volcanohunter

That a large number of Bolshoi employees refuse to believe in Dmitrichenko's involvement suggests that for them such a thing is unthinkable.

Dmitrichenko may not even know who is pulling the strings. Judging by what he said in court and by what he allegedly said in police custody, each time it was Yuri Zarutsky who offered to inflict violence on Filin. Dmitrichenko complains to Zarutsky about his problems at work, Zarutsky offers to do something about it. Dmitrichenko supposedly said that he rejected outright at least two offers by Zarutsky to kill Filin. (Unless it was said in jest, if someone offered to help me solve my problems by knocking off my boss, I'd subsequently avoid that person like the plague.) In court Dmitrichenko said he did accept Zarutsky's offer to beat Filin. It is possible that someone had paid Zarutsky to goad Dmitrichenko into ordering an attack.

I should have phrased my observation differently, because what matters is not my perception, but whether her attempt at message control is likely to be effective. Whatever you think of Novikova's statement, this is a response on the blog of Kirill Filatov, one of the leaders of the Bolshoi's second violin section: http://filatovkirill...com/293163.html

I think it's clumsy because she explicitly states that "no one doubts," when it appears that, for the moment at least, there are plenty of doubters.

Katerina Novikova, in her role as Bolshoi press secretary states: http://ria.ru/cultur...l#ixzz2NFMxTtEI (Sorry for the lumbering translation.) On the other hand, another outlet publishes an interview with a Bolshoi dancer, who asked not to be named because the Bolshoi had advised dancers not to talk to the press about a meeting that took place between Bolshoi employees and police investigators, in which he lays out their doubts about Dmitrichenko's guilt. http://www.mk.ru/cul...-na-filina.html Given that there have been quite a few articles in the Russian press along the lines of "people within the Bolshoi do not believe in Dmitrichenko's guilt," Novikova's attempt at message control and presenting a unified front seems clumsy.

What makes no sense to me is Dmitrichenko taking his concerns about possible financial machinations to the theater management on January 16, and then going through with the attack on Filin the following day, rather than waiting to see whether anything would come of an internal investigation. And if you're going to do a stakeout, why on earth bring along two witnesses? What sort of alibi could they provide? "Where were you the night of January 17?" "Parked outside the Moscow Art Theater." That's not very helpful.

Apparently he is livid, which prompted the heated telephone conversation that resulted in Annadurdyev submitting his resignation. Dmitrichenko and two friends were hanging out in a car in mid-January Moscow at 10:30 p.m. Does this strike anybody as a sensible thing to do? Ilya makes a good point that so much of the information we're getting has been coming from "sources close to the investigation." This satisfies eveyone's desire to figure out what happened, but given that much, if not most, of what we've learned has been leaked by the police rather than coming directly from Dmitrichenko's mouth, I can also understand why at this point so many of his colleagues refuse to believe the semi-official version of events.

Oh, that's not good at all. But if he's really penitent and even offered to pay some sort of compensation during the interrogation, why did he refuse to make an apology to Filin in court?

I do hope eventually it all comes to light, but it seems a shadow will be hanging over the Bolshoi for a while yet. It may be more than that. According to this link, the conversation between the two was extremely unpleasant and as a result Annadurdyev submitted his resignation. http://www.gazeta.ru...n_2787489.shtml

The translation is inaccurate on a couple of points. And when Dmitrichenko paid the attackers the 50,000 rubles he didn't say that he "knew no more than them," but rather that he "no longer knew them."

Filin may have promoted Dmitrichenko twice in 2012, but Izvestia implies that Grigorovich has been the driving force behind his career. http://izvestia.ru/news/546173 Personally, I find Dmitrichenko to be a dancer of limited usefulness to today's Bolshoi given that his repertoire is so narrow: Spartacus, Ivan the Terrible and several of Grigorovich's villains: the Evil Genius, Abderakhman, Tybalt and Yashka. That's about it. (I'll admit I'm not an admirer. I groaned out loud when I realized he would be playing Abderakhman in the cinemacast of Raymonda.) He has by far the lightest workload of any Bolshoi soloist. I did my best arithmetic to count up Dmitrichenko's appearances from the beginning of the season to the beginning of March, and his tally was 7 performances of 4 ballets. For comparison, Vladislav Lantratov, promoted to leading soloist at the same time as Dmitrichenko, tallied up 30 performances in 12 ballets. But no one is suggesting that Dmitrichenko was unhappy with his own career. Supposedly he was either unhappy for Vorontsova's sake or, the newer tack goes, he suspected Filin of financial corruption.

