Category: dance

Ballerina Olga Smirnova: “In Mariinsky theatre, my dance would be considered as more spiritual and refined, but Bolshoi audiences sometimes might judge it as cold.”

“The Mikhailovsky Ballet opens its London season this week with the most perfect of all romantic ballets, Giselle. … And one of the tantalising attractions of the Mikhailovsky programme is the chance to see Olesya Novikova and Natalia Osipova dancing their two very different interpretations of the role.”

Each raffia horse “fits two dancers and rustles like a corn field when the herd ‘grazes’ in Vanderbilt Hall or suddenly breaks into choreography, set to live percussion, steps from the main concourse.”

“A former director of the English National Ballet and confidant of Diana, Princess of Wales, has admitted that he asked a pregnant ballerina to consider having an abortion.”

“Too expensive and not popular enough. That’s the harsh verdict on contemporary dance delivered by the Sydney Opera House, which has ended Spring Dance, Sydney’s International Dance Festival, after just three years.”

Nikolai Tsiskaridze, the popular principal dancer who has been loudly campaigning against Bolshoi general director Anatoly Iksanov and ballet artistic director/acid attack victim Sergei Filin, appeared last weekend “on state-controlled NTV television, a channel that the Kremlin has used to attack its opponents or those who have fallen out of favor.”

“Anastasia Volochkova, who was infamously fired from the Bolshoi in 2003 for being ‘too fat’, has claimed on television and in a radio interview that the theatre forced female dancers to sleep with its wealthy patrons.”

“But from the state’s point of view, the Bolshoi has become a Soviet agent that has largely outlived its usefulness – it’s still important within the Russian cultural landscape, and a fine place to take visiting dignitaries, but the Cold War prerogative to showcase it as high cultural achievement is gone.”