Volkova, Vera (1904–1975)

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Volkova, Vera (1904–1975)

Russian ballet dancer and master teacher who trained the finest dancers of the day in the Vaganova technique of which she was the leading exponent in the West. Name variations: Mrs. Hugh Finch Williams. Born Vera Volkova on June 7, 1904, in St. Petersburg, Russia; died in Copenhagen, Denmark, on May 5, 1975; daughter of a Russian military officer; married Hugh Finch Williams (a British architect), in 1936.

Awards:

granted the title Knight of Dannebrog by the Danish government (1956); received the Carlsberg Memorial Legacy (1974).

Entered the Russian Choreographic School (1920); joined the State Theater for Opera and Ballet (1925–29); toured the Soviet Far East (1928); made second tour, including China and Japan (1929); defected while on a tour of the Far East (1929); settled in Shanghai, China (1929); moved to Hong Kong (1932); moved to London (1937); danced with the International Ballet (1941); founded a school in London (1943); taught at the Sadler's Wells Ballet (1943–50); was advisor to the Teatro La Scala, Milan (1950); was a guest teacher at the Royal Danish Ballet, Copenhagen (1951), then artistic director (1952) and permanent instructor in dance (1952–75); toured the U.S. with the Royal Danish Ballet; was guest instructor with the Joffrey Ballet (1958); was guest instructor with the Harkness Ballet (summers 1964, 1965); created a Knight of Dannebrog (1956).

Vera Volkova was born into the aristocracy of imperial Russia and was raised in St. Petersburg in a wealthy home overlooking the River Neva. Her father was a career officer in an elite hussar regiment; her mother was a lady of taste and refinement, who encouraged her three children in their respective careers. Her elder sister became a painter and her brother a doctor. The exact date of Volkova's birth was long uncertain as she was skittish about her age, but it now appears certain that it was on June 7, 1904. After an initial education under the care of French governesses, Vera and her elder sister were sent to the Smolny Institute, the elite boarding school founded by Catherine II the Great as a private girls' academy reserved solely for daughters of the nobility. There, Volkova was educated in the French language and in the deportment thought necessary to a young woman who would soon be traveling in the highest circles of tsarist society. The school was under imperial patronage and manners suited to the imperial court were rigorously taught and enforced.

With the outbreak of World War I, the sheltered and genteel life of Vera Volkova began to crumble. Her father left for the front and never returned, having fallen in combat in 1917. As the revolution approached and the situation deteriorated in Petrograd, as St. Petersburg had been renamed at the beginning of the war, Volkova's mother sent her and her older sister, together with a French governess, to Odessa, far—it was thought—from the increasing food shortages and other difficulties in the capital. At first, all went well, and the girls continued their education even after the fall of the tsar, but in 1918, as the Russian Civil War drew nearer to Odessa, their governess fled to a French warship which was evacuating all French citizens from the beleaguered port, leaving the Volkova sisters with only enough money to return to Petrograd. The two girls secured a train but were unable to get further than Moscow where they were stranded and forced to support themselves by helping other refugee mothers with their children in exchange for food. Eventually they did succeed in returning to Petrograd, where they found their mother living in a single room of their mansion which under Soviet rule had now been divided among working-class families. These were years of privation that lasted until well into the 1920s. During this period, Volkova's health was undermined to the extent that her constitution was permanently weakened. She suffered several serious illnesses later in her life.

As the widow of a tsarist officer, Madame Volkova was in a difficult social situation vis à vis the new regime, but fortunately the Lenin government had decided to allow the ballet to continue despite its elitist associations, and apart from the Marinsky school, it also allowed other ballet schools to emerge. As a result, in 1920 Vera was able to secure ballet training at the new Russian Choreographic School founded and directed by the influential ballet critic Akim Volynsky (1863–1926) with the distinguished dancers Maria Romanova and Agrippina Vaganova (1879–1951) as his instructors. Romanova was an excellent teacher whose daughter, Galina Ulanova , went on to become the first great soviet prima ballerina assaluta. Though now in her late teens, an advanced age at which to begin ballet training, Volkova advanced rapidly to a great extent. Not having had prior ballet training, she had less to unlearn than some of the other dancers from the Maryinsky who had been trained in the earlier tradition of imperial Russia. Here at Volynsky's school, where Volkova studied for five years, new techniques were taught, especially by Vaganova, and in years to come Volkova would be the first to bring the knowledge of these to the world of Western ballet.

