Final Day in St. Petersburg

On our last day in St. Petersburg, we had a chance to visit the famed Vaganaova Ballet Academy where all the great ballet dancers of our time trained, includeing Nureyev, Balanchine, Baryshnikov, etc... We sat down with the Director-General, Madame Vera Doreefeva. Madame Doreefeva is quite the formidable director one might imagine running such an elite ballet school. After being presented with Vaganova Academy tea cups, we sat in on a few ballet classes, the last of which was a group of 20 year old girls who were about to graduate and their legendary instructor, who was herself a prima ballerina. The dancers were beautiful, mostly from Russia but a few from Japan and Bulgaria. We also had a chance to meet a young 20 year old girl from Washington DC, the only American at the school. She was in her first year, and seemed to be loving it. Both Tom and I felt sorry we didn’t offer to buy her a cup of coffee to see how she was doing.

Attached is a photo of Tom and I with Madame Doreefeva.

Lastly, we visited Maestro Valery Gergiev's new concert hall, opened this past april. His orchestra the Kirov Orchestra, will be coming to us in 2008-09.

In our final evening, I went to see Uncle Vanya, a great success, and Tom went to see the winners of the St. Petersburg Conservatory's vocal competition....

Glad to be home.

Emil