Week 1: The Show Begins

Background & Research Question:

I took my first ballet class at four and joined my first competitive dance team at ten. Even while I trained recreationally in classical ballet, I often heard about the prestige of pre-professional academies that teach using the Vaganova method. Exposure to these institutions, along with the polished performances of their dancers on social media, sparked my interest in understanding why Russian ballet remains globally revered despite ongoing political controversies.

This project examines how the Soviet Union historically wielded ballet as soft power. Additionally, it addresses how modern ballet companies replicate Russian excellence through pedagogy, performance, and prestige. To ground this question in professional insight, I consult Kitty Xu from Silicon Valley Dance Academy, a seasoned choreographer and instructor.

Hypothesis:

This project hypothesizes that Russian ballet maintains global dominance because training lineage and state-sponsored talent pipelines outweigh politics in shaping artistic legitimacy. My research includes interviews with professional dancers, performance observations, and internet research. Historical footage, particularly of canonical works from Russia such as Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, enduring global standards of technique and performance quality.

Week 1: “Collector’s Paradise”

This week, I scoured the internet for performance footage, documentaries, and interview clips with professional ballerinas. Zotero will be my best friend for the foreseeable future as I continue gathering material from Anna’s Archive, the Internet Archive, YouTube, and more. Rather than analyzing each source in depth, I focused on collecting as much relevant footage as possible.

I will not only use this material in my documentary, but also in developing questions for my own interviews. Rest assured, the “data collection” does not end in the first week. I will continue searching for footage as my research evolves and new questions emerge.

Next week’s task, seeing the hours and hours of footage sitting in my Zotero library, is to decide which are more valuable than others. I will continue searching for dancers and instructors to send interview requests to. Ultimately, this next phase will shift from simply gathering material to critically evaluating it.

Arirang News. “ Russian Dancer Shares Childhood Memories and Her Views on Ballet′s Future 발레리나.” YouTube, YouTube, 1 Nov. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfkAmVrY-WA.

Marquee TV. “ Swan Lake: 4 Little Swans [Bolshoi Ballet].” YouTube, YouTube, 27 Feb. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9viv_A60Mk.