Alexander Viktorovich Shiryaev (; — 25 April 1941) was a Russian

ballet dancer A ballet dancer is a person who practices the Art (skill), art of classical ballet. Both females and males can practice ballet. They rely on years of extensive training and proper technique to become a part of a professional ballet company. B ...

ballet master A ballet master (also balletmaster, ballet mistress, ''premier maître de ballet'' or ''premier maître de ballet en chef'') is an employee of a ballet company who is responsible for the level of competence of the dancers in their company. In mo ...

and

choreographer Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which Motion (physics), motion or Visual appearance, form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A chor ...

, founder of

character dance Character dance is a specific subdivision of classical dance. It is the stylized representation of a traditional folk or national dance, mostly from European countries, and uses movements and music which have been adapted for the theater. Char ...

in Russian ballet who served at the

Mariinsky Theatre The Mariinsky Theatre (, also transcribed as Maryinsky or Mariyinsky) is a historic opera house in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Opened in 1860, it became the preeminent music theatre of late 19th-century Russia, where many of the stage masterpieces ...

. Shiryaev was also a pioneering animation director who is credited with the invention of

stop motion Stop-motion (also known as stop frame animation) is an animated filmmaking and special effects technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exh ...

animation.

Early life

Alexander Viktorovich Shiryaev was born to a long line of artists involved in the ballet. He was the son of the

flautist The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

Hector (Viktor) Cesarevich Puni, who played for the St. Petersburg Imperial Bolshoi Theatre's orchestra; and dancer Ekaterina Ksenophontovna Shiryaeva, a member of the corps de ballet. Alexander Shiryaev was the grandson of the Italian composer of ballet music Cesare Pugni and his English wife Marion Linton, who came to Russia with the renowned ballerina Fanny Elssler and the balletmaster Jules Perrot in 1851. Alexander Shiryaev.
St. Petersburg Ballet. From Reminiscences of the Mariinsky Theatre Artist
' memoirs from the ''Notes by Film Historian'' magazine № 67, 2004, pp. 61—101 (in Russian) According to the Soviet ballerina Ninel Yultyeva, he was an illegitimate child, raised under his mother's surname.
Adagio of My Memory
'' fragment from the 2006 book of the same name by Ninel Yultieva published in the ''Vatandash'' magazine (in Russian) Alexander's cousin Ivan Puni was a well-known

Russian avant-garde The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of avant-garde modern art that flourished in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, approximately from 1890 to 1930—although some have placed its beginning as early as 1850 and its e ...

artist. At the age of nine Alexander entered the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatrical School where he studied under

Marius Petipa Marius Ivanovich Petipa (; born Victor Marius Alphonse Petipa; 11 March 1818) was a French and Russian ballet dancer, pedagogue and choreographer. He is considered one of the most influential ballet masters and choreographers in ballet history ...

, Pavel Gerdt, Platon Karsavin and

Lev Ivanov Lev Ivanovich Ivanov (; 2 March 1834, Moscow – 24 December 1901, Saint Petersburg) was a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer and later, Second Balletmaster of the Mariinsky Ballet, Imperial Ballet. As a performer with the Mariinsky Ballet, ...

. He graduated in 1885 and in a year became a member of the

troupe.

Ballet career

Shiryaev quickly rose to fame. During the studies he already managed to learn almost the entire repertoire of Mariinka, thus he easily substituted solo performers, both in classical and character roles. Shiryaev's musical talent and extraordinary visual memory gained him a place of Marius Petipa's assistant and tutor. He easily recollected all movements, reconstructing and finishing ballets after his teacher. He helped to stage '' The Seasons'', ''

Harlequinade ''Harlequinade'' is an English comic theatrical genre, defined by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' as "that part of a pantomime in which the harlequin and clown play the principal parts". It developed in England between the 17th and mid-19th ce ...

