Aleksandr Shiryaev

Alexander Viktorovich Shiryaev (; – 25 April 1941) was a Russian ballet dancer, ballet master and choreographer, founder of character dance in Russian ballet who served at the Mariinsky Theatre. Shiryaev was also a pioneering animation director who is credited with the invention of stop motion animation.

Early life Alexander Viktorovich Shiryaev was born to a long line of artists involved in the ballet. He was the son of the flautist Hector (Viktor) Cesarevich Puni, who played for the St. Petersburg Imperial Bolshoi Theatre's orchestra; and dancer Ekaterina Ksenophontovna Shiryaeva, a member of the corps de ballet. Alexander Shiryaev was the grandson of the Italian composer of ballet music Cesare Pugni and his English wife Marion Linton, who came to Russia with the renowned ballerina Fanny Elssler and the balletmaster Jules Perrot in 1851. According to the Soviet ballerina Ninel Yultyeva, he was an illegitimate child, raised under his mother's surname.

After that he built an improvised studio at his apartment where he carefully recreated various ballets by staging them using hand-made dolls which he created from either clay or papier-mâché; they were tall, and their body parts were connected by thin wire which provided plasticity. He then filmed them on camera, frame by frame. In the process he also made thousands of sketches, catching every movement, also turning them into a filming reel so that one could watch the entire dance in form of a cartoon.

During the Soviet period those films were mostly forgotten, although Fyodor Lopukhov and some other memoirists mentioned his animation experiments in their books. Ninel Yultyeva described how Shiryaev produced around 1700 drawings and filmed them just to demonstrate one complex dance to his students. For a Hindu dance from La Bayadère he prepared clay figures and made them repeat every movement on camera; his film was later used during the restoration of Marius Petipa's ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre.

In 2003 he finally released the one-hour movie entitled A Belated Premiere which included fragments of different films by Shiryaev. Around 2008 Bocharov finally managed to get fundings from the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in order to restore the negatives. Around the same time he got in contact with Aardman Animations who also became involved in restoration and digitizing process.

Personal life and memory Alexander Shiryaev was married twice. His first wife was a ballerina Natalia M. Matveeva who also performed at the Mariinsky Theatre. Their only daughter who had also trained as a character dancer drowned in 1912, and his wife died of grief shortly after.

In 1941 Shiryaev prepared a book of memoirs St. Petersburg Ballet. From Reminiscences of the Mariinsky Theatre Artist. It was meant to be published by the Union of Theatre Workers, but was postponed. The copy had been kept safe in the National Library of Russia and was first published in 2004 in the Notes by Film Historian magazine No. 67.

Filmography (1905–1909) Source:

Staged comedies

The Befuddled Film-Maker (35mm positive, 30") Circus Artists (17.mm negative, 36") The Clown and the Elephant (17.5mm negative, 1’42"; 17.5mm positive, 1’30") The Crocodile (17.5mm positive, 38") Drunkards (17.5mm positive, 1’15") The Fisherman's Dream (17.5mm positive, 4’20") An Interrupted Dinner (17.5mm positive, 2’58") The Lodger and the Spider (17.5mm positive, 1’52") The Naughty Girl and Granny (17.5mm positive, 2’02") The Tomboy (17.5mm positive, 2’45") A Troublesome Couple (17.5mm negative, 2’53") A Wet Romance (17.5mm positive, 1’27")

Trick films Boy in a Sack (17.5mm positive, 52") Chairs (35mm positive, 20") The Enchanted Tea Table (17.5mm positive, 42") Magical Dressing (17.5mm negative, 35") Pierrot and the Maid (17.5mm positive, 2’02") Pierrot and the Maid (variant version) (17.5mm negative, 1’52")

Dance films Character Dance (35mm positive, 2’20") Character Dance (35mm positive, 1’50") Character Dance (Solo) (35mm positive) Character Dance with Fan (17.5mm negative, 2’01") Character Dance with Tambourine (17.5mm negative, 1’10") Cossack Dance (17.5mm negative, 1’09") "Dance of the Little Corsair" from Le Corsaire (35mm positive, 60") Folk Courtship Dance 1 (35mm positive, 1’30") Folk Courtship Dance 2 (17.5mm negative, 44") “Fool’s Dance” from Petipa's Mlada (35mm positive, 1’02") “Fool’s Dance” from Petipa's Mlada (17.5mm negative, 1’06")

Puppet animation "Baby Dance" from Die Puppenfee (35mm positive and negative, 1’17") "Hindu Dance" from La Bayadère (35mm positive and negative, 3’) Mulatto Woman (35mm positive and negative, fragment) Pierrot-Artists (35mm positive and negative, 5’35") Pierrot-Artists (35mm positive and negative, 3’10) Harlequin's Jest (35mm positive and negative, in 5 scenes): Cassandre's Garden (3’11"); A Forest (1’55"); A Cave in the Grotto (48"); Cassandre's House (2’16"); The Marriage of Harlequin and Columbine (5’40") Two Pierrots Playing Ball (35mm positive and negative, 1’17")

Paper films Birds in Flight (2") Snake (5") Buffoon's Dance from The Nutcracker (1’30") Cakewalk (1’04")

Other Leningrad Choreographic Institute (1920s)

Character Pas de deux (17.5mm positive, 58") Coppélia (animated dolls) (17.5mm positive, 53") La Fille mal gardée (17.5mm positive, 60") Pas de trois (17.5mm positive, 24") Les Sylphides (17.5mm positive, 45") Woman Dancer with Snake (17.5mm positive, 10")

Roles 1923 — Comedienne — actor (choreographer Skripochkin) 2003 — A Belated Premier — self (archive footage)