A STUDENT in the Russian Academy does not risk discovering, after some years of study, that he cannot stand the physical training, nor does he learn, when it is too late to turn back, that his road to high places is blocked by defect of health, structure, or proportion. As a candidate for admission he undergoes an examination by a board of physicians, painters and sculptors. If he enters, it is after their approval, the examiners measuring the candidate by the standards of their respective arts. He knows, and his parents know, that he is starting, free from handicap, on the road to an at least respectable position in a respectable profession, with which he will be associated and by which he will be supported through life. His studies will be guided by the best instruction that can be secured; if he has genius it will receive the most favourable of cultivation. At all times his life will be surrounded by conditions as favourable to physical health as they can be made by science and free expenditure.
His payment for these advantages is complete renunciation of every interest apart from those of the Academy’s curriculum. To one not passionately fond of his art, the enforced devotion to work would spell loss of liberty. As a matter of fact, however, this does not often seem to be felt as a privation. The interests of the school are so varied, and the dance is possessed of such endless allurement, that life within the academic walls is generally felt to be complete in itself. In other words, the contract binding the pupil is not usually felt as a tether, notwithstanding that its operation covers the most restless years in a boy’s or girl’s life.
Seven or eight is the age for entrance, and the contract binds the pupil for nine years of training—which may be reduced to eight if proficiency warrants. At the expiration of this time the government has all rights to the dancer’s services, at a moderate salary, varying according to the rank for which he qualifies in the ballet organisation. From the graduates of the Academy are recruited the ballets of the two Imperial Opera Houses: the Marianski Theatre in St. Petersburg, and the Opera House in Moscow. In both houses, ballet pantomimes are presented twice a week, approximately.
Graduates with an aptitude for teaching are so employed. All of which must cost the government a great deal less than would the alternative of hiring corps de ballet, premiers and premières, and ballet-masters from Paris and Milan. In fact, until half a century ago, foreign talent was depended on for the important work. From its continued use, it may be inferred that the present system is the more satisfactory.
Naturally, a member of the Imperial ballet must have government consent to leave his country; departing without such consent, he automatically forfeits his pension. A few individuals have chosen the high salaries to which their work entitles them in other parts of the world, and deliberately stayed away at the expiration of a leave of absence. To the great majority, however, the pension and artistic conditions attaching to their home organisation have been the greater inducement.
