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If we are talking about the Ivanov-Petipa "Swan Lake", then they were. That version was produced for Pierina Legnani and by that time her 32 fouettés were already part of her ballerina craft. It was a normal practice then, as by the way was also a practice throughout much of the 20th Century, that a choreographer making a new ballet for a specific ballerina, tried to showcase her. This provides an answer to questions like "why there are only 21 fouettés here, and not 32?" The answer is: "because the (famous) ballerina for whom this particular ballet was made couldn't do more". It may be worth to remember that Legnani was not the first ballerina to do the fouettés, although she probably was the first one to do 32, in public. Emma Bessone, the second of Marius Petipa's Giselles, already was doing them earlier. Legnani was very short, with her anatomy and her legs, it was much easier to perform such tricks than for modern tall and slender ballerinas with elongated feet and X-curved legs. However, her pointe shoes were also much more pointed than many of the shoes worn today (just compare beautifully stylish, pointed shoes of, for example, Alicia Markova, with the ugly sabot-like modern shoes of some of the dancers we see today). Those feats of Bessone and Legnani had been made possible by the evolution in the construction of the pointe shoe that took place around 1880, when the bloc reinforcement was introduced. This, in turn, accelerated changes in the ballerina technique, making acrobatic tours de force that were earlier reserved to a few Italian wizzard-ballerinas, accessible to a much wider group of dancers. Ivor Guest expressed, and not once, grave reservations about how beneficial were those changes, believing them to contribute to the demise of a classically refined ballerina, and I have a great sympathy for his views. The active choreographers were, in turn, under pressure to incorporate those changes into their ballets and this is why we have them.

Actually, there were and there are ballerinas who whip fouettés at their will, up to 64. I think that they really enjoy being able to do that, with little stress, YouTube allowed us to see that their numbers are not so small. Some of them may struggle with nearly every other element of the ballerina technique, but this is a separate story. When you learn the proper technique, the rest is just a matter of exercise, unlike some other things that are infinitely harder to learn: if you want to do 32 fouettés with flying colours, in the class you do 64. There is a catch though: such exercises pose a serious threat to dancer's feet. Due to anatomic differences, some are a lot more vulnerable than others. For a ballerina, foot problems are very serious and chronic foot problems are a calamity. Several of internationally acclaimed and still active dancers experienced such problems. You know them.

Every single artist who at a major company is ever given "Swan Lake", passes the "exam" of fouettés in the rehearsal room. So, yes, every one of them can, with some luck, on a good day, do them well enough. I saw many times ambitious corps de ballet girls working on the fouettés with the pedagogues shouting at them (everything is taking place so fast that even normally very nice and able to restrain oneself people become explosive). The Odette/Odile part is one of the most daunting roles a ballerina can think about. Very few ever are given to perform it on stage complete. Whether Plissetskaya herself "amply" demonstrated that she can do the fouettés, I am not aware of "ample" evidence, her early decision to substitute the fouettés in "Swan Lake" was certainly not an easy one for her. If she happened not to be so successful as an artist later, we would likely never hear from her that admission 50 years later.

I allowed myself to highlight two key words in your post. This is in fact an interesting question. The 32 fouettés form a part of the prescribed choreographic text, so, in fact, any alteration, simplification, by a performing artist, is always an admission of weakness. I had an ambivalent feeling about them, in view how brutally vulgar or banal the whole part of Odile can be, with all those technical tours de force playing to the cheering crowd, which essentially destroys the tragedy of Prince and Odette, making out of it some sort of circus. One of the leading experts on the dramaturgy of choreography explained to me the meaning of the fouettés as the point of proclamation of the triumph over the Prince by the Evil Spirit, the culmination of a lengthy play of deception and ensnaring so, as such, the fouettés is a "must". It cannot be omitted.

@Lizbie1 I know of at least four legendary Soviet ballerinas who substituted, usually piqué manège, in place of 32 fouettés because they were so uncertain of their ability to perform the latter. Two of them are still alive. I wouldn't mention by name any single one of them, but you brought up Plisetskaya, incorrectly believing she did not perform the prescribed fouettés in Swan Lake for some unclear "artistic reasons". This why I thought I better correct it now, before such a view spreads throughout the waves of the internet, with all the consequences. The only reason why all those brilliant ballerinas didn't perform the fouettés was always their inability to do them without a serious risk of "ending up in the wings", "falling into the orchestra pit", or some other disaster (incidentally, I am almost quoting one of those celebrated dancers). I know this as a fact. I verified its veracity with the people who are authorities on the history of Soviet ballet, who knew personally, sometimes closely, those dancers. Plisetskaya herself writes about it in her book, saying, in particular, that before the ballerina arrives at the fouettés in the coda of the Black Pas de Deux, she is already exhausted, and Plisetskaya, admitting she never had learned the proper technique, decided to substitute piqué manège to relieve herself from the fear of failure. She made her decision very early, likely before 1950, soon after her debut. Concerning your video "proof", be aware that film served propagandist goals to demonstrate how the "People's Artists" toil for the Working Classes of the "Happy and Friendly Family of Nations of the Soviet Union". In those Soviet films practically everything was staged: what looks like a live performance was usually shot without any audience, the audience shots and the applause were recorded separately. You can make any number of takes, you are filming scene by scene, and only some scenes, not the whole show, etc, etc. Maximova, who was a perfectionist, once held the crew for 9 hours before she finally was happy with just a single number. Those artists really wanted to look best when recorded, they knew that this is how they will be judged by the future generations.

You assume that Plisetskaya was choosing not to them, hmm..., what if she felt she was unable to do them?

