Written by The Children of Theatre Street profiles three students studying at the Vaganova Choreographic Institute in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in 1977. This film inspired me as a student, and it still fascinates me today. Grace Kelly narrates.
George Balanchine was a product of this school (then called the Imperial Ballet School), and he eventually founded the School of American Ballet in 1934 In New York City. Fifty years later, SAB was strikingly similar in its culture, despite the stylistic divergences. Some of the combinations in the lower divisions remained intact half a century later and halfway across the globe. All of the original faculty are now gone, and with them the connection between the two institutions have faded.