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Natalia Dudinskaya in The Sleeping Beauty. 1940
Having been separated for three years, those who had been working in Molotov and those who had preserved their art in besieged Leningrad met at the theatre. Nonna Yastrebova, a 1941 graduate of the Leningrad School of Dance who during the siege had performed with the frontline ensemble based in Yukki near Leningrad, was demobilised and sent to work at the Kirov Theatre on the company’s return. She recalled that “I don’t know what was harder – to perform under gunfire, to dance on iced-over lorries or return to the profession after a gap of two and a half years. I removed my tarpaulin-material boots and military uniform... I had to put on my pointes and begin from scratch: standing at the barre and doing exercises, but my legs wouldn’t obey, the muscles were like wood, my body wouldn’t listen, my spine wouldn’t bend...
“Having been a pupil of Vaganova, at the theatre, too, I was in her perfection class. And there I felt like the ugly duckling surrounded by beautiful swans. It was incredibly difficult not just physically but morally as well. I had gone too far from my art and lost too much little by little. Standing at the barre, drenched in sweat and tears, in vain I tried to get back what I had lost. At times I felt bitterness, pain, resentment and fear. Was I to blame for the fact that there had been no opportunity for exercises? The cold, the hunger, the bombings, the constant relocations, the shelling. But the instances of weakness passed. Exposure on the frontline gave us a boost. I would tell myself ‘You must!’ I had to overcome the difficulties and not give up when faced with them, just as they never gave up on the frontlines. And, hardened by the experience of the frontline, I was able to overcome the most difficult obstacle I had ever faced in life – returning to my profession.”*
* N. Yastrebova// Soviet Ballet, 1985, No 2. P. 10