Vladimir Burmeister

Born July 2 (15), 1904, in Vitebsk; died Mar. 3, 1971, in Moscow. Soviet ballet dancer and ballet master. People’s Artist of the USSR (1970).

Burmeister studied at the A. V. Lunacharskii Theater Technicum in Moscow from 1925 to 1929 and became a dancer of the Moscow Art Ballet Theater in 1930. He also appeared on the estrada (the variety stage). His work as a ballet master began in 1931. From 1941 to 1960 and since 1964 he was the chief ballet master of the K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theater in Moscow. The ballets he produced there include Vasilenko’s Lola (1943), Scheherazade (to the music of Rimsky-Korsakov; 1944), and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (1953). (He received the State Prize of the USSR for the first two.) Burmeister staged ballets in theaters in Paris, London, and other cities. He was awarded two orders as well as medals.