Ulanova, Galina (1910–1998)

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Ulanova, Galina (1910–1998)

Prominent ballerina in the Soviet Union from the late 1920s to the early 1960s who flourished in both the classic and the newly composed propagandistic ballets that formed the repertoire of the Soviet dance world. Pronunciation: Ga-LEEN-ah oo-LAHN-ova. Name variations: Galya. Born Galina Sergeievna Ulanova on January 10 (some sources cite January 8), 1910, in St. Petersburg; died at Moscow's Central Clinic Hospital on April 25, 1998, after a long illness; daughter of Sergei Nikolaevich Ulanov and Maria Fedorovna (Romanova) Ulanova (both professional dancers); attended Leningrad School of Choreography, 1919–28; married Vadim Rindin (chief set designer of the Bolshoi Theater); no children.

Joined Leningrad State Theater (later Kirov Theater) of Opera and Ballet and debuted in The Sleeping Beauty (1928); debuted as star dancer in Swan Lake (1929); took starring role in newly created The Fountain of Bakhchisary (1934); gave first guest performance with the Bolshoi Ballet (1935); awarded Order of Red Banner of Labor (1939); awarded Stalin Prize (1941); joined Bolshoi Ballet (1944); awarded Stalin Prize (1947); performed in Italy (1950); awarded title of People's Artist of the USSR (1951); performed in China (1952); made London debut (1956); awarded Lenin Prize (1957); toured the United States (1959); gave final performance with Bolshoi Theater (1960); retired and began career as teacher (1961); gala performance in her honor presented by Bolshoi Ballet, awarded title of Heroine of Soviet Labor (1974); gala performance by Bolshoi Ballet in honor of her 80th birthday (1990).

Selected roles:

title role in The Dying Swan; title role in Giselle; Juliet in Romeo and Juliet; Masha in The Nutcracker; Odette-Odile in Swan Lake; PrincessAurora in The Sleeping Beauty; Princess Maria in The Fountain of Bakhchisary; Tao Hoa in The Red Poppy.

Galina Ulanova was the most prominent and widely hailed Soviet ballerina of her time. She was a member of the first generation to take their place in the Russian dance world in the decade after the Bolshevik Revolution, a group that included Natalya Dudinskaya and Olga Lepeshinskaya . Although some critics have found Ulanova's dancing technique limited, her abilities as an actress made her a star from the 1930s through the 1950s. Within the context of the propagandistic Soviet ballets of the Stalin era, in which choreographers often played down dance sequences in order to emphasize the role of mime, Ulanova had a place of unchallenged prominence.

In the 1950s, as the Soviet Union came in closer artistic contact with the non-Communist world, Ulanova became known to the West. She exhibited her talents in America and Western Europe with her starring role as a member of the Bolshoi Ballet. Performing with great success in the title role in Giselle, her favorite, she made an unforgettable impression on those who saw her. While her colleagues, like Alla Shelest , had no chance to become known in the West, Ulanova, writes Gennady Smakov, "won fame for all of them."

Since the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, the Russian ballet has gone through sharp changes under the pressure of political ideology. A major influence was the loss—mainly through emigration—of almost half of the prominent dancers, teachers, and choreographers who had maintained the traditions of the pre-1917 Russian ballet. Notes ballet historian Susan Au : "A period of experimentation followed the 1917 Revolution" as the old fairy-tale themes established for an aristocratic audience "seemed out of touch with modern life and values." The art of dance had to be made "available as well as appealing to the masses." This could mean staging productions in circuses and outdoor theaters, using jazz bands to accompany the dancers, but in particular it meant creating political ballets. Thus, as early as 1924, choreographer Fedor Lopukhov created the ballet Red Whirlwind in which two groups of dancers showed how dissolute elements of society such as robbers and drunks were defeated by the workers. The political role of the ballet grew throughout the 1920s and continued for at least four decades. A high point of the development was the ballet The Red Poppy, first produced in Moscow in 1927. Its plot presents the sailors of a Soviet warship aiding the oppressed workers of the Chinese port where their ship is docked. Ulanova was to play the role of the work's Chinese heroine Tao Hoa on many occasions.

The emergence of Joseph Stalin's dictatorship, in which his artistic tastes took on deadly significance, reduced all of the arts to what Mary Clarke and Clement Crisp describe as "the dreadfully stultifying doctrine of 'socialist realism'" as "ballet in Russia now had to concern itself with large-scale dramas whose politically correct message was more significant than their artistic means." Even when choreographers had some success in decreasing the political content of their work, e.g., in The Fountain of Bakhchisary, in 1934, they remained bound to the need to present a clear-cut moral lesson to the audience. Here too Ulanova was a leading figure; her performance as Maria, that ballet's heroine, was one of her greatest roles.

