And that is probably why the only serious examinations in the ballet school were in the dance classes. Fokine complained that history, geography, and languages were taught and learned superficially: “At that time none of the artists traveled abroad, and French seemed like a totally useless torture to us.”37 Lopukhov claimed that Nijinsky, for instance, graduated without taking any exams in the academic subjects, because it was understood he would fail them anyway.
That was how the school was set up and it continued in that fashion for decades. The daily routine of the ballet monastery had its own appeal; it was in harmony with the state structure outside the school and yielded excellent professional results. As long as it was peaceful in Russia, it was peaceful inside the ballet school. But as the foundations of the imperial state started to tremble, unrest began among the dancers, too.
One of the first rebels was Fokine, soon followed by others. Lopukhov told me that at age fifteen he had decided he would not be “just some dumb little dancer.” “Fokine taught us to ask questions,” he recalled. “How had it been before? You came out on stage, did your work, and left. The important thing was for your pirouette to be good, but why you were doing it, whom you were portraying—most didn’t even wonder about that. After Fokine, dancing meaninglessly became shameful.”38
The enticing rumors coming from Paris about Diaghilev’s enterprise had a profound effect on the school’s pupils. Western Europe did not seem so distant or abstract anymore. The Russian ballet was popular there, but not the traditional, academic sort that they were taught at the school, but a much more experimental one. As Danilova, who joined the school in 1911, told me, “Suddenly everyone wanted to move forward, and not keep endlessly rehashing the old.”39
At the ballet school, the conflict between the comfortable routine and the distracting outside world only increased. We do not know how it would have developed if the political situation in Russia had remained stable. But in 1917 two seismic revolutionary shocks hit the country. The first revolution swept away the monarchy, the second eliminated the bourgeoisie. And along with them, most of the institutions of the ancien régime were destroyed. But a particularly heavy blow befell the imperial theaters: they lost both their august patron and their most loyal audience.
In this catastrophic new situation, the ballet school was simply forgotten at first. Ballet and opera performances in revolutionary Petrograd continued as if in a somnambulist’s dream, by momentum, while the former “monastery” was suddenly without supervision. Previously pupils had arrived at the Maryinsky Theater in special carriages under strict supervision. Now even the streetcars were not running, and the pupils had to get to the theater on foot.
In late autumn 1917, Balanchivadze and his classmate Mikhail Mikhailov performed in Glinka’s
Petrograd at night was particularly eerie then. Shots rang out here and there and it was raining as well. Hunched over in their black topcoats, Georges and Mikhail jumped over big puddles to keep from getting their worn boots even wetter. No one had worried about the pupils’ clothes in ages.
A well-dressed gentleman strode boldly through the puddles ahead of the young dancers. His insouciance was explained by his marvelous new galoshes, which shone even in the dark. Hopping after the striding man, the boys eyed those galoshes enviously. Suddenly several shots could be heard and the proud owner of the galoshes fell face down into a puddle.
Georges and Mikhail ran off in opposite directions. Mikhail hid in the nearest doorway, where the gentleman in galoshes was soon brought. He was wounded and groaned loudly, repeating that one of the shots had killed the boy in a black overcoat who had been next to him. “Georges!” thought the terrified Mikhail. He ran to the scene of the shooting but found no one. He wandered around the nearby streets for a long time, trying to find out from the few passersby where the dead boy had been taken.
In despair, Mikhail returned to the school. “You can imagine my joy when Georges ran out of our small, agitated anthill toward me,” he later recalled. It turned out that Georges had also heard talk of a boy in a topcoat killed by the shots and decided that it had been Mikhail. He too had unsuccessfully looked for his friend and returned dejected to the dormitory, where he upset all his classmates with the terrifying story. Luckily, things had turned out all right that time.
