THE BOLSHOI MEETS BOLSHEVISM: MOVING BODIES AND BODY POLITICS, 1917-1934ByDouglas M. PriestFollowing the Russian Revolution in 1917, the historically aristocratic Bolshoi Ballet came face to face with Bolshevik politics for the first time. Examining the collision of this institution and its art with socialist politics through the analysis of archival documents, published material, and ballets themselves, this dissertation explains ballet’s persisting allure and cultural power in the early Soviet Union. The resulting negotiation of aesthetic and political values that played out in a discourse of and about bodies on the Bolshoi Theater’s stage and inside the studios of the Bolshoi’s Ballet School reveals Bolshevik uncertainty about the role of high culture in their new society and helped to define the contentious relationship between old and new in the 1920s. Furthermore, the most hostile attack on ballet coming from socialists, anti-formalism, paradoxically provided a rhetorical shield for classical ballet by silencing formalist critiques. Thus, the collision resulted not in one side “winning,” but rather in a contested environment in which dancers embodied both tradition and revolution. Finally, the persistence of classical ballet in the 1920s, particularly at the Ballet School, allowed for the Bolshoi Ballet’s eventual ascendancy to world-renowned ballet company following the second World War. This work illuminates the Bolshoi Ballet’s artistic work from 1917 to 1934, its place and importance in the context of early Soviet culture, and the art form’s cultural power in the Soviet Union.
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