Agrippina Vaganova, who was later to attain near mythic status as the founder of the Soviet ballet, had retired as a dancer in 1916, after long years of dissatisfaction with the teaching of ballet in imperial Russia. Before the revolution, three traditions had existed in Russian dance: the French school with its soft, gentle and artificial manner of performance which made it difficult to develop virtuosity, the Italian school which emphasized strength and endurance at the expense of lyricism and harmony, and the Russian school with its rich emotional and spiritual content. Vaganova's goal and her life's work was to consolidate the three traditions into one coordinated system that would nurture the best element in each. Since anything new and supposedly revolutionary was warmly welcomed in the years immediately following the revolution, Vaganova received strong support from the Soviet government, and it was under her tutelage that there emerged the first generation of Soviet dancers, including Galina Ulanova (1910–1980), Olga Lepeshinskaya (1916—) and Natalya Dudinskaya (1912—). This was important because the coming of the revolution had seen the departure of most of the great dancers of the previous era, including such luminaries as Matilda Kshesinskaia (1872–1971), Anna Pavlova (1881–1931), Tamara Karsavina (1885–1978), and Vaslav Nijinsky (1890–1950).

In 1925, Volkova was able to secure a position with the State Theater for Opera and Ballet (GATOB), formerly the Maryinsky and later the Kirov Theater and Ballet, where she performed until 1929. At first, she had little opportunity to dance in public, and as the daughter of the old upper class her chances for a career in the increasingly radical and despotic Soviet Union were highly uncertain. In 1928, however, the authorities thought it a good idea to send small companies of selected dancers to perform in the Soviet Far East and other remote places where dancers were unlikely to defect, and Volkova was chosen as part of a group sent to Harbin in Manchuria, a town then under Soviet rule. Although several dancers took the opportunity to flee the company while there, Volkova chose to return to her family in Leningrad, as Petrograd had been renamed in 1924.

Life in Leningrad was difficult, however, and even though Vera was able to continue performing with GATOB until 1929, it became increasingly clear that the Soviets were thwarting the careers of the children of the old expropriated classes. Volkova's mother encouraged her to seek a career abroad. Since no one was allowed to leave Russia without special permission, when an opportunity arose for a second tour to the Far East Madame Volkova urged her daughter to join the group and this time to defect to Shanghai, which had become a focal point for many Russian refugees who had fled the new regime. At first, Vera was unable to secure the necessary permits to travel but by a piece of sheer good fortune the official to whom she made her final application remembered having served under her father during the war and he approved her journey.

This second Soviet tour (1929) took Volkova to China and Japan and then back to Russia. Once in Vladivostok, she managed to defect without difficulty and, making her way to China, soon found herself in the cosmopolitan world that was Shanghai between the two world wars. Initially, she supported herself as an acrobatic dancer along with other former dancers and students of the Russian ballet who survived by performing in the many nightclubs and theaters of the bustling city. In time, however, she was dancing with Georgi Goncharov, another expatriate Russian dancer who had formed a company and a school in Shanghai. As a "White Russian" (an émigré from the Soviet Union), Volkova soon became accepted in the European society of the teeming city. Among her newfound friends, she counted the Hookham family, whose daughter Margaret was taking ballet lessons with Goncharov and who appeared to Vera to be extremely talented. It was Volkova who encouraged the family to take their daughter to England and secure more formal training for her. The girl, as Margot Fonteyn , would become the first great English ballet dancer and one of the greatest dancers of the mid-20th century and a devoted pupil and friend to Volkova for decades afterward.

It was at a party in Shanghai that Volkova met a young English architect, Hugh Finch Williams, and soon the two were in love. Williams planned to marry Vera but was forced to return to Hong Kong where his firm was engaged in the construction of the first high-rise building—the Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank. The attempts of Williams to bring Volkova to join him in Hong Kong failed at first because before she could obtain the necessary papers to enter the British Crown colony she was required to have secured employment there. Eventually, however, Williams hit upon a scheme whereby he would establish a school in Hong Kong announcing children's ballet lessons soon to be available from the Russian dancer Vera Volkova. A location was chosen, a studio fitted up, and with this as security Vera received a Nansen passport of the kind devised by the Norwegian humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen for displaced persons without proper papers after World War I.

Once in Hong Kong, Volkova became seriously ill for several weeks and after her recovery moved into the Helena May Institute, an English hostel for single women, where she began the study of the English language. As soon as she had acquired sufficient English, a language that she never fully mastered, she was able at last to open her school in 1932. The venture proved a great success and, as the teacher of children of the more prominent members of the English community in the colony, Volkova was soon drawn into their tumultuous social life.

