The article is devoted to Zhanna Ayupova, who is a prima ballerina of the Mariinsky Theatre as well as an Artistic Director of Vaganova Ballet Academy. Ayupova’s leading roles in ballets by Michel Fokine, productions by Marius Petipa, George Balanchine, Rostislav Zakharov, Leonid Yakobson and others are looked at in details. The article defines peculiar characteristics of Ayupova’s dance. The contribution to the Russian ballet made by Zhanna Ayupova is evaluated.

The article considers the place of the ballet segment in the regional cultural medium. In the mainstream of massovization of culture a contradiction is found between artistic language complication and public artistic tastes’ simplification. A correlation of artistic institutions and the cultural medium is presented by the author. The author reduces variability of the ballet segment in the cultural medium structure to three aspects. The first aspect is connected with a general determination of personality’s interaction with the medium affected through the mechanism of cultural activity. The second aspect determines the capacity of ballet art to reflect value-significance foundations of human existence. The third aspect highlights the resource potential of ballet institutions, which exert possible medial influences on people through artistic education.

This article contains several reviews of “Ballet” magazine’s publications selected on the subject of theories of choreography in the period from 2011 to 2015. These works as well as publication activity of the magazine in general, are highly evaluated and interpreted as a sign of quality growth of ballet education and its institutions in Post-Soviet Russia. The author analyzes specific problems of dance and ballet, which go beyond the boundaries of contemporary scientific discourses. Among others, he describes: sociological aspects of choreography, participants of artistic process (vis. a director, a manager, a viewer and an art critic), semiotics of (modern) dance and growing diversity in the art of dance.

The article tells about how Sergey Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliette” ballet which has been put on stage in Novosibirsk twice. From the one hand, a look into the ballet version of 1965 allows to follow a career path of an outstanding choreographer Oleg Vinogradov. From the other hand, a look on the second version of “Romeo and Juliette” ballet the important stage of professional development of N. Kasatkina and V. Vasilyov ballet masters.

The article is devoted to the pictorial Bestiary by Léon (Lev Samoylovich) Bakst, which represents a variety of beasts and monsters created by the artist in different years as costumes for musical performances. The author reveals the reasons for popularity of these images in the fine art of the turn of the century, analyzes their ontology and traces their stylistic evolution.

The article is devoted to graphic art performances by contemporary St. Petersburg artist O. Y. Yakhnin. Some of his works influenced by folk cultures of the world are analyzed. The author states that a series of collages, based on the author’s color lithographs of the 1990s, is characterized by the unity of natural and mechanistic components. A cheerful plastic suite introduces the viewer to vegetative and geometrical ornamental patterns of world art cultures. Yakhnin enters into an imaginary dialogue with Léon Bakst, who is famous for his sketches of Indian silk paintings of the 1920s.

This article focuses on three portraits of Sergey Diaghilev, Dmitry Philosophov and Walter Nouvel by Léon Bakst. All the portraits were the representatives of the “World of Art” movement and artistic bohemia of St. Petersburg at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Looking at the mentioned portraits, the author reconstructs the «spirit» of bohemian lifestyle of St. Petersburg’s dandies. The article questions whether a self-presentation of a model can influence a portrait painter. It is made an attempt to study the iconography of each model as well to create a typical image of dandy of the “World of art”.

The article is an attempt to analyze the early 20th century activity of the US textile market by the means of identification of textile design features, ornamental style, diversity and patterns of fabric. The author considers the influence of the main artistic movements of the time in the American textile design and also investigates some works of Léon Bakst - a creator of fabrics designs for American textile market. The author marks the place and the role of the artist in the process, as well as the degree of Bakst’s immersion in a new cultural immersion.

The article focuses on two portraits of Andrei Bely painted by Léon Bakst in 1905 and 1906s. Both became symbolic for Silver Age of Russian culture. The author traces the history of those portraits as well as interpretations of the image of the Symbolist writer, created by Bakst, in mass culture from the 1900s up to the present day. The research covers Russian and foreign editions of Bely’s writings, newspaper publications, literary studies, films, advertisements and online resources.

