Mariinsky Ballet
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The Mariinsky Ballet, affiliated with the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, is one the most famous ballet companies in history. The company was known as the Imperial Ballet until the early 20th century. Following the assassination of Sergei Kirov, they were renamed Kirov Ballet but reverted to the original name after the fall of the Communism.
It was for this company that the great choreographer Marius Petipa staged may of his most quinassential works, notably the revisions of Giselle, Swan Lake, Le Corsaire and the original ballets Raymonda, The Nutcracker, La Bayadere, Don Quixote, Harlequinade, and The Sleeping Beauty. Among the 20th-century ballets, Spartacus was inaugurated there in 1956.
The choreography school of the Mariinsky Ballet, named after its most celebrated teacher, Agrippina Vaganova, prepared many of the greatest danseurs in history: Avdotia Istomina, Paul Gerdt, Olga Preobrajenska, Mathilde Kschessinska, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Olga Spesivtseva, Vaslav Nijinsky, George Balanchine, Lydia Lopokova, Galina Ulanova, Marina Semenova, Yury Grigorovich, Natalia Makarova, Rudolf Nureyev, Yuri Soloviev, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Following the October Revolution of 1917, the ballet master Agrippina Vaganova determined to continue the traditions and methods of the Russian Imperial Ballet. Her work laid the groundwork for the formation and development of classical ballet in the world. During the Cold War, however, the company faced the problem of some dancers refusing to return from Western countries that they visited while on tour, why others were transferred by Communist authorities to the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. In this way the company lost great dancers such as, such as Ulanova, Nureyev, Makarova, and Baryshnikov.