Pyotr Gusev

Who is Pyotr Gusev?

Pyotr Andreyevich Gusev was a ballet dancer, teacher and choreographer. He was born on 29. December, 1904 in St. Petersburg. He studied at the St. Petersburg School of Choreography under Alexandr Shiryayev. He was a friend of George Balanchine and joined his Young Ballet group. He graduated in 1924 and joined the Kirov Ballet. He married Olga Mungalova, a ballet dancer at Kriov. In 1935 he left the Kirov and joined the Bolshoy in Moscow as a soloist. He was dancing with such ballerinas as Galina Ulanova and Maya Plisetskaya.

In 1945 he decided to finish his stage career and became the artistic director of the Kirov, then the Maly Theatre and later the Novosibirsk Theatre. He was also teaching at various schools and took up the role of the ballet master in the Stanislavsky Theatre.

He also worked abroad. Especially important was his work in China between 1958 and 1960. He set up the first ballet academies in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and also taught the first generation of Chinese ballet dancers in those institutions.

From 1966 he taught at the Leningrad Conservatory first as a teacher then from 1973 as a professor. He retired in 1983.

In 1982 the UNESCO accepted his suggestion to declare April the 29 as the International Dance Day. He played the role of Marius Petipa in the film Pavlova, a film made for the memory of Anna Pavlova in 1983.