The article is dedicated to a bibliographic phenomenon of Léon Bakst’s surname change, repeated for three times in his childhood and youth. It also reflects upon historical background of the changes. Using archival data from Grodno the author proves some common misconceptions about Bakst’s youth and explores German, Dutch and Belorussian origins of the family name “Bakster” and Bakst pseudonym respectively. An assumption on a symbolic reason of a pseudonym choice is put forward in the article.

The article is devoted to porcelain figurines of the St. Petersburg State Porcelain Factory which were created in a memory of famous Diaghilev’s “Russian Seasons” in the early 21st century. Some sculptures of the 1920s and 1930s (namely sculptures of T. Karsavina, M. Fokine, V. Nijinsky and other dancers dressed in costumes designed by Léon Bakst) are described in the article. Besides, the article by Khmelnitskaya analyses the works of contemporary Russian porcelain artists newly converted to the theme of Diaghilev’s “Russian Seasons”. The author gives examples of European manufacturers’ (primarily Meissen porcelain factory) using the theme of “Russian Seasons” in their works.

In the article the author analyses the reasons of Léon Bakst’s popularity with English theatre audience. Famous for his stage arrangements and costume designs, Bakst was one of the painters, who revolutionary changed the art of English theatre. Léon Bakst very quickly became a social and artistic star in London, particularly popular with the intellectuals of the Bloomsbury group. Using the example of Duncan Grant the author shows how Bakst’s works inspired the young English artists. His vibrant colour combinations greatly influenced fashion, applied arts, and interior design in England in the beginning of the 20th century.

The article is devoted to transmedia phenomenon in musical works of an Italian composer Fausto Romitelli (1963-2004). The author makes an attempt to characterize the well-known “Dead City Radio. Audiodrome” (2002) as an example of a new media art, the essence of which is encompassed in the Canadian sociologist Marshall McLuhan’s book “Understanding Media”. Romitelli and McLuhan both contrasted written and oral cultures, thereby shifting the axes of modern media coordinates. Fausto Romitelli’s oeuvre is a fusion of rock and techno music complemented by a sophisticated spectral technology. A spectral method adopted in Audiodrome embodies the idea of composer’s sound to be material and possess physical characteristics. The first impulse is an acoustic image followed by a computer analysis. These findings later form the basis of musical compositions. Transmedia as a new media technology functions as a substitution of reality by switching one’s perception from the really existing to an imaginary reality.

The article tracks the intersection between the history of Fluxus movement, on the one hand, and a biography of George Maciunas, the movement’s founder, on the other. Four periods connected with the Lithuanian born American artist’s life are highlighted. The importance of two of them for Fluxus foundation is also demonstrated. It is made a conclusion that Fluxus aesthetics were influenced by Maciunas’s views and biography. The unity of Maciunas’s biography and Fluxus group history is proved by essential facts.

The article analyzes the current state of medical monitoring and rehabilitation of athletes in dance sport in Saint Petersburg.

The article focuses on a joint project between the Leningrad Academic Maly Opera Theatre (MALEGOT) represented by the director Boris Zagursky and the renewed choreographer Kasyan Goleyzovsky in late 1950s - early 1960s. Letters of Kasyan Goleyzovsky to Boris Zagursky which are archival materials from the Manuscript Collection of the Russian National Library (St Petersburg) are published for the first time. They shed light on a little known period of the choreographer’s career as well as on the MALEGOT ballet company’s repertoire search.

The aim of this article is to show that Leonardo’s remarks about the discipline of art are an important aspect of his thought and an important feature of its modernity, to suggest that his overall approach to art needs to be seen, not only in terms of an emerging scientific mentality, but also against a background of new economic and social pressures equally characteristic of the modern world. The translation is made from: Williams R. The Spiritual Exercises of Leonardo da Vinci // A Companion to Art Theory. Blackwell Publishing, 2002. pp. 75-87. Article is published with the kind permission of the author.