“The Starry Round Dance”: Mastering the Universe by the Means of Folk Choreography in the USSR of the 1960s

Abstract

In 1961, Tatiana Ustinova, the choreographer of the famous Pyatnitsky Choir, choreographed “To the Stars”, the first dance on the theme of space exploration in the Soviet repertoire. The suite, in the Russian pseudo-popular style, told of the Russian cosmonaut's encounter with the moon and stars. However, this work remained in the repertoire of the famous chorus for a relatively short time. How to assess the emergence and disappearance of this dance from the point of view of a historian? To answer this question, the choreographic event is placed within the Soviet historical context of the Thaw and the dance-artistic context of 1930s – 1960s. The paper shows that a combination of circumstances outside and within Soviet choreography was not favourable for the conjuncture of space dance in the USSR. The pathos of a break-through into the future expired soon after Khrushchev resigned, the boundless pride for the unparalleled leap forward was superseded by the bitterness of the untimely loss of the first man in space and the success of the American space programme, and the language of Soviet choreography was hopelessly anachronistic for description of a new reality. But the very attempts to portray space on the dance stage are evidence of the incredible popularity and ubiquity of the theme of space in the USSR in the early 1960s.