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Dancing Couple - The history of ballet dates back to Italy of the 15th century when rich princes hired professional dancers to give luxurious performances that would impress their noble guests. In the 17th century choreographers of Italy, France and England strived to find a new distinct form for “the new ballet” and new “possibilities of dance technique.”
Russia possessed a rich national dance folklore and had been subjected to European cultural influences during the reign of Peter the Great. It proved to be fertile ground for the development of ballet theatre. From the early 18th century ballet in Russia was inculcated by Italian and French teachers. Learning foreign art, the Russians introduced their own unique features.
The original purpose of the ballet in Russia was to entertain the royal court. In the 18th c. the Russian ballet was developing in the tideway of the European classicism. At the turn of the 19th century, however, the hey-day of Russian ballet started. The theaters were opened up to anyone who could afford a ticket. There was a seating section called a rayok, or ‘paradise gallery,’ that consisted of simple wooden benches. This allowed non-wealthy people access to the ballet, because tickets in this section were inexpensive. Russian composers started writing music for ballet and melodramatic ballet became the leading genre. By the early 20th century Russian ballet took the leading part on the world ballet stage. After the revolution of 1917 many artistes left the country thus causing an intense development of the Russian ballet in Europe. The Ballet in Russia suffered but survived during the Soviet era. It finally began to re-emerge in the 1950s and started to regain the world stage in the 1980s.
The first ballet company was the Imperial School of Ballet in St. Petersburg in the 1740s. The Ballet Russe was a ballet company founded in the 1909 by Sergey Diaghilev, an enormously important figure in the Russian ballet scene. The headquarters of his ballet company was located in Paris, France. A protégé of Diaghileve, George Balanchine, founded the New York City Ballet Company in 1948. Today, the Kirov Ballet company (now known as the Mariinsky Ballet) and the Bol'shoy company are world-renowned Russian ballet companies.
Many Russian dancers have gone on to reach worldwide acclaim; notable Russian dancers include: Avdotia Istomina, Paul Gerdt, Olga Preobrajenska, Mathilde Kschessinska, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Olga Spesivtseva, Vaslav Nijinsky, George Balanchine, Lydia Lopokova, Galina Ulanova, Marina Semenova, Maya Plisetskaya, Yury Grigorovich, Alla Osipenko, Natalia Makarova, Ekaterina Maximova, Vladimir Vasiliev, Rudolf Nureyev, Yuri Soloviev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Alexander Godunov, Galina Mezentseva, Ulyana Lopatkina, Ilya Kuznetsov, Vladimir Malakhov, Nina Ananiashvili, Alexei Ratmansky, Yevgeni Panfilov, Nikolay Tsiskaridze, Svetlana Zakharova, Maria Gorshenkova, Lydia Price,Diana Vishneva.
This coin has a shiny "mirror-like" finish over its entire surface and it has been exceptionally hard to photograph.