In 1936, Williams returned to England. Having obtained a promotion that enabled him to support a wife, he sent for Vera, and they were married in 1937. After studying briefly with Olga Preobrazhenska in Paris, Volkova settled in Britain with her husband where eventually she became a naturalized British subject. In 1941, she joined the newly formed International Ballet Company of Mona Inglesby but then abandoning her career for a time, she settled down to a domestic life in the elegant Maida Vale district of London. With the coming of the war, Williams joined the army and was posted to India for the duration during which Volkova, with time on her hands, became a fire watcher during the German bombing of London known as the Blitz. Since this wartime role did not fully occupy her hours, she began giving lessons again. In 1943, she opened a school in Basil Street, Knightsbridge, which as her reputation as an excellent and innovative teacher spread was transferred to larger quarters at West Street in the fashionable West End, where most of the better dance schools were located and where Goncharov himself had opened a studio. Here the rising young Margot Fonteyn began taking lessons with her and in time most of the Sadler's Wells Company were taking afternoon classes as well. Ninette de Valois , director of the Sadler's Wells Ballet, having heard of her work from Fonteyn, attended Volkova's classes as an onlooker and was sufficiently impressed to invite her to come regularly to teach at Sadler's Wells, which she did from 1943 to 1950.

Advancing the system of Vaganova, Volkova adapted it for the training of individual dancers, and the innovations in ballet technique learned from Vaganova drew many dancers to her studio, including not only her former pupil Margot Fonteyn but also Robert Helpmann (1909–1986) and Moira Shearer (1926—), both of whom would become ornaments of the English ballet world by the middle of the century. "British dancers were a challenge for they were beautifully trained," said Volkova in 1959. "But their legs were more developed than their upper bodies. And so I had to find just the right approach to add harmony of arms and shoulders, and to release them a bit emotionally. Frankly, I don't think that Cecchetti technique is especially good for British dancers. It is too precise and confining. It was more suited to the Russian dancers of the Diaghilev era because they needed to be toned down. The British dancers need the reverse."

Dance historians are preoccupied with the past. I care about the future.
—Vera Volkova

Once the war was over, dancers came from all over to study under Volkova and for a time it was assumed that she would be invited to serve as a teacher with the newly forming Royal Ballet. Ninette de Valois offered her the position of resident ballet teacher with the company on the condition that she close her school on West Street. This, however, Vera refused to do, whereupon not only was the offer withdrawn but de Valois' dancers were forbidden to attend classes with Volkova. As a result, her school began to falter. In later years, both sides came to realize that a major mistake had been made. The future Royal Ballet had been deprived of the benefits of a great teacher, and Volkova had lost a great opportunity to continue her career in her adopted homeland. Instead, she began to look elsewhere to pursue her art. Meanwhile her husband had returned from the war and, taking advantage of his wife's success, gave up architecture and began to pursue painting which had always been his first love. His choice of a new career was not only successful but gave him the freedom to follow his wife wherever her work might take her. Their marriage was a happy one, and Williams and Volkova remained together until her death.

In 1950, she was invited to serve as an advisor to La Scala in Milan where the famed opera company was undertaking a reorganization of its corps de ballet. Volkova did the best that she could but was startled to find the Italian dancers lacking in the discipline and seriousness in which she had been trained in Russia and that she had found in her English pupils. The following year, however, she received an invitation from Harald Lander (1905–1971), director of the Royal Danish Ballet, to come to Copenhagen as a guest teacher for two months. Vera readily accepted, but upon her arrival found that Lander had been dismissed, and Niels Bjørn Larsen (1913–1992) had been pressured into taking his place, thus projecting Volkova into a political thicket in which she had no interest but soon became entangled. Larsen welcomed her, however, and when the two months were completed invited her to remain as artistic director of the company. It was soon clear to Volkova that the Royal Danish Ballet and its school were deeply entrenched in the Bournonville ballet tradition that was far from what was becoming the norm in the Western world, and that a great deal of hard work would be necessary to bring the company up to the standards of the mid-20th century.

August Bournonville (1805–1879), dancer, choreographer and teacher, was the artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet from 1830 to 1877 and was responsible for its having become a company of international stature. Rejecting the romantic tradition sweeping European ballet in the 19th century, with its emphasis on anguish and melancholy, he chose to emphasize the positive so that ballet would ennoble its audience. Rejecting too the increasing emphasis on the ballerina that in many cases had led to the male dancers becoming mere porteurs, he continued the Danish tradition of stressing the importance of masculine roles. Volkova had no problem with the importance of the male dancer, and she felt that the Vaganova system complemented that of Bournonville rather than competing with it, which was important because the Danes were dearly attached to what was considered to be the national tradition. What she tried to do at the Royal Danish Ballet was to update its technique using her understanding and development of the Vaganova system and to try to develop a cadre of first-class female dancers to complement the males. Senior members of the company predictably found it difficult to adapt to the new style, but younger members took to it rapidly and Henning Kronstam (1934—), Flemming Flindt (1936—) and Kirsten Simone (1934—) were the first dancers who succeeded in mastering the Vaganova technique as interpreted by Volkova. One of her pupils, the Anglo-Danish Stanley Williams (1925–1997), proved to be more interested in choreography than in dancing, and when he went to America he took the Vaganova technique with him, introducing it to the ballet world of New York.

