volcanohunter

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.

She probably believed she needed to speak because Bolshoi dancers are prohibited from talking to reporters without the theater's permission, and if they were to say anything critical, they would risk being slapped with a formal reprimand à la Tsiskaridze. I'm sure she didn't do it lightly. She has family members within the company to consider. You know, I can understand why they feel threatened. Since Sergei Filin took over in March 2011, the Bolshoi has lost an excessively large number of principal dancers: Vladimir Neporozhny, Yuri Klevtsov, Andrei Uvarov, Natalia Osipova, Ivan Vasiliev, Dmitry Belogolovtsev, Svetlana Lunkina (de facto), Galina Stepanenko and Nikolai Tsiskaridze. If the departures of Neporozhny, Klevtsov, Uvarov, Belogolovtsev, Stepanenko and even Tsiskaridze can be attributed to age, the others cannot. To lose one or two principals may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose that many looks like something quite different. I couldn't really blame the "native" Bolshoi dancers for feeling like they're under siege, their own being hounded out of their home theater and ready to be replaced by outsiders.

There's a good chance that the dancer "blackmailed" by Filin could be Marianna Ryzhkina, whose son Klim Yefimov dances in the Bolshoi's corps. The Bolshoi Theater site does not give any background on Dilyara Timergazina, but apparently she was not a dancer. Rather, she holds an MBA from NYU and previously worked for Ernst & Young. So I can understand why dancers would take umbrage at her expressing opinions about the quality of their dancing. I thought the newfangled artistic council was supposed to be Filin's eyes and ears. No, the interview does not give a specific reason for dropping Alexandrova from Sleeping Beauty, but she was for some reason. It's not as though she's technically incapable of dancing Princess Aurora or that she would be a drag on the box office. However, Alexandrova, along with Denis Savin, Elena Andrienko and a couple of others, are official dancer representatives in the union that elected Dmitrichenko to replace Filin and then selected Filin's ex-buddy Ruslan Pronin to fill in for Dmitrichenko. The union is not exactly pro-Filin, and that's why I'm suspicious. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdp5zXcX3-M Although the interview appears in tomorrow's edition of "Izvestia," its contents are not that new. Lunkina speaks of learning about Alexandrova's casting changes a few days earlier, when in fact they were announced several weeks ago. I'm sure lots of stuff has happened since then. But I agree that Lunkina would probably especially careful about saying things that could make life more difficult for her sister or her sister's mate. Incidentally, Skvortsov is not exactly a weak Prince Désiré either. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spdsaZZDlJo As for business practices, if Filin resorts to abusive language, I think that crosses the line. Among recent information leaked from police interrogations of Pavel Dmitrichenko is a description of how Filin drove Svetlana Adyrkhaeva to tears by screaming at her. http://izvestia.ru/news/552018

In this case it may be more sinister than that. It is possible that Ruslan Skvortsov in particular is being victimized because of his familial connections to Svetlana Lunkina, just as Maria Alexandrova may have been relieved of her Beauties for her trade unionism, and Maria Allash appears to have been scratched from the tour entirely for signing the letter in support of Pavel Dmitrichenko. http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/36700-is-svetlana-lunkina-moving-to-toronto/?p=322491

Svetlana Lunkina unleashes on Sergei Filin. It's a quick and dirty translation, so my apologies. http://izvestia.ru/news/552486

They're not second-string infielders. They're Bolshoi principals. Real Bolshoi principals.

Not the same ones.

Will other dancers now be bumped to make room for him in Swan Lake, La Bayadère and "Diamonds"? I realize it's not Hallberg's fault that he was injured for a long time, but it's not fair to those who have been toiling away in his absence. Every day they've been dealing with the hell that's embroiled the Bolshoi for the last five months, and he swoops in for the glamour job.