volcanohunter

The Russian service of Radio Liberty has published an extensive article on the myriad problems of the Bolshoi Theater. In addition to the ballet company, it covers the theater's reconstruction and ticket scalpers. I'm not inclined to translate the whole thing because I rather hope that RFE/RL will provide a translation of its own. However, these are the passages dealing with the ballet company. "The investigator has already indicated a sentence: 8-10 years. But he holds firm and does not intend to give up," said relatives of Pavel Dmitrichenko. Dmitrichenko initially made a confession of organizing the attack on Filin, then repudiated it. On social networks "crowd-funding" to pay for Dmitrichenko’s legal costs has been announced, and at the Bolshoi Theater nearly three hundred people signed a letter in support of him, risking their careers. "All who openly sympathized with Dmitrichenko will be dismissed," said Georgy Geraskin, the former head of the theater’s union, who recently completed his career at the Bolshoi. Prior to the attack on the artistic director of the ballet Dmitrichenko had managed to establish himself as a defender of artists’ rights, quarreling with Filin because of the latter’s boorish treatment of the company and arbitrary distribution of salaries. Therefore some artists are convinced that "Pavel was framed" and that all possible versions of the attack must be investigated, while others say that "Filin had shortcomings, but this is no way to respond," referring to the acid. Bolshoi primas versus the "newbies" Artists do not rush to communicate with the press; after the story with Tsiskaridze’s reprimands, no one is brave enough for an interview. On condition of anonymity, one of the [female] artists of the ballet said: "Many artists are deprived of roles because they don’t toe the line, for example, many of our prima ballerinas have little to do in the repertoire: Marianna Ryzhkina, Anna Antonicheva, Elena Andrienko, Maria Allash. Maria Alexandrova is also being harassed, but she is standing firm for now. All of this is because the troupe took in a lot of artists from other theaters: the Kremlin Ballet, the Stanislavsky Theater, from the Mariinsky. But if the Mariinsky Theater is one of the best, the other troupes are weaker. Soloists of these theaters come the Bolshoi and immediately occupy leading positions, thereby depriving our prima ballerinas of performances. And believe me, the replacement is not unequivocal..." Vladislav Moskalev, the husband of ballerina Svetlana Lunkina and former business partner of Vladimir Vinokur, cites the example of Anastasia Vinokur, who was promoted under Sergei Filin: "Nastya got a job at the Bolshoi Theater with the help of her dad, Vladimir Vinokur. He lobbied for her and told me about it. Nastya has spent 10 years in the corps de ballet. In my presence daddy called Filin twice, in May and June of 2012, and spent a long time persuading him to promote Nastya in rank. Filin complied with this request after Vinokur gave Filin a job at his foundation (the Vladimir Vinokur Foundation - RL) and, of course, paid Filin money. " "Such artists ought to be in the theater," former ballet dancer Alexey Koryagin said sarcastically. He left the Bolshoi Theater of his own volition at the beginning of the season. "There are parts she can perform better than anyone else. For example, the languid Dacha Dweller, 40-50 years old with large breasts, in the ballet The Bright Stream." She manages marvelously. And so artists appeared as to whose standards there are doubts. Awards, Filin and Dmitrichenko On March 21 the newspaper "Izvestia" reported that the Accounts Chamber was auditing the Bolshoi Theater. The paper speculated that inspectors were checking Pavel Dmitrichenko’s accusations about the unfair calculation of salaries at the Bolshoi Theater, as well as allegations that Filin was embezzling a portion of the bonus pool. However, the results of audit, which the Chamber called routine, were not officially reported. The former head of the trade union of the Bolshoi Theater, soloist Georgy Geraskin, retired six months ago. He described the salary system at the Bolshoi: "The base salary of an artist is very small - no more than 15,000 roubles [$450]. Bonuses come from presidential grants and 'points' for performances. The size of grants ranges from 8 to 24 thousand roubles [$240-720]. But the grants are calculated in such a way that there is an unused fund that each month goes toward awards. Prior to the establishment of grants commission under former artistic director Gennady Yanin the system was a complete mess. Later we managed to establish a grants commission, which included the head of the union, that is, me. On balance order was established, although some inconsistencies remained. Then I retired and left Pavel Dmitrichenko in my place. Filin again began to manipulate, there was even a scandal with Pavel... It’s a good thing I left, or else I would be sitting in jail with Dmitrichenko. I would also be accused of the attack," said Geraskin. He is not the only one calling for a more thorough investigation of the attack because "Dmitrichenko could not do such a thing." Businessman Vladislav Moskalev, husband of émigré Bolshoi ballerina Svetlana Lunkina, talks about Sergei Filin’s employment at the Vladimir Vinokur Foundation, which involves large sums of money. Moskalev proposes investigating all possibilities of who might have benefited from an attack on the artistic