'', ''The Trial of Damis'', among others. As a ballet master he helped Petipa to bring back such ballets as ''Coppélia'', ''The Little Humpbacked'', '' The Pharaoh's Daughter'', '' Tsar Kandavl or Le Roi Candaule'' and '' Giselle''. Around the same time he became deeply interested in

. In 1891 Shiryaev, aged 24, opened and headed the first character class under the Theatrical School. He studied and implemented elements of Russian, Hungarian, Spanish and other national dances into his ballets. He was the first performer of the Buffoon part in ''

The Nutcracker ''The Nutcracker'' (, ), Opus number, Op. 71, is an 1892 two-act classical ballet (conceived as a '; ) by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, set on Christmas Eve at the foot of a Christmas tree in a child's imagination featuring a Nutcracker doll. Th ...

'' (the role was edited out from later productions) which he also staged, gaining praise from

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer during the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popula ...

himself. He also performed the buffoon dance from '' Mlada'', Russian dance from '' Dubrovsky'', dance of jesters and skomorokhs from '' The Merchant Kalashnikov'' and other operas directed by Lev Ivanov. Some of his famous ballet performances include Carabosse in '' The Sleeping Beauty'', Ivanushka in '' The Little Humpbacked Horse'', Quasimodo in '' La Esmeralda'', Harlequin in ''

'', Dr. Coppélius in '' Coppélia'' and Abderakhman in ''

Raymonda ''Raymonda'' () is a ballet, grand ballet in three acts, four scenes with an apotheosis, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa to the music of Alexander Glazunov (his Opus number, opus 57) and libretto by Lydia Pashkova. ''Raymonda'' was creat ...

''. In 1905 a new director of Imperial Theatres made Shiryaev leave the theatre. After that Shiryaev spent a lot of time touring around Europe. He also opened a training school in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

; his students later joined the troupe led by

Anna Pavlova Anna Pavlovna Pavlova. (born Anna Matveyevna Pavlova; – 23 January 1931) was a Russian prima ballerina. She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, but is most recognized for creating ...

. After the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

he worked both as a dancer and a pedagogue in the Mariinsky and Alexandrinsky Theatres, restoring forgotten ballets. In 1921 he left the stage and became a teacher at the Leningrad Choreographic Institute where he had worked for the rest of his life. Among his students were such acclaimed artists as

Michel Fokine Michael Fokine ( – 22 August 1942) was a Russian choreographer and dancer. Career Early years Fokine was born in Saint Petersburg to a prosperous merchant and at the age of 9 was accepted into the Saint Petersburg Imperial Ballet Sch ...

, Fyodor Lopukhov, Pyotr Gusev, Galina Ulanova, Yury Grigorovich, Nina Anisimova.

Animation

During his 1904—1905 visits to London Shiryaev acquired a 17.5 mm film Biokam camera and started filming ballets, as well as making home movies involving his family, comedy and

trick films In the early history of cinema, trick films were short film, short silent films designed to feature innovative special effects. History The trick film genre was developed by Georges Méliès in some of his first cinematic experiments, and his wor ...

. His suggestion to film primary dancers of the Mariinka for free was rejected by the theatre management. Nina Alovert.
Belated Premier. Past Pages Come to Life
' article from the Russian Bazaar magazine, January, 2005 (in Russian) After that he built an improvised studio at his apartment where he carefully recreated various ballets by staging them using hand-made dolls which he created from either clay or

papier-mâché file:JacmelMardiGras.jpg, upright=1.3, Mardi Gras papier-mâché masks, Haiti Papier-mâché ( , , - the French term "mâché" here means "crushed and ground") is a versatile craft technique with roots in ancient China, in which waste paper is s ...