Just to augment what Helene wrote, according to reports, it was Filin who arranged to have Vorontsova move to the Moscow school, who paid her a stipend and who found her mother a job in Moscow on the understanding that she would join the Stanislavsky upon graduation. But she took Burlaka's offer to join the Bolshoi instead. It was because of this that Dmitrichenko believed Filin was prejudiced against her. I don't think there is any evidence that he is prejudiced against her. http://izvestia.ru/news/546173 http://www.kp.ru/daily/26042/2956452/

Yes, she's the blonde who starts second from the right. https://www.youtube....h?v=QbVXAvyX-Ws

For what it's worth, the dancers Dmitrichenko mentioned in court as being part of Filin's alleged kickback scheme are corps members Anna Voronkova and Dmitri Zhuk, who transferred from the Stanislavsky to the Bolshoi at the beginning of the season. This seems to be a "native Bolshoi" vs. "interloper" sort of conflict. Again, it's grumblings from the peanut gallery, but some of the commentary from anti-Filin segments on the Internet take him to task for pushing his recent recruits from other companies, namely, Kristina Kretova and Semyon Chudin. Hallberg doesn't seem to come up in these discussions, probably because so far he has performed in Moscow so infrequently owing to injury.

The really freaky detail in the Izvestia report about yesterday's court proceeding is that the name of the country grocer who introduced Yuri Zarutsky to Pavel Dmitrichenko is, I kid you not, Sergei Killer. Sixth paragraph: http://izvestia.ru/news/546345

Wouldn't it be fair to say that her roles began to improve markedly in 2009 under Yuri Burlaka? That's when she was cast in the Travail quartet in Coppelia and as one of Esmeralda's four friends. The following year came Lise's friends and the D'Jampe dance. Prior to that she had been on maternity leave twice, which obviously would have limited her stage time. I assume that her casting in the "Rubies" corps, the "Emeralds" trio and as one of Apollo's nymphs would have been approved by repetiteurs of the Balanchine Trust, and that Kylian's repetiteurs likewise would have chosen the dancers for Symphony of Psalms, which was cast largely from the ranks of the corps de ballet. http://www.bolshoi.r...#20110721190000

I think it's worth remembering that Filin promoted Vorontsova out of the corps de ballet in May 2012 and that he promoted Dmitrichenko twice, to first soloist in January 2012 and to leading soloist in December 2012.

That's exactly what he did. And then Tsiskaridze began to complain that Filin was trying to take away his pupils. Obviously a phrase along the lines of "take a look in the mirror and ask yourself whether you see a Swan Queen" could be interpreted in a number of ways, but it doesn't appear that Filin explicitly accused her of being overweight. Marina Kondratieva did say explicitly that Vorontsova had become too heavy, but she's not the one to end up with acid in her face. Personally, I have little sympathy for a 21-year-old dancer who whines "You have no idea how long I’ve been asking to dance Swan Lake, and they refuse."

Anyone else find this strange? In England (and US?) arrested suspects are read their rights and told they can stay silent. I have never heard of someone confessing before speaking to a lawyer. No mention of bail either. Confession made under duress? The BBC has translated the video confessions without additional voiceover commentary. I notice that the alleged attacker, who has prior "experience" with the criminal justice system, does decline to answer questions. http://www.bbc.co.uk...europe-21681273

Actually, it's not his description. On Facebook Ratmansky made a reference to a "disgusting claque" (klaka), but I think it was mistranslated into French. You can see how there could be confusion between the words cloaque and claque. The Russian word for cesspool is vygrebnaya yama or stochnyy kolodets.

It's a good thing Cote and Ogden are getting the extra practice because they're not yet at the level of their Hamburg counterparts, technically or dramatically. But tonight was just the first performance, and I'm sure that the Hamburg Ballet is very happy to have their services after Anna Polikarpova and Otto Bubenicek fell by the wayside. Alexandre Riabko is a horse, but even he couldn't have managed seven Nijinskys in seven days.

Exactly. And Opus Arte has not yet released a film of MacMillan's version. The Rojo-Acosta performance was released as part of Acosta's 3-DVD deal with Decca.

I certainly never meant to suggest that you hated Tsiskaridze, Helene! Rather, I'm guessing that Tsiskaridze and Volochkova hate Iksanov so much (and vice versa) that they would find suitable glop with which to smear him even if he were descended from the Riurikids and had several Patriarchs of Moscow and All Russia hanging on his family tree.

In a blog post ranting against "the tyrant" Iksanov and the Bolshoi renovation, Anastasia Volochkova also made an issue of the fact that Iksanov's birth name was not Anatoly, son of Gennady, but rather Tahir, son of Gadelzyan. http://volochkova-a.....com/75111.html Of course this can be taken to mean that "he's not one of us." Or perhaps, "The man is fundamentally dishonest. He even lies about his name." Long ago I remember reading an interview with Helena Bonham Carter in which she described overhearing a group of people at a party trashing her. Apparently the final nail in her coffin was: "And her hair isn't even real!" If someone is determined to dislike or hate you, just about anything, even the wigs you wore in period movies, can be used as a cudgel against you.

Which, in my case, already makes me favorably disposed toward it.