When, in 1983, I crossed the threshold of the building on Architect Rossi Street in St. Petersburg, where the Vaganova Ballet Academy is located, I could not have imagined that a significant part of my life and career would be connected to this building and institution, which was then called the Leningrad Choreographic School named after A. Vaganova. In 1991, I graduated from the academy and began working at the Mariinsky Theatre. About five years later, I realized that my vocational training as a ballet dancer was not enough. In 1991, the school had transformed into a higher educational institution, offering higher education programs, including one in «History and Theory of Choreographic Art.» I was interested in this program because it combined theory and practice. I had plenty of practical performance experience in the theater, but my knowledge of theory and methodology was lacking. This program offered the opportunity to fill in the knowledge gap I felt. In 1995, I enrolled in the Academy in the Pedagogical Faculty. The training took five years and was very diverse, as it involved studying classical and other dance methods and the history of ballet, source studies, ballet criticism, and so on. It was here that I met people I consider my teachers, who had a tremendous influence on shaping my worldview. In 2000, I completed my studies with honors. My thesis was on the history of the Trinity Church of the Imperial Theaters Directorate, which was established in the Academy building in 1806, later closed during the Soviet era, and revived in 1995. While working on my thesis, I gathered materials from the Historical Archive and memoirs from the past. The work was exciting and engaging. Based on these materials, I created my first book, Two Centuries of the Theater Church.
In 1999, as my studies were coming to an end, the then-rector, Leonid Nikolaevich Nadirov, called me into his office and said: «Aleksei, here’s the situation: I think you’re not a stupid person, and this might be of interest to you. In the new season, Marina Leonidovna Vivien, the director of the academic museum, is leaving for France. Would you take on her role?»
Marina Leonidovna was a well-known figure in St. Petersburg, having managed the Academy’s museum for a long time, and the museum’s continued existence is primarily due to her efforts. Moreover, she was the daughter of the renowned Leningrad director Leonid Vivien, spoke French fluently, and had a fondness for French roots. I hesitated for a short time and took on the role of museum director. The Academy’s Museum is a departmental collection of relics, lacking the severe cataloging of state museums and archives. It was (and still is) a classic institutional museum in a rather grandiose ceremonial space adorned with historical photographs that visually represent the school’s history and ballet. It hosts conferences and regular classes on the history of art. With the enthusiasm of a young man, I set to work on organizing it, including archiving and so on. I continued working in the museum throughout my years at the Academy (until 2013).
During this time, the Academy underwent a major reconstruction and renovation, significantly updating the museum. We acquired new equipment for it and presented the Academy’s history in a completely new way; plus, we organized numerous seminars with visiting foreign educators specializing in ballet management and pedagogy. This was an innovation for the Academy and, I believe, brought a fresh energy to both its and my own life.
A year into my work at the museum, I was also responsible for leading the Pedagogical Faculty. At that time, it had already trained students for ten years in ballet pedagogy, history and theory of choreographic art, and instrumental performance (piano). As an alumnus of the faculty, I knew its strengths and weaknesses well. The Academy had been a higher educational institution for only ten years, and the transformation of an institution with a 250-year background as a school presented a particular challenge, requiring unconventional solutions and approaches.
Moreover, teachers accustomed to working in a vocational school did not immediately accept higher education requirements (in some sense, this process is ongoing). Therefore, the transition period from the school to the university at the Academy was quite prolonged, and I was destined to play a particular role. Of course, I was not alone… There was a group of like-minded colleagues at the Academy, interested staff from the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia and the Ministry of Culture of Russia, who greatly assisted me by sharing their experience and teaching me—ballet dancer—the principles of university work, introducing me (and later the Academy) to the nationwide system of higher education institutions. Recognizing the ballet academy as part of the university system took ten years.
In the early 2000s, the Academy underwent the procedure of state accreditation for the first time as a higher education institution. As a result, it was mandated to introduce new areas of work—scientific and educational-methodological—and corresponding positions for vice-rectors. In 2002, I became the Vice-Rector for Educational and Methodological Work. Someone filled the position of Vice-Rector for Science and Development with a very unusual background—V.M. Isakov—an engineer, inventor, educator, and organizer of education in penitentiary institutions with a PhD in Technical Sciences, who had worked at the renowned Central Research Institute named after Academician A.N. Krylov. A technical expert by nature with a very systematic view of the world, he contributed significantly to both me and the Academy in terms of structuring and organizing work, which is always lacking in a creative educational institution.
The beginning of my deanship and later vice-rectorship coincided with a global reform of the entire Russian education system related to Russia’s signing of the Bologna Declaration.
