The Court of the Last Tsar

The salaries of people employed in the imperial theaters -- the Mariinsky, the Alexandrinsky, and the Maly Theaters in St. Petersburg, and the Bolshoi and the Maly in Moscow -- including directors, dancers, teachers, and pupils, were also paid from the Civil List, as all were considered to be members of the Emperor's Household. At the end of every season, as Mathilde Kschessinska remembered, all of the pupils at the Imperial Ballet School and the dancers in the ballet itself received presents from the emperor. "In most cases," she wrote, "it consisted of a jewel in gold or silver, enriched sometimes with precious stones according to the class of gift and always bearing a crown or Imperial eagle. Male dancers usually received a gold watch. On the whole, these gifts were not particularly beautiful." The annual cost of funding the imperial theaters alone amounted to some 2 million rubles a year. Also included were the upkeep of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, the Alexander III Museum of Russian Arts, and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Thus the emperor's outlay each year was certainly enormous. According to the Romanovs in exile, Nicholas was lucky to survive from financial year to financial year, so strained were his resources.

The Court of the Last Tsar: Pomp, Power, and Pageantry in the Reign of Nicholas II by Greg King. 2006. Page 235.

Stalin and ballet's Golden Age

 In the storm of meetings, debates, and humiliating self-criticism that followed, Asafiev condemned Shostakovich's score for the ballet as "Lumpen-Musik" and Vaganova dutifully denounced The Bright Stream for having strayed from the "correct path" of art. Shostakovich retreated, and Lopukhov never made another important dance.

"Ballet Fraud" unleashed a panic. Dancers and ballet masters scrambled to interpret the official pronouncements and to create or revise their productions to suit Stalin's elusive tastes. As the Terror spread, dram-balets took on ever more ideologically strident tones and obvious themes. The stakes were high. Although dancers were spared the worst of Stalin's horrors, the sense of danger was acute and pervasive -- and not only for Lopukhov, whose past difficulties had made him an easy target. One morning in 1937 Vaganova arrived at the theater to find a note posted on the door stating that she had "resigned" her position as director; she quietly withdrew into teaching. The ballerina Marina Sernenova's husband (a high-ranking diplomat) was arrested and killed; Semenova was put under house arrest but eventually released (she was Stalin's favorite dancer). In 1938 Meyerhold's theater was shut down, and when he dared to speak out he was arrested, tortured, and shot; his wife was found stabbed to death in their home. Fear cast a pall over art, but the effect on dance was not always immediate or apparent. Whatever they were thinking at the time -- and we really don't know -- Ulanova, Chaboukiani, and many others continued to dance their hearts out. Artists who were there will tell you that, the Terror aside, this was ballet's golden age.
 
Apollo's Angels: a history of ballet by Jennifer Homans. 2010. Page 357.

The importance of hands -- José Limón

One of the most eloquent of the voices of the body is the hand. It is its function to give completion to movement and gesture. The hand is the seal upon the deed. A powerful gesture with the body cannot fully convince unless the hand is in accord with it, nor can a subtle, restrained one be completely so without having the hand in full consonance. The hand can be said to breathe like the lungs. It expands and contracts. It can project movements seemingly to infinity, or gather them back to their source within the body. It is a mouthpiece, a moderator. It has a brilliant range, capable of complexities and subtleties unequalled by other regions of the dancer's "orchestra." It is the abettor of all that the dancer intends. It is unthinkable, a dance without hands.

"On Dance" by José Limón in The Vision of Modern Dance edited by Jean Morrison Brown. 1979. Page 103.