director of the ballet, including the version connected with the fight for the funds of the Vinokur Foundation. At present the Vinokur Foundation and producer Vladislav Moskalev are suing each other. Trade unionism is not conducive to a career Georgy Geraskin became head of the independent trade union of the Bolshoi Theater in 2004. His union activities coincided with an absence of invitations to participate in performances: "That’s how it coincided. How can you prove anything?" smiles Geraskin. At one point there were two trade unions at the Bolshoi. In 2008 Filin began creating an "elite" trade union, which would include only artists of the opera and ballet. He then retired as a dancer and became artistic director of the Stanislavsky Theater. Returning to the Bolshoi as artistic director in 2011, he remained head of the theater’s "parallel" trade union. The situation was not normal, and Dmitrichenko wanted, first, to make the trade union independent, and second, that there be only one. "We had taken steps to elect Dmitrichenko head of the trade union, and in theory, this procedure was completed when he was already in custody," said Georgy Geraskin. Promising young dancer Alexey Koryagin resigned from the Bolshoi Theater during his fifth season. According to him, artists were paid "kopecks." "There is a salary and there is a bonus, constant and variable. The salary is ludicrous: 4-5 thousand roubles [$120-150], depending on category, plus a "permanent" grant, plus a variable grant—money distributed by the management at its own discretion. They may not grant it, and this is absolutely typical. In total I was receiving 30-40 thousand roubles [$900-1,200], having worked four seasons. Kopecks. At the beginning of the fifth season I resigned. Sergei Yuryevich [Filin] offered me a salary increase and more roles. Well, that would have been a few more kopecks. Why should I bother? I happened to learn that our cleaning lady received a New Year's bonus bigger than mine." But the main reason for his resignation was exhaustion, says Koryagin. "We sometimes gave 30 performances a month. An astronomical number. Filin shouted at rehearsals. He did not like that some people came to rehearsals at less than full strength. Even though, for example, artists had already been dancing from morning to evening all month long, they were tired. Once Filin began to scream: "Do you think you can’t be replaced?" Then Dmitrichenko asked for some politeness, "What is this? Can’t artists be treated like human beings?" Alexey Koryagin does not hide that he was one of the few who attended Nikolai Tsiskaridze’s class. It was considered an "oppositional" gesture. [An account of the controversies surrounding the Bolshoi’s reconstruction and programming follows.] "Creative meat" One of the points of criticism raised by artists are the difficult working conditions in the theater. "Concerning means of rehabilitation and general physical support. The masseurs’ salary is 14,000 [$420]; that's ridiculous. Naturally, all massage therapists work part-time and work additionally in commercial ventures. Properly equipped rooms for fitness classes or post-injury rehabilitation are nowhere to be found, although this issue has been raised repeatedly by employees. The physiotherapy room is equipped with obsolete machines, so there was talk of closing it. In general, artists are creative meat," says former Bolshoi soloist Georgy Geraskin. "Dead Souls" and socks for 2,000 roubles "During the revival of Ivan the Terrible there was a murky story with costumes. They began to be sewn, then they suddenly stopped being sewn, the costumes were gone, they had to be rented from the Paris Opera, but they did not all fit. The dress rehearsal was taking place, Grigorovich was sitting there and needing the artists to appear, and some simply could not go out on stage – they couldn’t get into their costumes. Though money had been allocated... Sometimes we got hold of budgets: men's socks – 2,000 roubles [$60], blindfold – 4,000 [$120]... What sort of prices are these? Clearly Russia’s universal problem—corruption—did not pass by the Bolshoi Theater..." says former Bolshoi Theater artist Alexey Koryagin. "When I worked in the theater there were a couple of ‘dead souls.’ Usually artists who had actually retired, but retained a salary” says Geraskin. “But how much did the curtain for The Golden Cockerel cost!” [What follows is a section on ticket scalpers and Anastasia Volochkova’s accusations of dancers used as escorts, which Geraskin largely dismisses.] In response to the question "What is to be done?" Georgy Geraskin answers briefly: "Save the country, and the theater will follow." Alexey Koryagin says he wrote an open letter to Dmitri Medvedev. There were pickets at the theater demanding the resignation of the leadership, organized by audience members. As for working artists, a rebellion is not possible at present. “If they’re going to rebel, then all together, immediately, once and for all. Today that’s not possible, not in the theater and not in the country. There is a cult of leadership, everyone is afraid. Once we were detained at a dress rehearsal. Artists rebelled: let's demand compensation! Eight people set off to see the administration and two arrived. Someone slipped on a string, right in the hallway, someone jumped into a crevice... What can I say?” sums up Alexey Koryagin. http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/25035210.html

Tickets for the 21st are still available.

