Vaganova Method

The Academy of Classical Ballet opened in 1992. We are a ballet school that is dedicated to the education and development of classical ballet dancers and teachers in the method of training developed by Agrippina Y. Vaganova, considered by many to be the greatest ballet pedagogue of the 20th century.

Agrippina Vaganova was a ballerina of the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia prior to the revolution of 1917. When she retired from her performance career she dedicated the rest of her life to the development of a system of teaching that would far surpass anything that had gone before. This system was to impact the world of ballet dancers and teachers far beyond anyone's expectations.

Vaganova began teaching in 1919 and taught for over ten years before she began to codify her method. From 1931 until her death in 1951, she devoted her life to developing this extraordinary and singular method of teaching classical ballet. Today Vaganova's work lives on through her students and her students' students. Her method has been taught at the Vaganova Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia for over seventy years and continues to be taught there today. This is the method that has produced many of the world's greatest dancers. This impressive list of names includes: N. Makarova, R. Nureyev, M. Baryshnikov, G. Ulanova, M. Semyonova, N. Dudinskaya, I. Kolpakova, and many others perhaps less well-known in the west.

In 1976 the Academy of Classical Ballet's Artistic Director, Karen Morell, received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the department of pedagogy at the Vaganova Institute in Leningrad and became the first United States citizen to complete the study of the full eight-year program. Ms. Morell received her certification in 1978 and has been teaching the Vaganova method exclusively for the last 25 years.