Using Russian-German relationship for the reconstruction of a Russian ball at the beginning of the 19th century
(Maria Derkach)

The reconstruction of a ball in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century is quite complicated because of the lack of dance manuals at that time. Indeed, between Kuskov’s (1794) and Petrovsky’s (1825) books no dance manuals and even mentions of the existence of such sources have not been found yet. Nevertheless the balls in Russia were surely an essential part of leasure time of Russian aristocracy, as the memoirs tell us. In search for solutions many links lead us to German sources. First we need to remember that beginning with Catherine II all wifes of Russian monarchs were German. Secondly, very often the tutors of Russian aristocracy were German as well. There are also some clues in books: the style of the language, in which Petrovsky writes his book, makes us think he had German roots in his language. Another valuable German source of 1806 is the book of Ivensen published in Riga, which already had become a part of Russia.

On the other hand Russian dance culture was not identical to the German one and some dances were poplular in one country and almost not danced in another. For example, Monimask and Matredur much more popular in Russia while Anglaises, which were an essential part of a German ball of the 1st decade of XIX century, were rarely danced in Russia. Studying German dance books together with Russian memoirs helps us to understand the true picture of the Russian dance culture.

Maria Derkach, Moskau, Russland:

Graduated from Kaluga Dance College in 1998, Maria Derkach began to study historical dances in 2005. Now Maria is one of the leaders of the "Golden Forests" early dance school and teaches classes of different levels on various topics from Baroque to XIX century social dancing. She gave classes all over Russia as well as in Ukraine and Belarus. Currently Maria's main interest is German and Russian dancing culture in the first third of the XIX century.