Ballet Star ‘Cosmic Yuri’ at Work & Play
by Matthew Yang (NYU MIAP)
Ten reels containing the personal home movies of Soviet ballet star Yuri Soloviev (1944-1977) travel to New York from St. Petersburg and publicly screen for the first time, thanks to the efforts of film historian Dr. Maria Vinogradova. Soloviev, a premier danseur of the renowned Kirov ballet, is still regarded as one of the great dancers of his era. His gravity defying leaps captured the imagination of many, so much so that he is still revered as “Cosmic Yuri,” a reference to Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
Unbeknownst to most, Soloviev was an amateur filmmaker and eager documenter as well. His 8mm movies depict scenes of work and play, giving a rare glimpse into his professional and family life. The films record the world of Soviet ballet and his celebrated contemporaries Irina Kolpakova, Natalia Makarova, and global stars Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. His handheld camera observes colleagues from afar, mapping their precise and elaborate sequences on stage. More notably, it captures the ballet company’s tour to Paris and London in 1961, where Nureyev famously defected to the West when told to return to Moscow to do a “special performance” for the Kremlin. ( “Rudolf Nureyev’s Defection to the West,” National Archives UK blog, Mar, 22, 2019.) As Nureyev’s roommate during the tour, Soloviev was subjected to extreme scrutiny by the KGB, which subsequently studied his footage. All shots of Nureyev were allegedly confiscated — except for one that Vinogradova has found survives on one of these reels.
Color scenes of Soloviev’s family show them at summer leisure by the beach. Shots of his daughter Alyona experiencing the pleasures of beach life are interspersed with her adult male caregivers spearfishing in their speedos. Baryshnikov makes several appearances, at one point effortlessly performing a handstand.
St. Petersburg-based filmmaker and dance historian Viktor Bocharov uncovered Soloviev’s 8mm home movies and loaned them to Vinogradova for study and scanning.
She has personally digitized them in anticipation of Orphans 2024. She screens a selection of films with her research on this rare collection: “A Life Worth Filming: Soviet Ballet Dancers and Their 8mm Cameras.”
Maria Vinogradova invites interested researchers to view her online Vimeo showcase. She shares these notes on the collection.
Yuri Soloviev and Tatiana Legat Home Movies
The videos in this showcase are scanned 8mm reels from the family archive of Kirov (Mariinsky) ballet dancers Yuri Soloviev (1940 – 1977) and Tatiana Legat (1934 – 2022). Soloviev was a premier danseur and among the finest male dancers of the Soviet mid-century along with Rudolf Nureyev, who was his classmate at the Vaganova Academy, and Mikhail Baryshknikov, who was a few years younger. Unlike Nureyev and Baryshnikov who defected to the West in 1961 and 1974, respectively, Soloviev stayed in the Soviet Union. He ended his life by suicide in early 1977, for reasons that were not entirely clear, although testimonies of his contemporaries suggest a growing disenchantment with a lack of creative growth and discomfort caused by multiple injuries. Tatiana Legat was a prominent soloist at Kirov Ballet and Soloviev’s wife. She came from the famous Legat ballet dynasty, which did not result in any privilege during her early years when she, like other children of her generation, had to endure the hardship of World War II and its consequences as she studied ballet.
Soloviev and Legat were both included in Kirov Ballet’s foreign tours. A significant part of their footage documents their international travel – a great privilege unavailable to the overwhelming majority of Soviet people. As a result, Soviet performing artists and other celebrities were among the pioneers of amateur filmmaking, since their unusual lifestyles provided plenty of material they wished to record and share with their communities. A number of shots in their reels show their fellow dancers with movie cameras.
A significant part of the reels are traditional home movies, which put Legat and Soloviev’s daughter Alyona into the center of attention. The collection also includes rehearsal and performance footage, including that by visiting companies, such as American Ballet Theatre (1960) and New York City Ballet (1962). Among the dancers that appear on these reels, in performance and daily life, are Soloviev and Legat, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Kaleria Fedicheva, Irina Kolpakova, Natalia Makarova (briefly), Alla Sizova, Maria Tallchief, Erik Bruhn, Lupe Serrano, and others.
Some of the footage conceals more than it reveals, and the stories behind some reels are truly fascinating. I share some of them in annotations to the videos.
The reels were provided to a private collector, who is a filmmaker and ballet enthusiast in Saint Petersburg, in the 1990s by Tatiana Legat upon request to transfer them to VHS tapes. Legat chose to keep the VHS copies and did not want the reels back. So far I have not been able to contact the family for permissions to share these materials, so I am keeping the videos in this showcase password-protected. I am providing access to a limited number of film and other professionals for educational purposes. I express my sincere gratitude to Filmic Technologies for providing their EZ16 scanner that enabled me to scan these reels.
— Maria Vinogradova <mv930 (at) nyu.edu>