Galina Ulanova was born on January 10, 1910, in St. Petersburg, soon to be renamed Leningrad. Her parents were both dancers at the distinguished Maryinsky Theater. Her father

Sergei Ulanov, a member of the ballet corps, went on to become a ballet producer. Her mother Maria Romanova , before starting a career as a teacher, was a leading soloist in the company. These dance-minded parents introduced their daughter to the world of ballet at an early age. Her father took her to her first performance when she was only four. When she recognized her mother dancing one of the parts in The Sleeping Beauty, she startled the audience by shouting, "That's Mama, my Mama." Years later, she wrote, "even today the thought of The Sleeping Beauty never fails to call up the image of my mother as the Lilac Fairy." Her childhood memories also included the revolutionary year of 1917, the summer that the police searched her parents' apartment. But her more serene memories placed her backstage, taken to the theater with her parents when they were scheduled to perform and there was no one to care for her.

Ulanova's education began early, at the Maryinsky Ballet School in 1919. Her parents, once again, had a problem caring for her, and they placed the future star in the school largely so that she would have adult supervision. "My parents were terribly busy in those difficult early years" after the Revolution, said Ulanova, and she had to board at the school during her first two years of study. In the poverty-stricken Russia that was emerging from years of world war, revolution, and civil war, life was harsh, and Ulanova remembered freezing classrooms and dormitories, and meager rations. One of her teachers was her own mother, who left her career as a performer behind to take work as an instructor. After studying with Maria from 1918 to 1923, Galina spent five years in more advanced study with the renowned teacher Agrippina Vaganova . Ulanova's talent soon became evident at the school, and she graduated with honors in 1928. With the help of both her mother and Vaganova, she received a post immediately in the leading company in her native city.

A sign of the changing world in which Ulanova grew up was the shift in names in the dance institution in Leningrad that dominated her early years. Called the Maryinsky Imperial Theater before the revolution, it was subsequently named the State Theater of Opera and Ballet, the title it held when Ulanova joined it. In the 1930s, it finally took on the title of the Kirov, named after a leading Soviet politician.

The future star's debut came in October 1928 in a performance of The Sleeping Beauty. In a charming coincidence, she danced in the same ballet and the same theater where she had shouted out her greetings to her mother 14 years earlier. Moreover, her mother was present, "doubly anxious," said Ulanova, "because as my teacher she was thoroughly familiar with every difficult movement and with my weak points." Maria Romanova covered her face when Galina moved into some of the more difficult portions of her performance as Princess Florina. "My technique was by no means what I could have wished," said Ulanova. The following year, however, she made her debut in a starring role, Odette-Odile in Swan Lake.

As a young dancer, Ulanova suffered from what Léon Nemenschousky referred to vaguely as an "organic weakness." She spoke of it in her autobiography only as a "thoroughly prosaic illness." It was, nonetheless, serious enough to require treatment at the Essenkovsky spa in the Caucasus. In later years, the ballerina sometimes mentioned this problem as an influence on her lyrical style of dancing: "I tired too easily, did not like to move abruptly, did not care for running or jumping." "And," she suggested, "perhaps it was these things that made for the gentleness of movement and line which has often been counted to my credit."

Romanova, Maria (1886–1954)

Russian ballerina. Name variations: Maria Ulanova. Born Maria Fedorovna Romanova in 1886; died in 1954; married Sergei Nikolaevich Ulanov (1881–1950, a ballet dancer and regisseur of the Kirov ballet); children: Galina Ulanova (1910–1998).

Maria Romanova graduated from her theater school's corps de ballet in 1903. She toured abroad with Anna Pavlova 's company in 1911 and was a soloist with the former Maryinsky Ballet, then known as the State Theater of Opera and Ballet, until 1924. From 1917 on, Romanova taught at the Leningrad Ballet School and the School of Russian Ballet. For five years, one of her pupils was her daughter Galina Ulanova ; she also taught Vera Volkova .

A more critical view of her early years can be found in the account of Gennady Smakov. He notes how her personal timidity seemed to narrow the range of her dancing, as if she "had potential of which she did not want to make much use." Her physical limits, including a short neck and broad shoulders, also seemed likely to block her career from achieving distinction. Some roles such as Odette-Odile and Aurora reflected her technical limits. On the other hand, her restrained and lyrical style of dancing fit well into the title role in Giselle, and here she excelled for the rest of her career.

