Agrippina Yakovlevna Vaganova was a russian ballet teacher who developed the unique method – the technique which derived from the teaching methods of the old Imperial Ballet School (today the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet) under the Premier Maître de Ballet Marius Petipa throughout the mid to late 19th century, though mostly throughout the 1880s and 1890s. It was Vaganova who perfected and cultivated this form of teaching the art of classical ballet into a workable syllabus.

Her Fundamentals of the Classical Dance (1934) remains a standard textbook for the instruction of ballet technique. Her technique is one of the most popular techniques today. From 1931 to 1937 she was an artistic director of the ballet of the Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theater (Kirov Ballet).
Among Vaganova's dance alumnae were the distinguished Soviet ballerinasM. Semenova, O. Jordan, G. Ulanova, T. Vecheslova, F. Balabina, N. Dudinskaya,

G. Kirillova,  O. Moiseeva, N. Kurgapkina, A. Ossipenko and I. Kolpakova among many others.