Alexander Pushkin: Master Teacher of Dance

"... this new gem of a book ... is required reading for any dance enthusiast, and the black-and-white illustrations, sprinkled throughout, are just gorgeous."
--Time Out New York

At the great Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg, Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin (1907-1970) danced many leading roles from 1925 to 1953. However, it was as a teacher at the Leningrad Choreographic School that he became a legend. Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov were his star pupils, but nearly all the leading male dancers of the Kirov Ballet from the 1940s through the 1960s were taught by him. Filled with personal photos, as well as others of his students and classes, this concise, insightful biography reveals to us the life and techniques of a master teacher.

Alexander Pushkin: Master Teacher of Dance presents in detail three of Pushkin's classes: a Senior Class from the late 1930s-early 1940s; a Graduating Class from 1967; and an Artists' Class from the 1960s. The classes reveal the inventiveness of his combinations and the logic of his class progressions. Pushkin always refused to write a ballet textbook because he did not want his method, which was flexible and adapted to the individual needs of his students, to turn into a rigid lesson plan. However, he was generous in sharing his ideas on teaching with all who came to observe his classes. His openness is reflected in this biography by a former student, which makes available for the first time in English the techniques of one of the greatest and most influential of all modern ballet teachers.

For dance enthusiasts as well as for the serious student and teacher, this small volume illuminates the methods and personality of a man little known in the West, but someone who has made significant contributions to the international world of dance.

2001, b/w photographs, 200 pages, hardcover, $27.50, ISBN 0-87104-452-8

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About the Author and the Translator

Gennady Albert studied under Alexander Pushkin in the 1960s and is currently Managing Director of the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg. Antonina E. Bouis has translated more than fifty titles from Russian into English including I, Maya Plisetskaya, a memoir of the Russian prima ballerina; Mothers and Daughters by Elena Bonner; and St. Petersburg: A Cultural History by Solomon Volkov.

Foreword

by Mikhail Baryshnikov

The publication of this book elicits in every student of Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin a wave of infinitely tender memories of this amazing man. We owe him so much for what he contributed to that most important period of our formation as dancers.

I think that this publication is an event for the entire ballet world. This is not only a monograph about a brilliant teacher of dance and a handbook for professionals of the choreographic stage. It is also, and perhaps most importantly, a serious attempt to examine the development of the school of Russian ballet from the perspective of the entire century. This book is a great help in understanding the consecutive development of ballet pedagogy from Petipa and his comrades-in-arms Johansson and Cecchetti through the line of brilliant names such as Legat, Obukhov, and Ponomarev, to the master pedagogue, Pushkin, who perhaps without knowing it embodied and crystallized the best ideas of the most important European schools of choreography. He did not blindly re-create the exercises and skills of his great predecessors but intuitively transformed them in relation to the evolution of the art of ballet. More than a quarter century has passed since Alexander Ivanovich's death, and nearly a decade since the death of his most famous graduate, Rudolf Nureyev. Teacher and student believed in each other and in the end opened the door to immortality for each other. And the great number of Pushkin's students now working in ballet theaters all over the world--dancers, teachers, choreographers--are the best memorial to their teacher. I am pleased to note that this book about our mentor and the glorious traditions of Russian ballet instruction is written by a student of Alexander Pushkin.

A few words about the book as a manual. The three Pushkin classes included are no more than an example of the harmony and wholeness of his educational assignments. They are the fruit of priceless experience, but not the solution to all problems, since Pushkin worked with every class, with all his students, for several years, determining fully the course of their formation, both professionally and as human beings.

His pedagogy did not turn into a rigid, regimented system, like that of some of his outstanding contemporaries. However, he may have done more than anyone else to preserve the purity of connections to his predecessors, to the past of Russian and world ballet. It is this that gave his creative views a breadth and freedom that were not typical of his generation. He regarded with interest various schools of modern choreography, and he could take delight in the crystalline dancing and artistry of Erik Bruhn, the feline softness and plasticity of the young Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, and the innovative productions of various choreographers.

Finally, a wish. The reader should not be put off by the book's special ballet terminology and concrete descriptions of classical steps--they are easy to step around. What you have here is an enjoyable and accessible book--a book about a teacher and his students, written by a not-indifferent author. Everything that it conveys about bringing up a ballet artist applies to other spheres of life and art. In essence, this is a book about raising and educating individuals and about the work of a great artist and teacher.




B. Bergeron/J. Woolf, 12/01