Alexander Shiryaev

Partially lost.

Alexander Shiryaev created “The Fool’s Dance” in Marius Petipa’s 1896 revival of the ballet “Mlada”, with music by Ludwig Minkus, at the Mariinsky Theatre. His innovation of combining high leaps with the characteristic squatting step, prisyadka, was so dangerous that Petipa turned his back during Shiryaev’s solo, and in fact he broke his fibula while performing it in London in 1912.

A prominent Russian ballet dancer and teacher Alexander Shiryaev had another talent hidden for almost a century. Archive materials that date back to 1906 reveal his bold experiments at stop-motion and paper animation.

No synopsis available yet.

A girl dances with a ball.

One of the first Russian animated films, created by choreographer Alexander Shiryaev in the second half of the 1900s.

Puppets representing Pierrot and Harlequin acting with a ball. Stop-motion animated short films produced sometime between 1906-1909.

Alexander Shiryaev created “The Fool’s Dance” in Marius Petipa’s 1896 revival of the ballet “Mlada”, with music by Ludwig Minkus, at the Mariinsky Theatre. His innovation of combining high leaps with the characteristic squatting step, prisyadka, was so dangerous that Petipa turned his back during Shiryaev’s solo, and in fact he broke his fibula while performing it in London in 1912.

Experiment in animation: birds flying.