Igor Moiseyev created out of love

By Jennifer Pencek

Brilliant.

That’s the thought that always came to mind when Elena Shcherbakova watched Igor Moiseyev at rehearsals of the dance company she directs and he created. Moiseyev, who founded Russia’s world-famous Moiseyev Dance Company in 1936, ended his earthly journey November 2 after 101 years.

“Everything that Igor Moiseyev showed at rehearsals he did brilliantly,” says Shcherbakova, communicating via e-mail. “As a choreographer, there is no one like him, and there won’t be anyone like him, just like there is only one Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tchaikovsky. His choreography is very unique, it’s timeless, and the feelings it brings out in people from around the world are love and kindness, which will always be essential to the human race.”

To honor Moiseyev, a short video documentary is being produced in Moscow using never-before-seen footage from the company archives. Options for the video’s use are being explored. The troupe performs January 17 at Eisenhower Auditorium.

“In this documentary footage we would like to show different periods of his artistry,” Shcherbakova says. “There is incredible footage of the ensemble’s first visit to the [United States], Mr. Moiseyev dancing with Elizabeth Taylor, and footage with the American impresario Sol Hurok, who first brought the Moiseyev Dance Company to the [United States] in 1958.”

Throughout his life, Moiseyev stood out. He was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1906, the only child of a Russian lawyer and a French-Romanian seamstress. He lived with his family in Paris until he was 8, and throughout his life spoke to Western journalists in fluent French.

After returning to Russia, he took private ballet lessons in Moscow, entering the Bolshoi Ballet School in 1921. He was a member of the Bolshoi from 1924 to 1939. In 1936, he was appointed dance director of the Moscow Theater of Folk Art, from which emerged a year later the Soviet Union’s first folk-dance ensemble. The company originally included amateurs but soon employed professionally trained dancers. Despite its official name as the State Academic Folk Dance Ensemble of the Soviet Union, the troupe tended to be billed in the West as Moiseyev Dance Company.

Moiseyev received international acclaim for his folk dances, but there was also a share of criticism. American groups protesting Soviet policies occasionally targeted the company. While the majority of protests involved only picketing, some turned violent. At an opening in September 1986, Russian members of the Jewish Defense League threw a tear gas canister into the audience at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House, sending nearly 4,000 people fleeing the hall.

The content of Moiseyev’s work also stirred controversy. Some Western critics said his “happy folk” was in line with accenting the positive required by Socialist Realism. But criticism didn’t just come from the West.

In 1959, Soviet authorities reprimanded Moiseyev for delivering a speech in which he maintained that American culture was blessed with vigor. Eight years later, he upset Soviet authorities when he was quoted in a Pravda article that Soviet ballet was deadened by its preoccupation with princes and princesses and its unwillingness to tackle contemporary themes.

Yet despite all, Moiseyev’s company evokes deep feelings in its audiences, dancers, and staff. His company forges ahead with its dancers and staff members working to maintain what Moiseyev left behind.

“The most important goal for the upcoming years is not only to preserve the entire repertoire created by Igor Moiseyev performed by the ensemble today, but also to renew his earlier works that haven’t been performed in a long time,” Shcherbakova says. “After that, if we come across an interesting choreographer who will be able to stage a work specifically for our ensemble, in the style of our ensemble, we will certainly invite him into the troupe.”

Perhaps Moiseyev himself best summed up his work in a 1965 interview. “Everything I’ve done, I love,” he said. “If you’re not in love, you can’t create. And if you’re calm when you’ve created something, you can rest assured that you’ve created nothing.”