While being treated at Essenkovsky, the rising young ballerina began an important friendship with the actress Elizaveta Ivanovna Timme , a performer at Leningrad's Pushkin Theater. In her conversations with this figure from the Russian stage, Ulanova found guidelines for heightening the dramatic content of her dancing. Timme urged her "to feel the story of Odetta or of Giselle." Ulanova came to see that "however perfect its outward form, a role will be cold and empty unless filled with the fruit of thought."

She was also deeply influenced by the prevailing ideas of a revolutionary society. "Dances were staged now not for the sake of the charming waltz or gallop tune," she said, "but for the sake of expressing ideas and emotions." Despite her own talent and eminence, she wrote approvingly of the fact that, unlike the old Imperial Ballet with its focus on "the dancer of scintillating technique," the new ballet aimed at conveying ideas, notably "the basic idea of Soviet humanism, the idea of faith in man, in his strength, beauty, his will to fight for happiness."

The young star's performance in Swan Lake in 1933 made her a popular idol in the Soviet Union. The production, staged by her former teacher Agrippina Vaganova, had heavy political overtones, pointing to the barren role played in national life by the 19th-century aristocracy. Nonetheless, Ulanova's interpretation of her role, stressing her own femininity, went beyond the political message of the ballet. On the other hand, according to Smakov, her work was acceptable to the officials of the Soviet dictatorship because her lack of sexuality and her emotional restraint matched the propaganda image of the woman in 1930s Soviet art. "Ulanova's image happily satisfied the needs of both the Russian collective mind and Soviet propaganda," he wrote.

The mid-1930s saw Russian dance move increasingly toward the form Smakov calls "Soviet drama-ballet" or "Soviet ballet realism." In this genre, dance passages took second place to long sequences involving mime in ballets intended to convey a clear political message. Ulanova excelled in such work, making herself into "a dancing actress." She became the star of one such drama-ballet after another. She expressed distaste for ballets without plots and for other aspects of modern dance, and her strong defense of the Soviet dance tradition made her a noted favorite for Stalin and other political leaders of the time. Nonetheless, her acting abilities turned out to be restricted to the ballet stage; Sergei Eisenstein rejected her for the part of Anastasia in his film Ivan the Terrible after a failed screen test.

In her autobiography, Ulanova later recalled her role in the Kirov's 1934 production of The Fountain of Bakhchisary, one of these drama-ballets, as a crucial step forward in the progress of Soviet dance. Moving away from the abstraction and spectacle of the existing dance tradition, the leading characters, Maria (her role) and Zarema, now tried to express clear and changing emotions. This included what Ulanova called a "dialogue" with each other. According to Au, the ballet was a definitive point in Ulanova's artistic development, since the rising ballerina now incorporated the dramatic methods of Constantin Stanislavski in her performances.

If any one dancer typifies for Western audiences the artistry of Soviet ballet, it is Galina Ulanova.
—Mary Clarke and Clement Crisp

During World War II, she and the other artists of the Kirov Theater left Leningrad and sought safety in the Urals. But she spent many months entertaining troops at the front or performing for those on leave in Moscow and Leningrad. She danced in Moscow at the Bolshoi during the dangerous months of September and October 1941 as German forces threatened to capture the city. In 1944, she formally joined the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow as star ballerina, sharing the limelight only with Maya Plisetskaya . One of the distinguished visitors before whom she performed was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

From the start of her career, Ulanova had paved the way for a smooth ascendancy to the top of her profession by enthusiastic expression of support for the achievements of the Russian Revolution. Starting in the 1930s, the Soviet ballet world presented two types of productions in which she took part: first, polished versions of 19th-century classics; second, newly commissioned works with a heavy political content. As dance historian Mary Grace Swift described ballet in the Soviet era, "the entire apparatus is state controlled…. [T]he state can easily decree the production of any type of ballet as simply as it can decree an increase in the production of cotton." Operating skillfully in this political milieu, Ulanova carefully avoided the offstage contact with Westerners that caused Soviet officials to see her rival Plisetskaya as politically suspect. In commenting on her trip to the People's Republic of China in 1950, Ulanova remarked on "the force of the Soviet people's example of creative work and labour heroism." She also claimed that she had received inspiration for her role as heroic martyr Tao Hoa, "the daughter of the people," in the propagandist ballet Red Poppy by her contact with the Chinese people, especially their "valiant and fearless" women. Her position as an ideologically correct ballerina was strengthened by her performance as a contemporary Soviet woman, Jeiran, in the propagandistic ballet Life in 1949. Here she played a young woman whose husband dies in the war, leading her to even greater devotion to her neighbors and their work in a collective farm.