The strategic goal of my work as vice-rector was defined by the ideas of the then-rector, L. Nadirov, who, in 1994, visited the Paris Opera Ballet School (the oldest ballet school in the world), where he saw that its graduates received a bachelor’s level higher education after eight years of training. This inspired him to develop a similar model for the Academy. Moreover, since the Academy’s transformation into a university, the issue of the lack of higher education for ballet dancers has become significantly more acute: most teachers (for example, N.M. Dudinskaya and others) traditionally had vocational education, as did all ballet dancers in the Soviet Union. This did not prevent them from working at the choreographic school, but they were not qualified to teach at the Academy, a higher education institution. Therefore, L. Nadirov envisioned raising the educational level of ballet dancers to that of higher education for all graduating ballet artists. This proved to be a challenging task. Historically, ballet education policy (like many phenomena in Russian culture) was shaped by the rivalry and pull between two centers – St. Petersburg and Moscow – the Leningrad and Moscow choreographic schools. They developed two approaches as with other aspects of understanding higher education for ballet dancers. The Moscow Academy of Choreography, which became a higher education institution slightly later than the Vaganova Academy, took a straightforward approach by adding four years of higher education to the eight years of vocational training, albeit in a shortened program. This meant that after completing eight years of training and starting to work in the theater, a ballet dancer would have to continue studying for another 3-3.5 years in the specialty of choreographic performance. In this case, the quality of education was less than adequate. The professional career of a dancer typically spans 15-20 years, and the early years in the theater should be dedicated to laying the foundation for a future career rather than being split between study and work. Nadirov’s idea was to extend the eight-year education to the first level of higher education – a bachelor’s degree – without significantly increasing (or only minimally increasing) the duration of training. My task was to resolve this issue. Ultimately, I succeeded in creating a nine-year training system for ballet dancers with a bachelor’s degree by adding just one additional year. After the education reform at the Academy (since 2009), the total training period for ballet dancers became nine years, with seven years dedicated to vocational training and two years to higher education, which was an exceptional and atypical phenomenon in the Russian education system. The implementation of this model was made possible with the help and support of Rector Vera Dorofeeva (who succeeded L. Nadirov in 2004) and Artistic Director Altynai Asylmuratova.
Aleksei Fomkin and Yuri Grigorovich during the choreographer’s visit to the Vaganova Ballet Academy. 2008
During this period, Russia was joining the Bologna Process, which involved introducing a two-tier higher education system in the classical European model: a bachelor’s degree – 3-4 years, and a master’s degree – 2 years. Considering the specifics of training ballet dancers – the short period of professional activity and the dependence of training on the state of the body – the physical apparatus – these timeframes required adjustment: a two-year bachelor’s program should correspond to a three-year master’s program with training for ballet pedagogues and choreographers. Unfortunately, with the arrival of government officials with a completely different mindset, it was impossible to complete this model. The results of these administrators’ activities at the state level are seen today in the rejection of the Bologna Process and at the Academy level, in dismantling the described system and returning to the «Moscow» model of training.
Nevertheless, it is essential to note that I created the atypical model for training ballet dancers – bachelor’s degree holders- and implemented it in practice for several years. Ballet dancers studied for nine years and received a bachelor’s degree. After concluding their careers with higher education, they could teach in the system of additional education or, after completing a three-year master’s program, become ballet teachers at higher education institutions or choreographers. Of course, this model significantly challenged long-established patterns of perception in ballet education, which were familiar but not practical, particularly from the perspective of the dancers’ life needs. Nonetheless, significant work was accomplished: a precedent was established, and perhaps, in the future, its results will be in demand.
It should be noted that the Bologna reforms were not the only attempts to reform ballet training. They affected all choreographic education in Russia, as choreography became the only field in culture and art to transition to a bachelor’s and master’s degree system. These changes were most fully manifested in developing federal state educational standards for the second and third generations between 2002 and 2010. This was a brief period during which the bureaucratic apparatus of the Ministry of Culture partially and temporarily relinquished control over educational policy, allowing universities to determine it independently (today, this is a thing of the past, and officials are once again in control). This policy was formed within the framework of the Educational and Methodological Association for Choreographic Art – an association that included representatives of educational institutions in Russia engaged in choreographic training. The management of the Association was divided between the Moscow and St. Petersburg ballet academies, with their spheres of influence defined by the educational programs assigned to them. For a decade, I had the opportunity to lead the work of the Association effectively and develop the federal state academic standards for bachelor’s and master’s degrees of the second and third generations.
According to Russian legislation, standards are supposed to be updated once every ten years, but in practice, this has occurred much more frequently. At that time, the essence of these updates was to expand the freedom of educational institutions in developing their academic programs. As a result, contemporary dance programs are currently implemented in more than 15 higher education institutions in Russia (compared to just one before the reforms start). Each of these programs has its substantive specifics, depending on the needs and opportunities of the region where the institution is located. This enhances the competitiveness of educational institutions and broadens the options available to students.
