Under the brutality of totalitarianism, humans are forced to turn on one another to survive, subverting the idea of the inherent, unbreakable unity of the oppressed masses which was so prevalent in Soviet revolution ballets.
In the same way that Jeanne or Laurencia spur their people to revolution, Spartacus launches a rebellion against the nobles, and they win victories against the Roman army until Harmonious is seduced by Aegina into betraying the cause, which results in his death. Phrygia and Spartacus bid one another goodbye as he goes to battle the final time, knowing that he will die in his attempt to be free. The final scene is that of Phrygia coming across Spartacus’ body. She silently screams, sobs, tears her hair, overcome by total grief. Then, controlling herself after a moment, she gently arranges his shield and sword atop his body.
It is this, the ending of the ballet, that most sharply diverges from the Soviet revolutionary ballet mold. In a world where every revolution had a happy ending, Spartacus ends with the sobbing grief, then desolation of Spartacus’ faithful wife as Spartacus lies dead on the ground. The oppression cannot be overcome by the uprising of the masses, and the hero is dead and gone, a far cry from the nigh-indestructible Soviet heroes danced by Chabukiani and his contemporaries. Instead of the optimistic ending demanded by socialist realist principles, there is no hope for a better future, there is only a dead man and a woman broken by grief. The libretto ending with Spartacus’ death can be justified by historical fact, but the presentation of it in Spartacus is unique in its desolation. The themes expressed in Spartacus would never have been allowed to grace the stage if it had not been for the Soviet view of primarily judging the unambiguous content of a ballet work and not the artistry, and Yakobson’s skill at combining compliant content with artistry expressing themes contrary to the Soviet cultural project. Nevertheless, Yakobson does address such themes in Spartacus, and he addresses them through dance, not through pantomime, allowing the viewer to interpret more than simply what they are meant to read in the libretto.
Conclusion
After the October Revolution, the odds against Russian ballet appeared insurmountable. Nurtured with pride by the Imperial household and then condemned by radicals, the survival of ballet was in jeopardy, and many would never, even decades later, regard it as an art form capable of expressing serious themes or truly escaping its bourgeois heritage.
Ultimately, ballet artists wanted to create effective productions, and each had his own vision on how best to do so. The variance in success between productions, regardless of their adherence to the standard socialist realist plot, can be attributed to the effect of the artistry of individual productions. By and large, audiences enjoyed classical ballet as both a virtuosic display, such as the famed thirty-two fouettés of Swan Lake, and an expressive abstract force, such as the dreamlike eternity of La Bayadare’s Kingdom of the Shades. Soviet ballet, however, was quickly limited in its ability to express theme or meaning through dance. Drambalet was popularized not by ballet pedagogues, but by intellectuals who believed that classical ballet was artistically worthless, still believing ballet could never be capable of addressing any serious subject. This idea was accepted by the political regime, aware that as a tool for propaganda, drambalet was far better, as its clearly articulated pantomime was unambiguous and could not be misinterpreted. The anti-formalism campaign of 1936 kept classical ballet in a stranglehold, to be used to entice audiences but only punctuating long periods of pantomime which explained a dramatic plot.
Still, despite the oppression, censorship, and sometimes deadly consequences of making art in the Soviet Union, ballet artists wanted, above all else, to fulfill their artistic visions. There was no consensus on how to best utilize ballet, but all artists knew that they were in a precarious position and responded accordingly, in a way which strove to please the regime while still creating works that they found merit in as artists. To dismiss ballets such as The Flames of Paris, Swan Lake, Shurale, Spartacus, or Laurencia as wholly artistically stagnant due to their obvious attempts to adhere to the demands of socialist realism is to, like the Soviet regime, overlook artistry for content. It is an extremely shallow view of the artistic landscape of Soviet ballet. Ballet was not a monolith; every artist had their own conception of how to best express truths about the human experience through ballet, and despite the brutality of the regime they worked under, they attempted to carry out those expressions. Many Soviet ballet artists made compromises with their work, taking advantage of the Soviet regime’s preoccupation with content as a clear means of expressing Soviet ideology in order to carry out their personal artistic vision, whether that was a preservation of classical heritage, a character-infused virtuosic heroism, or the experience of being othered by a brutal regime.
