by Michael Donnelly

Created on: August 07, 2008

An American Impresario of a Russian Ballet Company

In my life I have been privileged to have served as a field grade officer in the United States Army, owned a travel company that specializes in travel to Russia, become the only American ever to graduate from the Russian Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, and have traveled to Russia hundreds of times. In between those seminal events I enjoyed a great life and thought that basically the only thing left for me was total retirement except for an occasional foray back to St. Petersburg, with a new group of tourists. Little did I know that the best was yet to come. In February of 2008 I was suddenly thrust into the role of impresario!

During my years of study and travel to St. Petersburg and Moscow I had occasionally attended ballet performances at the Bolshoi and the Mariinski and to my surprise had enjoyed them immensely. Still, I did not become a ballet aficionado until tourist groups insisted that ballet become a regular part of our magical trips to Russia. After ten years of this exposure I discovered that I was becoming quite familiar with ballet performances, terms, personalities, and the differences between exceptional ballet and ordinary ballet performances.

Imagine my surprise when I was asked to be on the board of the Hermitage Ballet! This was the result of my constant appearances at the ballet with groups of appreciative tourists and my ever growing enthusiasm for the genre. A second Masters and a Ph.D. in the arena of Russian art history had made me very familiar with the rich Russian traditions in the arts. Their achievements in and appreciation for music, dance, painting, and sculptures, were not as well known in the west as in Eastern Europe. After years as a student I had come to appreciate just how important the arts were to the Russians and this added great importance to the honor.

Once on the board I started to press for an American tour by the Hermitage Ballet. After a futile year of trying and failing to raise money I was overcome with gratitude when the Russians decided to finance the tour themselves. They had a history of touring in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe, but had never ventured to the United States. I was amazed at just how expensive it was. I had prevailed upon the ballet management to bolster the cast chosen for the United States tour by selecting additional soloists from the Mariinski, the Mussorgsky, and the Perm ballet companies. The result was that

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