Coming from a ballet family, Carlo Rossi, the street’s architect, seemed fated to build the house for what would become the most famous ballet school in the world. The building is part of the architectural ensemble of magical harmony and severity. The secret of that magic was explained to me by the choreographer Fyodor Lopukhov. I once met him on Nevsky Prospect in the early 1960s. Resembling Gogol—if the writer had lived to a ripe old age—Lopukhov was hurrying back to his small apartment in the ballet school building. Before that, we had met in the Leningrad Conservatory, where Lopukhov headed the choreography department.
What luck to have had Lopukhov as guide, even for just twenty minutes! I still remember his exaltation when proclaiming that Rossi’s edifice had no equal.
Behold the Alexandrinsky Theater—there is nothing comparable in Europe! The Grand Opera in Paris, Covent Garden—they pale before Rossi’s creation. I assure you! They say that Russians don’t know how to work. It’s not true! The entire Teatralnaya [Theater] Street was built in three and a half months, eighteen million bricks laid by hand!
Lopukhov made me realize that the entire street is basically two huge buildings. One had housed the Ministries of Education and Internal Affairs since 1834; the one across the street had been the site of the administration of the imperial theaters and the ballet school since 1835. “Do you know, when you walk down this street to the theater, the columns of the buildings literally start to dance? Believe me! You’ll see, I’m right! I sometimes wonder—did Rossi do it consciously?”
Of course, I knew that the harmony of the street was the result of architectural calculation. It had been beaten into our heads since childhood that Theater Street is 220 meters long and the height of the buildings equals the width of the street—22 meters. In my Leningrad days the conventional wisdom was that walks along Theater Street (renamed by then to Rossi Street) cultivated the feeling for refinement and spiritual harmony. But I suspect the young Balanchine did not think much about it. It is hard to believe now, but initially he felt almost revulsion for his future profession. He was attracted by music, which he felt came from within and touched him, while dancing seemed forced on him from without.
The unexpected change came during a performance of Tchaikovsky’s
The music started, and Georges suddenly understood that he passionately wanted to be on that stage, as often as possible—he was prepared to spend the rest of his life there.17 He was carried away by the spectacle made up of music, movement, scenery, light, and the response of the audience. But music in that inseparable union always remained the first among equals for Balanchine. And that feeling was probably what propelled him to become the greatest choreographer of the twentieth century.
The author of the ballet masterpiece that had inflamed Georges’s imagination and changed his life was Marius Petipa, the Frenchman who came by boat to Petersburg at the age of twenty-nine in 1847. Balanchine came to America at the age of twenty-nine, also by boat, a significant coincidence for the superstitious Georgian. Living a long life, Petipa, whom many consider the greatest creator of classical ballet, served four Russian emperors “with faith and truth”—Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II. He choreographed dozens of ballets for the imperial theater, including such world-famous masterpieces as
