4 3 KOLPAKOVA ENGLISH
It is not that easy to meet Irina Kolpakova in St. Petersburg nowadays as for many years now she and her husband Vladlen Semenov have been living and working in New York. Today, Irina Kolpakova is a ballet mistress with the American Ballet Theatre; and yet, whenever she has a chance, Kolpakova comes home and speaks with a good degree of pride of the Mariinsky Theatre, “our ballet”, “our school”, “our dancers”. Irina Kolpakova was one of Agrippina Vaganova’s favorites in her very last class and now she seems to incarnate the St. Petersburg school of classical dance at its very best. Irina Kolpakova was accepted to the Kirov (Mariinsky) Theatre in 1951 where her dancing career took flight. A superb dancer of the classical repertoire she also proved to be an ideal match for many parts in ballets staged by modern choreographers such as Y. Grigorovich, I. Belskiy, N. Kasatkina, V. Vasilyev and others. The film you are about to see is a captivating narrative of the dawn of a dancing career told by the ballerina herself. Irina Kolpakova speaks about her fist steps in the science and art of ballet and remembers her teacher Agrippina Vaganova and her teaching methods. Irina Kolpakova shows and much as tells her story. The beautiful plasticity of her arms and hands as if submerges the spectator into the world of ballet, which in itself is an act of true art.
This film is a part of a larger project filmed in St. Petersburg in 2012.