The interesting detail revealed is that the Bolshoi had offered to renew Vorontsova's contract for only six months. This makes the Bolshoi's claim that it hadn't intended to terminate Vorontsova's contract sound a little disingenuous. No wonder she left.

July 12, 18: Smirnova / Lantratov / Tikhomirova / Chudin July 13, 16: Obraztsova / Volchkov / Stashkevich / Gudanov July 14, 17: Kaptsova / Skvortsov / Kretova / Ovcharenko July 19: Vishneva / Gomes / Kretova / Ovcharenko July 20: Amatriain / McKie / Osadcenko / Vogel July 21: Obraztsova / Hallberg / Khokhlova / Alexeyev

Zakharova is out after all. Casts have been shuffled around right, left and center. Obraztsova will dance two performances with Volchkov and the final one with Hallberg. The Bolshoi has admitted that Zakharova has walked out. For now she isn't saying anything, and her coach Lyudmila Semenyaka is refusing to comment. http://izvestia.ru/news/553027

For some clarity (hopefully), here is an excerpt from a recent interview by Bolshoi coryphée Ivan Alexeyev, which he gave to the hometown press in Voronezh. http://www.moe-online.ru/news/view/258668.html There is nothing inconsistent in Vorontsova's story. She says she joined the Bolshoi as a coryphée, which would have had her listed among the members of the corps de ballet, as Alexeyev is, and in May 2012 she was promoted to the rank of soloist. You can find that information in the Bolshoi news feed for May 1, 2012. http://www.bolshoi.ru/en/about/press/articles/2012/

Where do you believe she lied in the interview? If we're thinking of the same passage, she said she joined the company at coryphée rank. "It's a little lower in rank than a soloist, but the pay is practically the same" (p. 18 in the original text). At the Bolshoi coryphées are members of the corps de ballet. The Bolshoi corps has three internal ranks: "artist of the ballet," "artist of the ballet 1st category" and "artist of the ballet 1st category - coryphée." Looking at an alphabetical listing of the Bolshoi's corps you would not be able to tell which of the dancers belongs to which category. After that comes the rank of "artist of the ballet higher category," i.e., soloist, then "artist of the ballet higher category - first soloist," followed by "artist of the ballet, leading master of the stage - leading soloist," and "artist of the ballet, leading master of the stage - ballerinas and premiers," or principals in English.

To be sure, I hope he succeeds for the sake of the dancers of the Bolshoi, the Mariinsky and every other company in Russia. We just shouldn't assume that any plan he devises has the government's imprimatur and must therefore be accepted by the Bolshoi's administration.

The Cranko estate makes the Balanchine Trust look downright lenient. And of course Messrs. Graefe and Anderson are notorious for preventing companies from filming Cranko ballets, too. That has never made much sense to me. I don't see how Cranko's legacy is served by making it nearly impossible to acquire DVDs of his ballets.

Bolshoi casting is a bit like old-fashioned Kremlinology. And meteoric rises are a double-edged sword. When fears emerged that Zakharova might not appear in the ballet you would not believe how much venom was directed at Smirnova in the RUnet. I never really expected Alexandrova or Shipulina to be cast in the ballet, but the exclusion of Krysanova is more surprising. Nikulina hasn't been getting much love from the Bolshoi lately. She recently danced a couple of Swan Lakes at the Mariinsky, but her own company has not cast her in the ballet for more than a year. For me it's a crying shame that Svetlana Lunkina is not around to dance in this production. I still hope this can be rectified in the future.

Every theater has more employees than bigwigs. There are worse ways to build up your party base.

I'm not sure this conclusion is warranted. Pochinok has not been a government minister for nine years, and as the original article states, he represents the Civic Platform party, not Vladimir Putin's United Russia party. Mikhail Prokhorov, founder and leader of Civic Platform, ran against Putin in the 2012 presidential elections. I wouldn't really expect the government to side with the employees of any Russian theater. I would naturally expect it to back theater administrations, which serve at the government's pleasure.

