Natalia Dudinskaya, 90; Influential Russian Ballerina, Dance Teacher

Natalia Dudinskaya, for 70 years a powerful force in Russian ballet on and off the stage, has died. She was 90.

Ballerina, teacher, wife to the head of the Kirov Ballet and expert in the staging of Russian classics, Dudinskaya died Wednesday in St. Petersburg. The cause of death was not announced.

“In the history of Soviet ballet, Natalia Dudinskaya represents the embodiment of unlimited virtuosity,” writes Russian ballet historian Gennady Smakov in his book “The Great Russian Dancers.” “Her impeccable timing, the exemplary purity of each pose and the academic perfection of every movement lent an icy brilliance to her dancing.”

Dudinskaya herself was fond of saying, “Ballet is my life and my heart.” She earned a reputation for uncompromising standards throughout several different dance careers.

The daughter of ballerina Natalia Tagliori, she was born in 1912 in Kharkov, and received her early training from her mother.

Starting in 1923, Dudinskaya studied in St. Petersburg with Agrippina Vaganova, the teacher who completely reformulated Russian classical technique in the 1920s and ‘30s, becoming Vaganova’s prize pupil.

Dudinskaya graduated in 1931 and immediately became a member of the State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, renamed the Kirov four years later.

In her very first season, she scored a triumph as the lead in “Swan Lake.” She remained at the top of the roster for the next 31 years. Evacuated to Perm during World War II, she began dancing with -- and married -- Konstantin Sergeyev, who became artistic director of the Kirov Ballet in 1951.

Sergeyev choreographed for her one of her favorite star vehicles, the title role in “Cinderella,” to music by Prokofiev. And Dudinskaya, in turn, helped him preserve the company’s classical heritage and lead it to triumphs in Western Europe and the United States.

But the very success of the company’s foreign engagements eventually brought about the couple’s downfall. Their regime survived the scandal of Rudolf Nureyev’s defection in 1961, but after Natalia Makarova left nine years later -- and Sergeyev failed to get her to return -- they were dismissed.

The loss of power, however, did not mean a loss of influence. Dudinskaya had begun teaching Kirov classes de perfection (master classes for the greatest professionals) in 1951, and ended her teaching career at the Vaganova Academy 50 years later. Her most famous students include two of Russia’s current ballet stars, Uliana Lopatkina and Anastasia Volochkova.

Dudinskaya also helped her husband stage his productions of Russian classics outside Russia, turning up at the Boston Ballet, for example, in the 1980s and ‘90s to work on “Giselle,” “Swan Lake,” “La Bayadere” and “Le Corsaire.”

Although she always proclaimed to her students that “without energy there is nothing,” Dudinskaya remained a staunch believer in the aristocratic classicism of Kirov traditions, rather than the flashier style favored by Moscow’s Bolshoi.

“Moscow’s ballet has a little too much circus for us,” Dudinskaya told the Boston Herald in 1996. “The Kirov has a purer style than the Bolshoi, a little more intelligence and elegance in the dancing.”

Dudinskaya was buried Saturday in St. Petersburg’s Literatorskiye Mostki Cemetery alongside Sergeyev, who died in 1992.