Bolshoi
Ismene Brown
It’s unspeakably bad for so many reasons that the injured Bolshoi Ballet director Sergei Filin cannot be in London to see his company perform, and one is that he can’t see his protegée Olga Smirnova revealing herself to us as destined to be one of the great ballerinas of this era. Smirnova was signed in 2011 by Filin from the Vaganova Academy in St Petersburg, the Mariinsky’s nursery, whose combination of regal style and gossamer delicacy is evident through every fibre of this miraculous young dancer’s movement.In La Bayadère last night she showed herself not only to possess as if by nature Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Everyone must be wishing the Bolshoi Ballet a swift return to company health after the tragic events of this year, as well as a return to physical health by their horribly injured artistic director - in the circumstances it’s heroic that they have got to London at all, let alone in such good performing order as they showed last night. Many of us will be wishing they had got themselves a worthy production of Swan Lake too, but they haven’t, and so the first night of their three-week visit to Covent Garden was not the glowing triumph it should be in the film script.Those Russian women have a Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Are we seeing a breakdown in the ballet company system? Where the brightest stars used to twinkle in the great companies, all is changing. Alina Cojocaru, the great Royal Ballet ballerina, has announced today she's joining English National Ballet - run by another great Royal Ballet ballerina, Tamara Rojo. For ENB to have the two finest talents of the past decade in Covent Garden now at the head of their cast lists is the biggest stunner since… well, since the Bolshoi Ballet's young superstars Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev quit to join the smaller Mikhailovsky Ballet.Or since the Royal's Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Just a fortnight before Russia's great Bolshoi Ballet lands in London for its splendid summer tour, it has now added a lost chief executive to its tally of a blinded ballet director, an arrested dancer, and a sacked star.The Russian press reports that today its general director for 13 years, Anatoly Iksanov (picture below, Izvestia), has resigned and will be replaced by the veteran chief of the neighbouring, but smaller, Moscow company, the Stanislavsky Theatre. It caps a horrendous six months, but may well signal a new determination by the Russian government to sort out the mayhem.Iksanov’s Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The celebrated star of the Bolshoi, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, has been told his contracts will not be renewed when they expire at the end of this month - an effective dismissal for Russia's flamboyant and outspoken ballet icon. The dancer is currently embroiled in a vitriolic lawsuit with his Bolshoi bosses over media interviews he has given since the acid attack on the Bolshoi ballet director Sergei Filin, in which he has questioned whether Filin was genuinely injured and has accused the theatre management of manipulating the incident to get rid of Tsiskaridze.He has stated more than once that he Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Russian superstar ballerina Natalia Osipova is to join the Royal Ballet, the Royal Opera House announced today. The 26-year-old Moscow ballerina, who made her name as a wunderkind in the Bolshoi Ballet until she quit two years ago, signed a contract last month but held back the news until the end of the London tour of her current company, the Mikhailovsky Ballet, reports Russian daily Kommersant.Osipova danced as a guest with the Royal Ballet last autumn in Swan Lake with Carlos Acosta (pictured right, © Alice Pennefather/ROH), and her dramatic range has made her an obvious target Read more ...
Ismene Brown
General booking for the Bolshoi Ballet's Covent Garden season this summer opens on Tuesday (9 April), and the company has at last announced its intended casting. However, it should always be borne in mind that, as Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo habitually announce before every performance, "in accordance with strict Russian tradition, there may be changes". The notable news is the absence of two male names from the roster - Nikolai Tsiskaridze, who is currently taking the Bolshoi Theatre to court over disciplinary action in the wake of the acid attack on Bolshoi director Sergei Filin, Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Victims driven to death by the mob, women and men violently rutting in animal costumes, a black comedy about a snatched baby, a naked man dancing alone in his own fantasy - many and varied are the images in the nearly 200 danceworks created to the notorious Rite of Spring since its premiere exactly a century ago. Nothing created in performance art in the 100 years since has had so decisive an aftermath as this seismic work. Nothing has liberated creators from rules quite as emphatically as the uncategorisable theatre piece put before shocked audiences in Paris and London in the late Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Is the Bolshoi Ballet going to have trouble selling its tickets for its London tour as a result of the acid attack on its artistic director Sergei Filin? A range of opinion is erupting among ballet-goers dismayed not only by the attack but by the exposure of vicious infighting inside the Moscow troupe and the subsequent public developments.Filin's key opponent inside the company, the leading dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze, has been billed to come over on the tour - he has so far expressed no sympathy for Filin's plight, while denying having anything to do with the attack, for which a Bolshoi Read more ...
Ismene Brown
So the man who specialises in dancing Bolshoi ballet villains has been arrested and confessed to the infamous attack on his boss, Sergei Filin. But today Pavel Dmitrichenko, well-known to Bolshoi audiences for playing Ivan the Terrible, one of Russia's more pitiless Tsars, showed an equally Tsarist haughtiness when he made his first appearance in a Moscow court. He had nothing to apologise for, he said, even though it's emerging that at the very least Filin, a 42-year-old father of three, will never see normally again and his future employment must be in doubt.Dmitrichenko insisted it wasn't Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Bolshoi Ballet director Sergei Filin has vowed to return from the horror of an acid attack to lead Russia's flagship ballet company - "not handsome, but in full force", in a remarkable interview from his hospital bed. Facing two solid days of surgery on his eyes and head, seriously burned by sulphuric acid thrown over him by a masked man last Thursday night, Filin said he urgently hoped the police would solve the crime, or he would lose faith.Yesterday his duties were officially handed over to a senior Bolshoi ballerina and coach, Galina Stepanenko, who will act as the company's director Read more ...
Ismene Brown
UPDATED SUNDAY: Moscow police have revealed that Bolshoi Ballet director Sergei Filin was attacked with sulphuric acid, causing third-degree burns to his face and eyes. As he recovered today from a second round of surgery on his damaged eyes, his public rival described the assault as "monstrous". The star dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze, who has been widely accused of inspiring fanatical opposition to the current Bolshoi management, today condemned the attack.It was in contrast to yesterday when, challenged by a journalist to answer, Tsiskaridze had curiously evaded any comment on the Read more ...