Trained in the rudiments of ballet by his father, Enrico was sent for further training to Giovanni Lepri who prepared accomplished dancers. He also studied with two more of his father’s colleagues, Cesare Coppini, who taught at the prestigious La Scala in Milan, and Filippo Taglioni, father of the celebrated ballerina, Marie Taglioni.
All of Cecchetti’s teachers had been trained by Carlo Blasis. This early training created a background for Enrico Cecchetti’s method of teaching following the lines of Blasis’ own theory.
Throughout his career, he received rave reviews and accolades and was considered the finest male dancer of his time. At the height of his career, he migrated to St. Petersburg. While performing in Russia, he captivated his audiences with brilliant feats of batterie, amazing leaps, and multiple pirouettes.
So prodigious was his technique and his gifts for mime that he created and performed the virtuoso role of the Blue Bird and the mime role of Carabosse in the premiere of Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty in 1890.
Cecchetti taught at the Imperial School in St. Petersburg from 1887-1902, and from 1902-1905 he taught in Poland at the Warsaw State School. Returning to St. Petersburg in 1905, he established a school there. From 1907-1909, he taught Anna Pavlova exclusively until dancers from the Maryinsky pleaded with him to open his classes to them again.
Diaghilev hired Enrico for the dual roles of ballet master and mime. Cecchetti performed many mime roles which were created expressly for him by choreographers of the Ballets Russes.
Tired of touring with Ballet Russes, Cecchetti settled in London, England where he opened a school to which dancers flocked.
Considered the technical lodestar of the ballet world, it was said that no one could become a finished ballet dancer without passing through Cecchetti’s hands.
In 1923, he returned to Italy to retire but was invited by Arturo Toscanini to resume his teaching career at La Scala, his lifelong dream. While teaching a class, Cecchetti collapsed and was taken home where he died the following day, November 13, 1928
Cyril Beaumont, a world renowned dance historian and friend of Cecchetti said, “What impressed me most about the Cecchetti method of teaching was the way in which each exercise played a definite and planned part in the student’s technical development. There is nothing haphazard about the system, nothing which depended on the teacher’s mood of the moment. There is a definite plan to daily classes.”
The method devised by Maestro Cecchetti was recorded and published in 1922 by Cyril Beaumont with the help of Idzikowski and Cecchetti, himself. The Manual of Theory and Practice of Classical Theatrical Dancing (Cecchetti Method) is an excellent source of information on technique, stance, positions of arms, feet, legs, hands, body, head, port de bras, adages, etc.
Among the many dancers influenced by Cecchetti were: Anna Pavlova; Vaslav Nijinksy; Tamara Karsavina; Dame Ninette de Valois and Dame Marie Rambert (Royal Ballet of England and Ballet Rambert, respectively); Gisella Caccialanza (New York City Ballet and San Francisco Ballet); Vincenzo Celli, Luigi Albertieri, Dame Alicia Markova, and Margaret Craske (Metropolitan Opera Ballet); Luba Egorova and Olga Preobrajenska (who taught in Paris); Serge Lifar (Paris Opera Ballet); Betty Oliphant (National Ballet of Canada); Molly Lake (Ankara Ballet of Turkey); Adolf Bolin (San Francisco Opera Ballet and Chicago Lyrical Ballet); Mikhail Mordkin (American Ballet Theatre); George Balanchine (New York City Ballet); Dame Peggy Van Praagh (Australian Ballet); Dulcie Howes (University of Cape Town, South Africa, also known as C.A.P.A.B. Ballet Co.). The list is endless.
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