; they were tall, and their body parts were connected by thin wire which provided plasticity. He then filmed them on camera, frame by frame. In the process he also made thousands of sketches, catching every movement, also turning them into a filming reel so that one could watch the entire dance in form of a cartoon. From 1906 to 1909 Shiryaev produced a number of pioneering

and

traditionally animated Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation of the 20th century, until there was a shi ...

films. This happened at least several years before Ladislas Starevich — another influential Russian animator who had been long credited with invention of stop motion animation — produced his first films. Although Shiryav didn't hold much interest in animation as an art form, but rather saw it as an instrument in studying human plastics, using his films for educational purposes. Peter Lord.
The start of stop-frame
' article from ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', November 14, 2008 During the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

period those films were mostly forgotten, although Fyodor Lopukhov and some other memoirists mentioned his animation experiments in their books. Ninel Yultyeva described how Shiryaev produced around 1700 drawings and filmed them just to demonstrate one complex dance to his students. For a Hindu dance from '' La Bayadère'' he prepared clay figures and made them repeat every movement on camera; his film was later used during the restoration of

's ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1995 a Russian documentarist and ballet historian Viktor Bocharov started researching information on Shiryaev's animation experiments. He was soon contacted by Daniil Savelyev, a ballet photographer who personally knew the family. He got hold of the entire archive from the last wife of Alexander Shiryaev's son and kept it safe. Bocharov spent many years trying to get financing from Roskino in order to restore the films and produce a documentary. In 2003 he finally released the one-hour movie entitled ''A Belated Premiere'' which included fragments of different films by Shiryaev. Around 2008 Bocharov finally managed to get fundings from the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in order to restore the negatives. Around the same time he got in contact with Aardman Animations who also became involved in restoration and digitizing process. The films were subsequently shown at various international film festivals.

Personal life and memory

Alexander Shiryaev was married twice. His first wife was a ballerina Natalia M. Matveeva who also performed at the Mariinsky Theatre. Their only daughter who had also trained as a character dancer drowned in 1912, and his wife died of grief shortly after. In 1924 he married a drama actress R. Pomerantseva, but, according to the ballerina Ninel Yultyeva, the marriage was also unhappy; after Ninel's mother and father — a well-known Soviet writer Daut Yulty and a close friend of Shiryaev's — were arrested in 1937 as " Bashkir bourgeois nationalists", she was raised by Shiryaev who called her his granddaughter. Shiryaev played a small part of choreographer Skripochkin in the 1923 drama film '' Comedienne'' directed by Aleksandr Ivanovsky. In 1938 he published a textbook ''Basics of Character Dance'' together with Alexander Bocharov and Andrei Lopukhov. It was re-released in 2007. In 1941 Shiryaev prepared a book of memoirs ''St. Petersburg Ballet. From Reminiscences of the Mariinsky Theatre Artist''. It was meant to be published by the Union of Theatre Workers, but was postponed. The copy had been kept safe in the National Library of Russia and was first published in 2004 in the ''Notes by Film Historian'' magazine No. 67. After his death the school theatre under the

Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet The Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet is a school of classical ballet in St Petersburg, Russia. Established in 1738 during the reign of Empress Anna, the academy was known as the Imperial Ballet School until the Soviet era, when, after a brief h ...

became known as A. V. Shiryaev's Training Theatre. In 2016 the name became official.

Filmography (1905—1909)

Shiryaev's Archive
at the website dedicated to Alexander Shiryaev

Staged comedies

*The Befuddled Film-Maker (35mm positive, 30") *Circus Artists (17.mm negative, 36") *The Clown and the Elephant (17.5mm negative, 1’42"; 17.5mm positive, 1’30") *The Crocodile (17.5mm positive, 38") *Drunkards (17.5mm positive, 1’15") *The Fisherman's Dream (17.5mm positive, 4’20") *An Interrupted Dinner (17.5mm positive, 2’58") *The Lodger and the Spider (17.5mm positive, 1’52") *The Naughty Girl and Granny (17.5mm positive, 2’02") *The Tomboy (17.5mm positive, 2’45") *A Troublesome Couple (17.5mm negative, 2’53") *A Wet Romance (17.5mm positive, 1’27")

Trick films

*Boy in a Sack (17.5mm positive, 52") *Chairs (35mm positive, 20") *The Enchanted Tea Table (17.5mm positive, 42") *Magical Dressing (17.5mm negative, 35") *Pierrot and the Maid (17.5mm positive, 2’02") *Pierrot and the Maid (variant version) (17.5mm negative, 1’52")