Even in the darkest years of the Cold War, Ulanova's talent began to find a foreign audience. She was allowed to dance in Italy in 1951, receiving a tumultuous reception as The Dying Swan in Florence. But the politics of the era intervened in these early tours. Her performances in Italy were repeatedly postponed until the country's national elections had ended, and she returned to the Soviet Union to make public statements about the exploitation of artists in the Western world.

After Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, the political pressures lessened, and Ulanova became the outstanding star of the Bolshoi's extensive foreign tours. Her most notable performances abroad came in England in 1956 and in the United States in 1959. In these tours, she and other members of the Bolshoi undoubtedly benefited from the novelty of Soviet ballet for a Western audience as well as the softening political climate. In London, note Crisp and Clarke, the Bolshoi's "impact was as great as the Diaghilev ballet [at the start of the century], and Ulanova, no longer young, had the greatest triumph of all."

Ironically, Ulanova began to lose her popularity with Soviet observers in the same decade in which she became an international star. As she aged and the technical requirements of ballet became more difficult for her, Ulanova's dancing relied increasingly on her acting techniques. Meanwhile, under Nikita Khrushchev, closer contact with artists in the West now became possible. Thus, the influence of such innovative Western choreographers as George Balanchine produced a more sophisticated Soviet audience.

Acquaintances stress two features of Ulanova's personality. First, her personal shyness; second her fanatic, daily application to her art in the form of unending practice. Even among prima ballerinas, whose devotion to unending work is legendary, the Russian star's devotion was seen as beyond the ordinary. In her autobiography, she noted: "Dancing is an art that demands endless, unremitting toil." And, in speaking to Albert Kahn, she pointed to the goal she sought to achieve: "Technical perfection should be such that the public should never notice, never suspect that any of the movements cost the dancer the least strain." Nemenschousky has described her working "with the tenacity of a workman at his lathe."

During the Bolshoi's extensive visit to the United States in 1959—its first—Ulanova danced in 30 out of the company's 60 performances. She was a remarkably unglamorous example of an international ballet star. Wearing no makeup and dressed in inconspicuous clothing, she seemed no more than an ordinary traveler when she stepped from airplanes in Paris and other major cities.

Although she received a heroine's reception from foreign audiences and stood as the darling of the Soviet establishment, critics of her artistic limitations spoke out both abroad and, somewhat more discreetly, back in the Soviet Union. The British-born Anatol Dolin disliked her prosaic version of Giselle, in which she used her unglamorous looks to portray the hapless peasant girl of the ballet's first act. At home, the noted poet Anna Akhmatova dismissed her brutally: "As a ballerina she is no one. She is merely a mime of genius." Despite such criticism, Ulanova remained a member of her society's social and economic elite. She had been paid generously during her active career, and her salary was augmented by such bonuses as the monetary award that accompanied the Stalin Prize she won in 1941 and again in 1947. She retired with a pension greater than that given to a former prime minister, Nikolai Bulganin, who ended his career at the same time.

When Ulanova left her position as a preeminent dancer in the early 1960s, she took on a new role as teacher at the Bolshoi. She also served as a judge in prestigious international ballet competitions. But her withdrawal from the stage came at a time when new influences were at work in the Russian dance world. By the mid-1960s, for example, the new choreographer of the Bolshoi, Yuri Grigorovich, was deemphasizing the role of mime sequence in which Ulanova had excelled. Ulanova responded in a variety of ways to the shifting currents in the world of the arts. In 1962, she called for sweeping experiments in Soviet ballet based on increasing contact with non-Soviet dance companies. But she also endorsed Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's campaign against abstract art.

Ulanova remained an active and honored figure in her native country and abroad. In her role of ballet coach, she accompanied the Bolshoi on its tour to the United States in 1975. A high point of her visit was her meeting, in April of that year, with Olga Spessivtzeva , an émigré dancer also famous for her playing the title role in Giselle. At age 79, Ulanova accompanied the Bolshoi to Great Britain, and, on the occasion of her 80th birthday, the Bolshoi presented a gala in her honor on January 8, 1990, but her failing health prevented her from attending. Galina Ulanova died on April 25, 1998, in Moscow after a lengthy illness.