False alarm. There was chatter that Zakharova had threatened to walk because she was not given opening night, but the casts have now been posted with Zakharova in place. Smirnova / Lantratov / Tikhomirova / Chudin / Biktimirov Zakharova / Hallberg / Kretova / Ovcharenko / Biktimirov Obraztsova / Volchkov / Stashkevich / Gudanov / Vodopetov Kaptsova / Skvortsov / Khokhlova / Alexeyev / Khromushin Vishneva / Gomes / Kretova / Ovcharenko / Khromushin Amatriain / McKie / Osadcenko / Vogel / Godunov - in other words, all Stuttgart

Just because she hasn't been gravely injured doesn't make Vorontsova's life less important, and that her career is relatively young doesn't make it disposable either.

The Bolshoi says it had not intended to terminate Vorontsova's contract, and that the resignation was her own initiative. http://www.itar-tass.com/c1/789193.html Tsiskaridze says she was pushed. http://www.interfax.ru/russia/news.asp?id=315495

The premiere is now two weeks away and casting has still not been announced, but Russian ballet fans have noticed that the ballet has been removed from the calendar on Svetlana Zakharova's official site.

There has been some contradictory information about this in recent weeks, but it appears that Anzhelina Vorontsova will, in fact, be leaving the Bolshoi. She submitted her resignation on June 25 and will leave with Tsiskaridze on June 30. She has not revealed where she'll be going, only that she's received several offers. http://lenta.ru/news/2013/06/28/wife/ The Bolshoi hasn't wasted any time and has removed her headshot from its web site already.

I have no idea. But when Johan Kobborg came to the Bolshoi in 2008 to stage La Sylphide, Zagrebin danced in his first-act pas de six. Perhaps it was on the basis of that experience that Kobborg believed Zagrebin would be suitable for a virtuosic trio for Zakharova and two short men.

Sorry!

Aw shucks. Yes, if Zagrebin is coming from the Stanislavsky, SFB should say so. And they can add that previously he'd been a soloist of the Bolshoi. In Igor Zelensky's shoes I'd be a little ticked off. He loses a dancer, and his company doesn't get any acknowledgement in exchange.

I didn't say they were dropped entirely, as Allash was, but their Sleeping Beauties were taken away from them.

There's a wrinkle to the cinema broadcasts, which is that choreographers or a ballet's producers have a lot of say about who gets filmed. If you're familiar with the Paris Opera Ballet film of John Neumeier's The Lady of the Camellias, you may remember that Agnès Letestu was to have been paired with Hervé Moreau. But he was injured at the beginning of the run, right on stage, if I recall correctly. A tall replacement had to be found, so the part went to Stéphane Bullion, who had learned the role but not yet performed it. The bonus feature on the DVD relates how Letestu and Bullion flew to Hamburg for intensive coaching before going before the cameras. Obviously it would have been easier to film a different pair with prior experience of performing the ballet together, but Neumeier insisted that the filmed Marguerite had to be Letestu and no one else. We know that Pavel Dmitrichenko does not like Sergei Filin, and that the feeling is mutual. But Dmitrichenko was cast as Abderakhman in the broadcast of Raymonda because that decision was Yuri Grigorovich's to make. Dancers' participation in the Bolshoi's broadcasts indicates that they are liked by Grigorovich, Burkala or Ratmansky, not necessarily that they are favored by the Bolshoi management. That's why Alexandrova, Allash and Skvortsov can be featured prominently on film while also being dropped from their London roles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDDoRgmJIa8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uopHMvfJDXg

This past season Zagrebin actually danced at the Stanislavsky Theater. http://www.stanmus.com/person.html?id=928 But a few months ago he, Steven McRae and Svetlana Zakharova performed a piece by Johan Kobborg at a gala marking Zakharova's 10th anniversary with the Bolshoi. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfbXl9SOf9k

No, this was a mistranslation. His criticism was directed at a "disgusting claque," but I can see how "claque" and "cloaque" may have gotten confused in French. The subordinate clause that followed said "cultivating friendships with artists," which is certainly consistent with a claque, but not a cesspool. As for dancer retirements, I think the feeling was that Uvarov, Belogolovtsev and Tsiskaridze were being pushed out prematurely and against their will.