Saint-Petersburg State conservatory by name of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov

The St. Petersburg Conservatory is the oldest musical higher education institution in Russia, founded in 1862. Many generations of remarkable musicians have made their worthy contribution to the foundation and development of it, to a large extent determining the highest level of St. Petersburg music education. The history of the Conservatory is inextricably linked with the names of its first graduate, Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1865) and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, its professor (from 1871 to 1908), who became the founder of the St. Petersburg school of composition.
The conservatory has the Ballet Directing department. The department was opened in 1962 not with the classical Russian school, but with the avant-garde. The first director was Fyodor Lopukhov, an experimenter of his time. In 2020 his work was continued in a separate division “The Art of Contemporary Dance”. There are three specializations: the art of the choreographer; the art of a choreographer-tutor; the art of contemporary dance. For 60 years, graduates of the department have choreographed dances for operettas, operas, and performances all over the planet – from Europe and the USA to Mongolia and China. In Russia, several ballet theaters are now headed by the choreographers with a Conservatory diploma.