When I take the metro in the morning to get to Theatre Square for classes, sometimes the carriages are only moderately full, but then sometimes without warning I'm suffocated by a crush of people flooding onto my car. These subways are not like American subways - people shove, jostle, and cram themselves in tightly. However, none of this is done with a hint of aggression, which is what surprised me most. The metro culture here is brusque, but not the slightest bit rude. In fact, many a man has given up his seat for a child, a woman in heels, or an elderly person. All done without ceremony or looking to be thanked. It's not chivalry, it's just what everyone does.
My large backpack makes me something of a nuisance, and also an obvious outsider. I have not yet "earned" my locker privileges in the conservatory dressing room (which I have nickname Skid Row because of the rather seedy atmosphere), so I have to haul my dance clothes and shoes back and forth with me every day. Given the state of them, I think I'll pass on said privileges.
I'm not sure which locker belongs to whom. They are all full, but I rarely see them opened. On the rare occasion someone does open one, it is to retrieve a CD, a book, or packet of tea from a crushed box trapped underneath a pile of ragged clothing and stray leg warmers. Perhaps the lockers belong to the eldest students, most of whom who infamously do not arrive at the conservatory until well into October. This is apparently allowed for the upperclassmen, because many of the professors don't seem to be back from holiday until at least then, anyway.
The culture here is all very new to me. There are no syllabi, no booklists for the Russian language lessons, no timetables for the dance classes except for the one which is (sometimes, not always) posted on the bulletin board closest to your department's section of the building. Needless to say, there was no orientation, nobody to show me around on the first day. When I arrived on the Monday a week after I was accepted to the programme, the teacher asked me where I'd been all last week. The foreign department told me to start on the 15th, but apparently classes had already begun and I was a week late. It also took me five days to find the bathroom.
Inquiries as to where so-and-so teacher is, twenty minutes after a class he was due to teach was supposed to start, are met with the same answer: "I don't know." and a disinterested shrug of the shoulders. Stumbling into the wrong class earns one very little sympathy, and elicits no offers of assistance in finding the correct classroom, but lateness is tolerated with surprising leniency. I have seen several students arrive consistently ten minutes after the morning classical training lesson has begun, and there are two students in the choreography programme here who are in the habit of rushing to and from the studio retrieving things from the dressing room during the lesson. None of this seems to be out of the ordinary.
Despite the rather chaotic lack of organisation which is so much a part of the conservatory, and the extreme shabbiness of these old walls, there is such a personal, warm atmosphere between the teachers and the students here that I feel my initial indignation being replaced by a cautious sense of appreciation.
Here they are relaxed in the administration, but within each lesson there is no one stricter, more exacting, or more specific as to the precise placement of each muscle, the timing of every breath, the angle of the eyes in every moment. This duality was something of a shock for me to experience, but I am coming to realise that perhaps the way we do things in the States puts too much emphasis on the rules, and not enough on the discipline.
One would never leave one's phone on full volume in an American classroom, and they frequently go off during morning lesson here. Yet, I have never seen such an intimate connection between teachers and students, nor such insistence that things be done in the right way, with the utmost care and presence of mind, as I have here at the St Petersburg Conservatory.
I feel more inspired here, more invigorated, and more motivated to spend time practicing and reviewing the lessons and choreography than I ever have before. Maybe it's the teachers, maybe it's the atmosphere, maybe it's this new city - or maybe a combination. Though I still feel like an outsider here, not only because of the language barrier, but because of the difference in culture as well, after my second week I feel that I am beginning to open up to this new Russian way.