This has been, in fact quite common, to have different dancers performing the parts of Odette and Odile, sometimesit was due to the fact that the more accomplished dancer of the two was unable to do the fouettes. The fouettes, by the way, aren't strictly speaking obligatory, as some of the greatest dancers of the past demonstrated.

I think you are realistic. I have a similar feeling that a lot of things they do is merely a PR exercise.

Being "one of the most over the top, bombastic, loud ballets ever" is for me a much lesser fault than being simply "crude". No amount of athletic masculine prowess or acrobatics will save in my eyes something that is crude. I had a chance to see Maximova, Vasilyev, Bessmertnova, in it, and I passed it over. If, for some, Grigorovich's "Spartacus" is an epitome of the "Bolshoi style", then I can understand why they are hostile to any attempts of instilling into that company much needed refinement. Of the two Soviet "Spartacus" productions, I prefer much more the earlier one, by Jakobson.

Marvelous! How refreshing! What kind of "ballet" is it, indeed?...

Thank you for the information. I am not particularly fond of galas, I would much more prefer to see Maria Alexandrova invited to appear in any one of major works with the Royal Ballet, ENB, BRB, etc. Artistic Directors and impresarios should be lining up now to sign her up for a guest appearance. Why they aren't? Lack of vision? Stifled by their company policies? trade unions? Whatever the reasons, this is a disservice for the ballet going public at large.

Whether intended or not but this sounds to me as a nugget of wisdom. The number of "ballet critics" quadrupled in the era of internet but the total amount of interesting things they are capable to say about ballet seems to have proportionally decreased. Many dance related articles read today as if they were generic pieces assembled from scraps everybody can find by googling.

When I woke up in the New Year and saw THIS (!!), I couldn't think of tutus. Those HANDS, Agrippina Vaganova must be rolling in her grave, for me it is just painful to look at it. I cannot imagine any great Kirov ballerina capable of doing this while dancing, much less during curtain calls.

The first ever ballet performance I attended was a fabulous "Firebird" with Annette Page. I had an excellent seat, close to the stage, and the image of a fiery firebird, exactly like on the photograph with Fonteyn, above, remains one of my most vivid and cherished balletic memories. Annette Page passed away earlier this month, I will be always thinking of her dearly, she was the one who introduced a small child to the magnetic beauty of Ballet.

...and the famous photograph by Seymour, of Stepanova, the last one of the baby ballerinas of "Ballets russes", The original Firebird, Tamara Karsavina, danced it in a fantasy costume, not in a tutu. The only good quality photographs I could readily locate where you can see her fully, show Karsavina partnered by Bolm, not by Fokine, her original partner.

Not an amalgam if you realise that it was Sergeev himself who was responsible for the London 1921 production. Anybody who is really interested in "authentic Petipa", "reconstructions", etc, must know that N.K. Sergeev is a figure at the very centre of all these issues. There has been a strong resentment against him as a régisseur at Mariinsky in the years before the bolshevik revolution, it continued afterwards, he was held responsible for his opposition and prevention of recording the Petipa and Fokine productions, that could be easily accomplished by 1914, in full knowledge that he would be the sole possessor of the choreographic text for those productions, then he left the country taking the notes with himself, making sure he was the owner of the unique copy, and the only person who was able to understand their contents (the notes are very difficult to read and understand without a proper instruction, their coverage is also fragmentary).

Ratmansky's "reconstruction" was a reconstruction not of the original 1890 production, not of the 1914 reprise, restaged by Sergeev, with entirely new set of decorations and costumes having little to do with those of the original production, but of the 1921 London "Sleeping Princess", again, with completely new decorations and costumes. In 1922-1923 Lopukhov set up a goal to reconstruct the original Petipa production, this however resulted in departing even further from the original.

This is what I wanted to say, and not even "unique to Bolshoi", but "unique" to a particular production at Bolshoi. Always remember that every production has a set and a costume designer, who often wants to be "creative" and makes changes to an established custom, more often wrong than right. We are witnessing it all the time. Earlier this year I saw a "Swan Lake" with Swans looking like Snow Flakes (?!) There is no such thing as "Russian tutu".

I don't agree with the message of any of the above three sentences. Your "arguments" for not releasing those old recordings don't make much sense to me. In most cases, all of this boils down to somebody making choice between willingness to do something, or an inertia. In the end, we all end up with VERY FEW ballet recordings available, in spite of the fact that MANY were made, and all of us, ballet lovers, ballet students, ballet artists, choreographers LOSE.

I checked my DVD of Onegin, it was indeed transferred from VHS, so please accept my apologies for sending a wrong signal.

It was issued by Home Vision, don't recall the year, quite some time ago.

Not just "another good source" , Wiley'a work on Russian Imperial ballet is the authoritative source in English. Roland Wiley is a professional musicologist with main focus on Russian 19th century music and ballet, Scholl is a professor of Russian and comparative literature responding to the popular demand among the ballet going public caused by the amount of coverage "reconstructions" and "authentic Petipa" were receiving in the madia.

Worth seeing, definitely, don’t expect too much artistically.

Yes, there are some very promising ones. This doesn't translate however into becoming a star, or even a leading soloist at Mariinsky anymore. Not a single Vaganova graduate since the graduation class of 2003 became a principal at the Mariinsky. "Vaganova graduates are good only for the corps, the best of them can attain the higher rank of a coryphee" (which, at Mariinsky, in terms of treatment and obligations means the same as corps, just with more visibility), as was quite clearly stated by Mr Fateev in an interview that appeared in "Dancing Times". Expect the best Vaganova graduates of the class 2018 to be going next year to the Bolshoi.

Why do you refer to them as claque? Maybe they are Bolle's groupies who travel wherever their idol performs? Ivan Vasilyev, Natalia Osipova, and a few other ballet stars have such devoted fans.