Alexander Shiryaev Movies

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.

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

Experiment in animation: birds flying.

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...