The history of the Tchaikovsky Perm Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet is one replete with iconic figures and genuinely miraculous coincidences that to a great extent have defined the current image of the company and the high position it rightfully occupies in the choreographic “table of ranks”.
It is interesting to note that there was a Diaghilev involved in the founding of the theatre. No, not the world-famous impresario and innovator, although he too played his part. It was his grandfather, Pavel Dmitrievich Diaghilev, who made a significant contribution to the building of a stone theatre in Perm. Then his grandson, with his unique biography, charted a new ballet itinerary across the globe: Perm – Petersburg – Paris. In the nineteenth century, the theatre’s spiritual patron was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, all of whose operas and ballets have been performed on the Perm stage at one time or another, and this fact became grounds to add the composer’s name to the theatre’s official title in 1965.
In the middle of the twentieth century, the tragic events of the Second World War paradoxically played into the hands of the Perm muses. The generous city in the Urals hospitably welcomed the legendary Kirov Ballet and Vaganova Academy in evacuation. Thousands of bonds, not only professional but also amicable, unusually emotional, and personal, were formed between the ballet worlds of Leningrad and Perm in those tragic years, gifting the latter the famous Vaganova training system and Petersburg virtuosity, enriching the ballet company with a new vocabulary. Even now, seventy years later, those bonds, imbued with warmth and gratitude, are reflected in the way the stars of the northern capital – dancers, choreographers and directors – eagerly travel to work in Perm. The mixed prescription of the Vaganova method of ballet training and the Moscow school of performance has also not gone to waste. To this day, Perm boasts a successful choreographic college, the graduates of which are in demand on the world’s most renowned stages.
The Perm theatre has a strong reputation as a “creative laboratory”, where new ideas are birthed, and its own original style is shaped. It was Perm Ballet that was the first in Russia to perform the works of the great twentieth-century choreographer Georges Balanchine, and later the choreography of Jerome Robbins.
It is the only stage in Russia where Jiří Kylián’s Svadebka, William Forsythe’s The Second Detail, and Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliette as choreographed by Kenneth Macmillan are performed.
A new chapter in the history of Perm Ballet began in 2009, when Alexey Miroshnichenko, a choreographer whose style is defined by a panoramic intellectual approach to movement on stage, was appointed to head the company. Although Perm Ballet’s key repertoire is undoubtedly the masterpieces of world ballet – Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, La Sylphide, Le Spectre de la Rose – the company’s calling card has become adaptations of the works of great choreographers of the 20th century not previously familiar to Russian audiences. Another unique feature of Perm Ballet is its ability and readiness to work meticulously with rare material. For example, in 2011, ninety years after its premiere, with set designs very close to the originals, Sergei Prokofiev’s Chout was once again presented to the world.
In 2020, the ballet company was taken over by the Petersburg choreographer Anton Pimonov, a graduate of the Vaganova Russian Ballet Academy, who began his career as a soloist at the Mariinsky Theatre. The Petersburg spirit can be glimpsed in his productions in the way that they strictly conform to classical canons while striving for new forms. At Perm Ballet, it is unlikely that he will seek compromise. It is more probable that the two polities will clash, and such tension is always beneficial for art.
In 2023 Alexey Miroshnichenko came back to his post of the artistic director and presented the ballet Yaroslavna based on the plot of The Tale of Igor's Campaign.
The company can boast numerous prestigious international and Russian awards, including several Golden Masks. For many years it has been said confidently that the theatre has managed to turn Perm into Russia’s third mecca for ballet.
Since 1973, the company has had an active touring schedule all over the world and has managed not only to travel all through Europe, but also to visit Australia and New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, China, the United States, Thailand, Egypt, India, Nicaragua, Bahrain, Oman, and even Cuba.
