Silver Age Ballet on Stage

An era of decadence, experimentation, and nostalgia, the Russian Silver Age (circa 1890-1917) remains understudied in music and ballet scholarship. Most analysis of this late-Imperial period focuses on premiere histories: the new ballets choreographed by Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov and later, Michel Fokine. But this over-emphasis on the “new”—as well as scholarly bias towards beloved canonical ballets—fails to capture the multivalenced nature of the Imperial ballet stage, which was defined just as much by revival and re-creation as it was by new works. Moreover, none of these productions (new or old) were the product of a single person, but were shaped by the minds, hands, and bodies of choreographers, composers, librettists, designers, musicians, decorators, répétiteurs, administrators, and dancers.

Using automated text recognition, this project will generate machine-actionable text and structured data from the comprehensive repertoire and artist lists contained in the multi-volumeYearbook of the Imperial Theaters (1890-1908). This data will eventually be made available in a public-facing database which will allow scholars and balletomanes alike to explore the interacting productions, performers, and collaborative creators of Silver Age ballet.