On December 6, 1916, according to the custom, all the churches in the capital of the Russian empire held a special service in honor of Nicholas II’s saint’s day. This time the feast of St. Nicholas was not marked with as much pomp as usual, because the bloody war with Germany had reached its third year. But for Georgy Balanchivadze (nicknamed “Georges”), a twelve-year-old charge of the Imperial Petrograd Theater School, and for his classmates, the occasion became quite special; he remembered and recounted it all his life.
Georges was learning to be a ballet dancer; he had been on a full scholarship for several years, paid out of the tsar’s treasury, in an enormous building that stretched the entire length of Teatralnaya (Theater) Street. On the morning of December 6, Georges and the other pupils were led to a service at the school chapel and in the evening were taken in a six-seater coach to a performance at the Imperial Maryinsky Theater. They were there not as spectators but as proud participants. The ballet was Nicholas’s beloved
When the performance was over, the little dancers changed into their parade uniforms from the ballet school. Georges liked his uniform—a handsome, light blue military-looking suit with silver lyres on the collar and cap. After lining up the children in pairs, their supervisors led them to be presented to the emperor. It was a solemn moment and the children caught their breath with excitement, but they stayed in line with their habitual professionalism. Georges Balanchivadze marched along diligently, too.
Everyone thinks that the royal box at the Maryinsky is the one in the middle. Actually, the tsar’s box was on the side, on the right. It had a separate entrance, a special, large stairway, and a separate foyer. When you came in, it was like entering a colossal apartment: marvelous chandeliers and the walls covered with light blue cloth. The emperor was there with his entire family—the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, the heir, his daughters; we were lined up by size and presented—here they are, Efimov, Balanchivadze, Mikhailov. We stood at attention.
The tsar wasn’t tall. The tsarina was very tall, a beautiful woman. She was dressed luxuriously. The grand duchesses, Nicholas’s daughters, were also beauties. The tsar had bulging light eyes and he rolled his Rs. He asks, “Well, how are you?” We had to click our heels and reply, “Extremely pleased, Your Imperial Majesty!”
Then we received a royal gift: chocolate in silver boxes, marvelous ones! And mugs of exquisite beauty, porcelain, with light blue lyres and the imperial monogram.1
In 1981, in New York City, this is how the émigré George Balanchine, a celebrated seventy-seven-year-old choreographer, recounted this touching story to me, another Russian émigré who had come to America comparatively recently. It was one of many little legends that composed Balanchine’s reminiscences of the city that he stubbornly continued to call Petersburg, despite official and widely accepted name changes.
Balanchine must have sensed the almost saccharine quality of the picture he was presenting. That may be why he invariably added an ironic touch: the other youngsters reverently preserved the chocolate from the tsar as relics until the candy grew moldy. But Georges ate his immediately. “At that time it wasn’t in the least bit important tome.”2