At the Academy level, introducing the master’s degree standard allowed me to launch an innovative program called «Scientific-Creative Laboratory of Contemporary Dance Forms.» This was a collaborative effort with dancers and choreographers Tatiana Gordeeva, Alexander Lyubashin, and manager Denis Venidiktov. For the Academy, this program was stylistically, substantively, and aesthetically radically different from the ballet tradition. In my view, it revitalized the choreography department, which had been stagnant at that time: the classical tradition gained the opportunity to be enriched with a modern understanding of corporeality, which led to the development of two poles of choreographer training, which, fortunately, continue to exist at the Academy today.
During the same years, Vice-Rector V.M. Isakov and I launched a program in Performing Arts Management. Management in ballet is a narrow professional field. Only a small number of specialists are trained in universities. Managers from related fields often do not understand the specifics of ballet art and education, where the body is the main instrument. These characteristics need to be considered in direct managerial activities.
A significant development in the Academy was the establishment of postgraduate studies, which allowed many dancers (including myself in 2009) to defend their theses.
I also attempted to reform the specialty «History and Theory of Choreographic Art.» I started from the idea that choreographic researchers need to be trained within a more generalized field of study, encompassing a broader range of activities for graduates. In the third generation of Federal State Educational Standards for Higher Education (FSES HPE), a new area of study was introduced: «Theory and History of the Arts» (bachelor’s, master’s), and the qualification of a dance art researcher was changed to choreologist (instead of balletologist). In the 1920s, the State Academy of Artistic Sciences (Moscow) had choreological laboratories that actively implemented an interdisciplinary approach to synthesize art studies in three directions: sociological, psychophysical, and philosophical, through «analytical study of the arts.» The Academy did not last long, but its experience could have been used to develop a comprehensive theory of choreographic art. At the Vaganova Academy, it became possible to start this work after introducing the «Arts and Humanities» program (bachelor’s, master’s). St. Petersburg State University created these programs based on the liberal arts programs of Bard College in the United States. My idea was to apply the principles of such education at the Vaganova Ballet Academy. Unfortunately, the changing political climate did not allow this to happen.
Nevertheless, over several years, I partially aligned higher education at the Academy with the European intellectual agenda by inviting leading European dancers, choreographers, and researchers to give lectures and conduct practical classes. Among them were Béatrice Massin – a renowned French choreographer and reconstructor of «belle dance» (French noble style); Pierre Rigal – a French dancer and choreographer whose works were well received in New York and presented at the Baryshnikov Arts Center as original and progressive; Jennifer Goubé – a famous French ballerina, educator, and director of the Paris Goubé Dance Center; Riitta Väinio, a pioneer of contemporary dance in Finland, and others.
I can’t say that the «European influence» was warmly welcomed by the Academy’s teachers. Still, it was gratifying that educators from many universities across Russia showed interest in it. To facilitate this, I had to establish a Continuing Education Faculty at the Academy, with administrative management handled by Denis Venidiktov.
Unfortunately, my reformist zeal did not extend to the specialty of «Ballet Pedagogy.» More precisely, it, like the entire system of choreographic education, was transitioned to the bachelor’s and master’s levels, but this did little to change its content. The only achievement was the addition of a course titled «Anatomy, Physiology, and Fundamentals of Ballet Medicine» (more details about this and the Bologna reforms in ballet: https://alfomkin.com/the-bologna-education-reform-in-russia/). To this day, no scientific research has been conducted to establish the optimal content for the training of ballet educators. As can be seen, there was no need for such work before the 1990s. Ballet teachers were trained in the schools of Moscow and Leningrad, and those who wanted this education, primarily teachers from peripheral choreographic schools, would go there. The emerging market situation dramatically changed this. There was a mass opening of higher education institutions, for which the educational program in ballet pedagogy became very attractive. The issue of preserving the appropriate professional level of the specialty is crucial, particularly the problem of legislatively fixing the requirements for the work experience preceding the current level of education.
During my years at the Academy, I was able to integrate it into scientific research to some extent: the faculty participated in more than 25 state scientific projects addressing various issues within the education system. We can only hope that the established system of professional ballet pedagogy will continue to attract the attention of researchers, who will review and summarize the accumulated experience, optimizing program content to preserve the ballet school.
In conclusion, I would like to note that I never abandoned my teaching work throughout my time at the Academy. Today, I fondly remember the time spent at the Academy and express my deep gratitude to all my colleagues who helped, supported, and debated with me for the opportunity to contribute to the common cause for the benefit of ballet art.