2023-08-16 16:45:34
Exotic, charming, strong-willed, silent film diva before being loved by the stars of futurism, from Balla to Depero, to Prampolini. Born in Russia and illustrious (she was born in Kerch, in Crimea, daughter of an officer in the Tsar’s army), she fled as a teenager from the October Revolution across the Black Sea, Constantinople, Greece, Egypt to land in England. She was only 18 years old and in an interview she declared with conviction: “My life is a novel… and I’m so young”. Gianluca Bocchino, a young researcher and musicologist, has dedicated over 5 years of studies and accurate investigations of unpublished sources and materials to deciphering the enigma Jia Ruskaja, ‘I am Russian’, founder of the National Academy of Dance, the only dance institution in Italy , with the precious volume ‘Jia Ruskaja. The dancing goddess’, supported by the Mic- Live Show.
“Diva and glamorous icon of Italian free dance, Evgenija Fedorovna Borisenko, this is her real name, has been able to establish, in the course of her existence, public and private relationships with the major personalities of national and international dance, artistic and political culture – she told time.news Gianluca Bocchino- Although not a trained dancer, she has always traveled with ease most of the years of Futurism, to find herself the queen of dance of the Fascist period, to the disappointment and indignation of a part of the militant critics. added the author – not without some difficulty Jia Ruskaja managed to overcome the Second World War by retranscribe her and others’ lives in the wake of the republican years as shown by the photos that portray her next to the ministers Martino, Andreotti, Moro in the gardens of the National Academy of Dance on the Aventine, the latter, next to his daughters”.
Choreographer and dancer (her creations were inspired by ancient Greece and Isadora Duncan, bare feet, without the cumbersome pointe shoes), director of the Scuola della Scala in Milan, weddings that count. With an English army officer, with whom he has a son, with the noble German sculptor Herbert von Kedermann-Wartheber, with the director of Corriere della Sera, Aldo Borelli, with whom he will form one of the most influential and acclaimed couples, always in first lines in the intellectual and worldly salons of via della Spiga. But why did Jia Ruskaja choose dance to assert herself in worldly and cultural spheres? “Simply because it was the simplest language to adopt – answered Bocchino- she had tried with the cinema, but her strong Russian accent would have prevented her from making it on the big screen. The message of her body was certainly the most immediate one, in particular that of the free dance so popular in those years. She challenged herself, the prevailing culture of those years, she entered the ‘singular combat’ with a straight leg and won ”.
Certainly Jia Ruskaja had a particular flair and knew how to surround himself with all those personalities who mattered, above all those who held political and cultural power, but also religious power. “She was an intelligent woman, she pursued goals and knew how to complete projects, she didn’t like to improvise – continued Bocchino – She knew how to exploit her beauty, and fill the gaps that existed in Italy, especially in the Terpsichorean area. Undoubtedly in those years the fascist government at the time helped and sponsored her, as evidenced by her book with a dedication to Mussolini, ‘Dance as a way of being’, which I recently found on an online platform at the price of 8 thousand dollars”.
Gianluca Bocchino’s work reconstructs the stages of an unusual and dazzling career, farsighted for the time. The creation of a school, the National Academy of Dance, where to educate the new generations in beauty and dance, the birth of a Foundation in support of less well-off girls, former dancers alone and at rest, the request to the then Minister Bottai of the ‘concession of a ministerial diploma enabling dance teaching to each student ‘licensed’ from the Specialization Course’, an internal institute for the students of the Academy to study. Alongside an interesting bibliography, Gianluca Bocchino has patiently reconstructed the chronology of his shows (hundreds), quoting and recalling that universe of experimentation and enthusiasm, but also all those friends, colleagues, lovers, husbands who accompanied his rise (among others, Curzio Malaparte, Anton Giulio Bragaglia with his Teatro degli Indipendenti, Ettore Romagnoli who engaged her for the Classical Performances of Syracuse, Trilussa, Palazzeschi who dedicated poems and compositions to her).
The work is accompanied by unpublished images, never published, those signed in particular by a diva of the time, the Hungarian photographer Ghitta Garrel. But what remains almost 80 years after the Foundation of the Academy of Dance? Which lights, which shades Bocchino? “My work also wants to be a reflection, a political and social cross-section of the culture between the 30s and 60s. Jia Ruskaja lived like a lioness, strong-willed and sensual, haughty and magnanimous, a proud ‘mother’, sometimes autocrat, but always very generous towards her favorite pupils, from Penzi, to Calizza, to Zoppolato, to whom she bequeathed her more beautiful jewels – replied Bocchino- The questions remain linked, for example, to his immense patrimony that has disappeared, dilapidated… By whom? And then the marriage with the powerful and in love editor of Corriere della Sera, the sudden divorce, perhaps to favor the rise of the former Mrs. Borelli, who after Fascism managed, it seems, to hide her husband in one of the convents on the Aventine , or that clause regarding the Opera of the National Academy of Dance, as written in his own hand… ‘should the opera not be able or in any case fail to observe the specified honors punctually and diligently, I order that the inheritance be devolved to the Bolshoi Theater of Moscow’”.
Questions that deserve other essays, new studies to which perhaps the journalist and writer Francobaldo Chiocci answers in part, who met and worked alongside Ruskaja, author of the first biography dedicated to the Foundress of the National Dance Academy, who in the afterword to the book by Gianluca Bocchino writes: “Who Jia Ruskaja is still today it is difficult to explain. Much of the fame of this enigmatic, fascinating but controversial arouser of admiration and hostility remains shrouded in a tangled artistic and existential mystery, which however must be scrutinized. If only for rediscovery and gratitude towards the most complex, multifaceted, creative and innovative character who emerged in the last century from the Italian world of dance”.
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