As artistic director at the Royal Danish Ballet, Volkova, while welcoming the production of new choreographic creations, insisted on the continued production of the great classics of ballet—Swan Lake, Giselle, Les Sylphides, etc.—because she knew that it was by the standards of these masterpieces that the quality of a ballet company and of its individual dancers must be judged. During her tenure, she was able to draw some of the greatest talents of Western ballet to Copenhagen for teaching visits of varying lengths. Balanchine came from New York to stage Apollo and Frederick Ashton came from London to create his Romeo and Juliet especially for the company.

Ultimately the strains of the political aspects of being a foreigner directing a national ballet led Volkova to resign as artistic director, but she continued to teach in Copenhagen, contenting herself with the knowledge that teaching was by far the most important aspect of the development of a ballet company and of great individual dancers. Extremely conscientious, Volkova watched almost every performance of the Royal Ballet and used what she saw to govern her teachings in class the following day. The years spent in Copenhagen proved to be the most important of her career. It was she who took the good but still relatively provincial Danish ballet and turned it into one of the great companies of the Western world, and who through its internationally renowned and respected dancers spread the influence of her version of the Vaganova system throughout the world of Western classical dance. As a result, the reputation of the Royal Danish Ballet grew with every passing year. The company was enormously acclaimed during its American tours, and every summer was the centerpiece of the summer ballet festival in Copenhagen. Dancers came from all over to study under Volkova, not only young newcomers but also defectors from Russia and luminaries such as Margot Fonteyn. In 1961, Volkova was approached in Copenhagen by the young Rudolf Nureyev (1938–1993), who, recently defected from the Kirov Ballet and knowing little English, took his first lessons in the West from her and who remained her friend for the rest of her life. Later Mikhail Baryshnikov (1946—), another famous Soviet defector, studied with her as well. In 1956, her paramount role in the transformation of the Royal Danish Ballet into a company of international stature was recognized by the Danish government which awarded her the title Knight of the Order of Dannebrog.

But though the years in Copenhagen may have been the summit of her career, Volkova did not spend all of her time there. From 1958 to 1970, she taught regularly at Kurt Jooss' Folkwang Schule in Essen, Germany, and in the summers of 1964 and 1965 she was a guest teacher for the Harkness Ballet at its headquarters in Rhode Island. In her later years, Volkova became interested in the work of a certain Dr. Thomasen of Aarhus, Denmark, a famous orthopedic surgeon who had taken a great interest in the injuries to limbs and joints brought about by the demands of ballet dancing. The human body was not designed to be dropped to the floor from great heights, and it was notorious that many great dancers had been forced to terminate rewarding careers because their knees had given way. Working with Thomasen, Volkova developed a series of exercises designed to renew the joints after surgical operations and in this way extended the careers of several of her dancers as well as enabling others to return to their work when previously they would have been unable to do so.

In Denmark, Vera Volkova had a profound influence on such dancers as Erik Bruhn, Lis Jeppsen , Henning Kronstram, Adam Lüder, Peter Martins, Peter Schaufuss, and Kirsten Simone, while Frank Andersen preserved her influence in Copenhagen, where for many years he directed the Royal Danish Ballet. Frederick Ashton, Michael Somes, Peter Schaufuss, and Merle Park brought some of her technique to London, Erik Bruhn to Canada, the American-born John Neumeier to the Hamburg Ballet, and the Hynds to Munich.

Vera Volkova was a small, lovely woman with dark hair, large brown eyes, and a warm expression. Her actual performing career was extremely brief, and she is best known in ballet history for her qualities as a master teacher with an uncanny eye for the detection of genius in a budding dance student. As a teacher of ballet, she saw herself as a link in the chain from the early teachings of Vaganova in Petrograd to the development of such Western companies as Sadler's Wells and the Royal Danish Ballet. Devoted to her students, she was a mentor, counselor, and guide, as well as a stern taskmaster to those unwilling to apply themselves with the intensity demanded of the ballet dancer's art. Curiously, though she spent 23 years in Denmark, she seems never to have even attempted to learn Danish and conducted all of her classes as well as her other affairs in a colorful and somewhat broken English. Her students held her in great devotion, however, and when she died in 1975 her funeral at Holmans Church was attended by a large number of dancers who came great distances to pay her their last respects.