Dance films

*Character Dance (35mm positive, 2’20") *Character Dance (35mm positive, 1’50") *Character Dance (Solo) (35mm positive) *Character Dance with Fan (17.5mm negative, 2’01") *Character Dance with Tambourine (17.5mm negative, 1’10") *Cossack Dance (17.5mm negative, 1’09") *"Dance of the Little Corsair" from Le Corsaire (35mm positive, 60") *Folk Courtship Dance 1 (35mm positive, 1’30") *Folk Courtship Dance 2 (17.5mm negative, 44") *“Fool’s Dance” from Petipa's Mlada (35mm positive, 1’02") *“Fool’s Dance” from Petipa's Mlada (17.5mm negative, 1’06")

Puppet animation

*"Baby Dance" from Die Puppenfee (35mm positive and negative, 1’17") *"Hindu Dance" from La Bayadère (35mm positive and negative, 3’) *Mulatto Woman (35mm positive and negative, fragment) *Pierrot-Artists (35mm positive and negative, 5’35") *Pierrot-Artists (35mm positive and negative, 3’10) *Harlequin's Jest (35mm positive and negative, in 5 scenes): Cassandre's Garden (3’11"); A Forest (1’55"); A Cave in the Grotto (48"); Cassandre's House (2’16"); The Marriage of Harlequin and Columbine (5’40") *Two Pierrots Playing Ball (35mm positive and negative, 1’17")

Paper films

*Birds in Flight (2") *Snake (5") *Buffoon's Dance from The Nutcracker (1’30") *Cakewalk (1’04")

Other

Leningrad Choreographic Institute (1920s)

*Character Pas de deux (17.5mm positive, 58") *Coppélia (animated dolls) (17.5mm positive, 53") *La Fille mal gardée (17.5mm positive, 60") *Pas de trois (17.5mm positive, 24") *Les Sylphides (17.5mm positive, 45") *Woman Dancer with Snake (17.5mm positive, 10")

Roles

*1923 — '' Comedienne'' — actor (choreographer Skripochkin) *2003 — ''A Belated Premier'' — self (archive footage)

Literature

*''Alexander Shiryaev (1941)''
St. Petersburg Ballet. From Reminiscences of the Mariinsky Theatre Artist
— ''Notes by Film Historian'' No. 67, 2004, pp. 61–101 *''Birgit Beumers, Victor Bocharov, David Robinson (2009)''. Alexander Shiryaev: Master of Movement. — Gemona: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 176 pages

References

External links

*
Alexander Shiryaev: Home Movie Genius
by Marie Lascu at the

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

website
Alexander Shiriaev: The Hidden Genius of Ballet and Film
by Wendy Perron,

Dance Magazine ''Dance Magazine'' is an American trade publication for dance. It was first published in June 1927 as ''The American Dancer''. ''Dance Magazine'' is currently part of Dance Media, led by longtime arts publisher Joanna Harp as president, and has mu ...

A.V. Shiryaev
website dedicated to Alexander Shiryaev
Alexander Shiryaev: Dance to Film
by David Robinson
A Belated Premiere
at kinoglaz.fr {{DEFAULTSORT:Shiryaev, Alexander 1867 births 1941 deaths 20th-century Russian ballet dancers 20th-century Russian memoirists 19th-century ballet dancers from the Russian Empire Dancers from Saint Petersburg Choreographers of Mariinsky Theatre Honored Artists of the RSFSR Mariinsky Ballet dancers Mass media people from Saint Petersburg Choreographers from the Russian Empire Male actors from the Russian Empire Russian animated film directors Russian animators Russian ballet choreographers Russian documentary filmmakers Russian male ballet dancers Russian male silent film actors Russian people of Italian descent Soviet male ballet dancers Soviet choreographers Soviet cinematographers Soviet male silent film actors Stop motion animators Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet alumni