Sergeyev Collection


The Sergeyev Collection is a collection of choreographic notation, music, designs for décor and costumes, theatre programs, photos and other materials that document the repertory of the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg, Russia at the turn of the 20th century. The majority of the choreographic notations document with varying degrees of detail the original works and revivals of the renowned choreographer Marius Petipa, who served as Premier Maître de ballet of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres, as well as notation and music documenting the ballets of Lev Ivanov, who served as second Maître de ballet. Also included in the collection are choreographic notation documenting dances from various operas by both Petipa and Ivanov, respectively.
The Sergeyev Collection is named after Nicholas Sergeyev, régisseur of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres from 1903 to 1918, who brought the collection out of Russia after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Today, the Sergeyev Collection is housed in the Harvard Theatre Collection at Houghton Library, where it has been since 1969.

The origins of the collection

At the end of the nineteenth century, the dancer Vladimir Stepanov developed his own method of documenting choreography, which he later detailed in his book L'Alphabet des Mouvements du Corps Humain. In 1893 Stepanov proposed a project to the ruling committee of the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet School and its parent company, the Imperial Ballet, that would record the choreography of the company's repertory for posterity. The committee, which made decisions on the appointment of dancers, repertory, etc., consisted of Marius Petipa ; Lev Ivanov ; Ekaterina Vazem ; Pavel Gerdt ; and Christian Johansson. The committee required that Stepanov first present demonstrations, known as "certifications", of the effectiveness of his method before the project would be fully implemented with state funding.
The first of these demonstrations was the notation of the one-act ballet La Flûte magique, a work originally produced in 1893 by Lev Ivanov and the composer Riccardo Drigo for the students of the Imperial Ballet School. Stepanov then presented a second demonstration of his method by mounting a reconstruction of Jules Perrot's one-act ballet Le Rêve du peintre, originally staged in 1848 to the music of Cesare Pugni. The notations for this work were created by Stepanov after consulting Christian Johansson, who participated in the 1848 production and many performances thereafter. The reconstruction of Le Rêve du peintre was performed by students of the Imperial Ballet School on. Based on the success of these notations, Stepanov's project was approved and he soon began to notate the repertory of the Imperial Ballet. Among the first pieces to be documented was Petipa's 1894 ballet Le Réveil de Flore and the scene Le jardin animé from the ballet Le Corsaire. Stepanov's method of notation was also included for a time as part of the curriculum of students of the Imperial Ballet School.
After Stepanov's death in 1896, the dancer Alexander Gorsky took over the notation project and perfected Stepanov's system. After Gorsky departed St. Petersburg in 1900 to take up the post of Ballet Master to the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow, the former dancer of the Imperial Theatres Nicholas Sergeyev took over the project as supervisor. By 1903 Sergeyev was appointed régisseur of the Imperial Ballet. It was Sergeyev's assistants who created the majority of the notation, all of whom were dancers with the imperial ballet: Alexander Chekrygin, and S. Ponomaryev. The collection also includes notation created by students.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Nicholas Sergeyev left Russia with a great number of the notated choreographies. In 1920 he was invited by Sergei Diaghilev to stage the Petipa/Tchaikovsky The Sleeping Beauty from the notations for the Ballets Russes in Paris, but Diaghilev's insistence on altering passages of Petipa's choreography apparently caused Sergeyev to withdraw his services.
, circa 1900
In 1921 Sergeyev took over the post of régisseur to the Latvian National Opera Ballet in Riga, and during his appointment with the company he added a substantial amount of the music belonging to the notated ballets. Orchestral parts for some of the ballets was also added, such as Paquita by Eduard Deldevez, The Little Humpbacked Horse by Cesare Pugni, and Adolphe Adam's scores for Giselle and Le Corsaire.
In 1924, Sergeyev utilized the notation to mount Petipa's definitive version of Giselle for the Paris Opera Ballet, with the ballerina Olga Spessivtseva in the title role and Anton Dolin as Albrecht. This was not only the first time the Parisian ballet had danced Giselle since the 1860s, but also the first Western production of Petipa's version, which is the traditional choreographic text that most ballet companies have always used as a basis for their own productions to date. The choreographic notation of Giselle documents when Petipa himself took Anna Pavlova through rehearsals.
With the aid of the notations, Sergeyev made what is perhaps his most substantial contribution to the art of ballet: at the invitation of Ninette de Valois, he restaged Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, the Petipa/Cecchetti Coppélia and The Nutcracker for the Vic-Wells Ballet of London, the precursor of the Royal Ballet, who still perform these ballets, if in edited form. In 1942 Sergeyev began staging classics for the International Ballet, a British touring company founded in 1941 by the ballerina Mona Inglesby, who offered to stage the productions as close as possible to Petipa's imperial stagings. When in 1946 the Sadler's Wells Ballet staged a new edited Sleeping Beauty to reopen the Royal Opera House, Sergeyev left to join Inglesby, remaining balletmaster with International Ballet until his death in 1951. His stagings for both British companies formed the nucleus of what is now known loosely as the "classical ballet repertory", and as a result these works went on to be staged all over the world in versions largely derived from the Vic-Wells Ballet's own productions.
When Sergeyev died in Nice, France on 23 June 1951 the notations passed on for a brief time to a Russian associate of his, from whom Mona Inglesby purchased them, continuing to stage his productions with International Ballet until its closure in 1953. Inglesby, through the London theatrical dealer Ifan Kyrle Fletcher, sold the Petipa Swan Lake notation to Harvard University in 1967, followed by the rest of the notations in 1969, for a sum claimed to be around £6,000. Today the collection is known officially as the Nikolai Sergeev Dance Notations and Music Scores for Ballets, though it is commonly referred to simply as The Sergeyev Collection. For some time the notations were useless, as no one in the world had any knowledge of how to read Stepanov's method. It was not until Stepanov's original primer was found in the archives of the Mariinsky Theatre that the notations were able to be deciphered.
Not all of the notations are complete, with some being rather vague in sections, leading some historians who have studied the collection to theorize that they were probably made to function simply as "reminders" for the Ballet Master or régisseur already familiar with these works. Aside from the choreographic notations, the collection includes photos, set and costume designs and music for many of the ballets in their performance editions, many of which include a substantial number of dances, variations, etc. interpolated from other works. One example of this is the music and notations for the ballet Le Corsaire, which contain additions from some of Marius Petipa's original works and revivals, some of which were no longer in the active repertory at the time the notations were prepared—La Vestale, Satanella, Les Aventures de Pélée, Pygmalion, ou La statue de Chypre, Trilby, and Cinderella''.

Noted use of the collection

Few ballet companies have utilized the collection in modern times. Below is a list of productions of various ballets that used the notation to either guide or completely reconstruct a scene or full-length ballet.