How Russia’s indigenous artists reforged Soviet ballet to revive provincial theatre

Seated in the new hall of the Sapaev Opera and Ballet Theatre in Yoshkar-Ola, it is easy to forget that you are almost some 400 miles east of Moscow. The theatre is compact but stately, with a magnificent organ that rises towards the ceiling’s ornate chandelier. It conjures scenes of a Russia best kept pressed between the pages of a novel, where Tolstoyan heroines live out their own private dramas from lavish opera boxes.

Look to the stage, however, and that familiar feeling is interrupted. The boards are bare but for a translucent curtain. A group of ballerinas, dressed in simple white tunics, enter the stage. Their movements seem odd: slow and smooth, as though they are wading through water or parting the branches of trees. Newcomers may be at a loss, but local audiences will recognise the movements at once. This is part of the traditional dance of the Mari, the region’s indigenous nation. Its sudden intrusion into an otherwise classical production is no coincidence. It is part of an experiment that seeks to tackle the some of the most crucial challenges facing the post-Soviet provincial stage: how to use Soviet traditions to create art for a new Russia, while still standing on par with global artistic developments.

In the past few decades, creative exploration in Eastern Europe has centred on rejecting Soviet clichés. The Soviet vision of artistic excellence has left a burdensome legacy, with the Revolution’s artistic avant-garde soon giving way to the return of classical high art. By the 1930s, the country state began reigning in bold experimentation, embarking instead to mould the arts into a suitably Soviet forms. Conservative, rigid, and tending towards classicism, the Socialist Realist aesthetic shaped literature, visual arts, and, even ballet, creating a climate that was more conducive to technical achievement than innovation. The aesthetically and politically complex work of choreographers like Leonid Yakobson was an exception that proved the rule: experimentation was difficult, requiring compromise and resources.

In Mari El, as in other ethnic republics, the Soviet state has defined a century’s worth of art. Here, cultural modernisation was accompanied by Sovietisation. State institutions used and to a certain extent encouraged Mari art in a way that the Russian Empire had not, allowing for many important firsts, including the first Mari novels, operas, and ballets. But this cultural visibility came at the price of artistic innovation. Mari art was expected to be “national in form, socialist in origin,” which led to moralistic prose, repetitive plots, and predictable techniques. The radical aspects of Soviet artistic life, either the avant-garde or the underground, did not generally make it to the provinces. Throughout the 20th century, Mari theatre had to develop within by the Soviet mainstream.

Founded in 1968, the Erik Sapaev Theatre of Opera and Ballet is a cultural bulwark in Mari-El. The troupe’s technical excellence is celebrated within and beyond Russia, including the UK, largely due to the creative and administrative direction of former Bolshoi Theatre soloist Konstantin Ivanov. Ivanov, himself a ballet prodigy who grew up in a rural, single-parent Mari household, returned to the Republic in the early 2000s, at the height of his career, to found a dance school. He also pushed the theatre to premiere an updated version of the first Mari ballet, Anatoli Luppov’s The Forest Legend (or Chodra Sem, in Mari) from 1973. Luppov’s score interprets traditional Mari tunes to create support a libretto with the predictable components of a classical ballet. It follows two young people, Erika and Aksai, whose love is threatened by an the evil wizard Keremet. With his eyes on the beautiful Erika, Keremet replaces her with a malevolent double called Shaivi, a woman he has enchanted and enslaved. The strength of the couple’s love — and, more practically, Shaivi’s lack of commitment to Keremet’s schemes — ensure a happy ending. At the libretto’s turning point, Shaivi releases Aksai, who is then free to fight Keremet and liberate his beloved.

The two previous versions of the ballet, Enn Raja’s in 1973 and Olga Komleva’s in 1993, were stymied by a lack of dancers, especially male ones, and by limited finances (Luppov’s forest maidens had to dance in tunics made of medical gauze). Despite these challenges, both productions are fondly remembered by older audiences as authentic representations of Mari culture. Ivanov, however, found the 1993 Forest Legend disappointing.

When I speak to Ivanov, he meets me in the office where he has served as Mari-El’s Minister of Culture since 2017, decorated with Mari art and photographs of local landmarks. Now in his forties, Ivanov is impressively tall and retains a dancer’s posture; once we begin discussing the ballet, he grows animated, moving his hands to demonstrate elements of the choreography. Initially, he agrees to talk for 15 minutes. We end up speaking for almost an hour.

Twenty-seven years ago, Ivanov had been excited about the ballet, but upon seeing it, could not help recognising that it lacked structure: “To my mind, it was a completely formless production,” he recalls. When he later took up the position of artistic director at the Erik Sapaev Theatre, Ivanov removed The Forest Legend from the repertoire along with several other productions, focusing instead on rebuilding classic ballets such as The Nutcracker and Swan Lake from the ground up. But the question of the first Mari ballet appeared time and again, both in interactions with the press, and with members of the public. Ivanov knew that the old production was not viable, but he also believed that the ballet was special. “It’s the first Mari ballet,” he reiterates, “and we have only had three. Of those, it was also the only ballet that was preserved, and that fact alone says a lot.” One day, after a particularly heated conversation with the media, Ivanov went back to the theatre and asked to see Luppov’s score. He loved it: “it has absolutely incredible passages, adagios that are just fantastic, beautiful themes.” He decided it was time to bring the ballet back.

But while revisiting Luppov’s score together with composer Ivan Yegorov, Ivanov realised what his predecessors’ greatest challenge had been: there simply was not enough music to create the production they wanted. The two decided to expand the score by splicing it together with Luppov’s other ballets: The Interrupted Feastand The Castle of Sheremet. The experiment worked seamlessly, and, after Ivanov sheepishly confessed their musical “hooliganism” to Luppov, even received the composer’s blessing. The score was completed on the day before the premiere. Choreographer Alexander Zverev, who collaborated with Ivanov on the production, arranged one of Luppov’s themes for the synthesiser. The electronic sound worked perfectly for the effect Ivanov was after: a story told “from such a distant past, almost as though it’s being told from space.”

But even if innovations in the production were rather mild, the road to acceptance was not without its difficulties. In the months after the 2005 premiere, audience members would challenge Ivanov during press events, lamenting the lost soulfulness and ethnographic detail of the old versions.

Although folk elements are toned down in The Forest Legend, a Mari spirit permeates the new production, communicated in the language of academic dance. The forest maidens’ striking gestures, which suggest swimming or parting tree branches, are borrowed directly from Mari tradition. (Incidentally, they were the only element left unchanged from the original 1973 production.) Aksai’s final solo is another example of Mari culture shaping the choreography. Like Tchaikovsky’s Prince Siegfried and other ballet protagonists before him, the victorious hero returns home from a transformative adventure. “But this is no Swan Lake,” explains Ivanov. “This is not a European story about a medieval duke. This is a story of the Mari people, about the nature of the Mari people, about the spirit of the Mari people.” The triumphant Aksai rushes not into the arms of his beloved but into the space of the kyusoto, the sacred grove. His dance is not about romance; it is a “monologue of admiration and adoration for the world. An anthem of love for one’s native land.”