volcanohunter

It is certainly said to have been signed by more than 300 employees, but in fact the letter (or at least its published version) is anonymous (it's quite ironic that they are calling it an "open letter"). I have not seen any evidence that this number is anywhere close to reality. The article cited above names the following signers: Alexandrova, Allash, Antonicheva, Volchkov, and Tsiskaridze. That's five. Who are the remaining 295+?

Izvestia has published one sheet of signatures, and no doubt this particular one was chosen because it includes Tsiskaridze's. It claims there are 35 more sheets. All of the signatories on the published sheet--Kochkina, Baranov, Kochan, Tsiskaridze, Barichka, Bochkareva, Zhidkov, Zelenko, Oppengeym, Savichev--are members of the ballet company.

http://izvestia.ru/news/546485

As part of his final season at the Berlin State Ballet, Vladimir Malakhov has invited Vasily Medvedev and Yuri Burlaka to stage their reconstruction of Lev Ivanov's original Nutcracker. (At least I think that's what the description says, my German being the pits.)

http://staatsballett...detail/11499959

Is this going to be RB's first DQ, ever? I don't recall RB ever performed DQ.

They last staged the ballet in 2001, but the production didn't last. It was filmed with Tamara Rojo, Johan Kobborg, Zenaida Yanowsky and Alina Cojocaru.

http://www.rohcollec...tion=4455&row=0

Previously Anthony Dowell had staged a production in 1993.

http://www.rohcollec...tion=4452&row=0

Well I guess the Bolshoi's loss (McGregor's Rite) is the Royal's gain?

It will be a revival of the MacMillan version.

This is a translation of an open letter by employees of the Bolshoi Theater demanding a fair investigation and trial of Pavel Dmitrichenko. It is said to have been signed by more than 300 employees. It's my own translation, so I apologize in advance for its imperfections.

To the President of the Russian Federation

To the Government of the Russian Federation

To the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia A.D. Zhukov

To members of the media

To admirers of ballet and theater in Russia and abroad

To the theater community

An Open Letter

The creative and administrative teams of the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia consider it their duty to express their position on the tragic situation of the attack on the artistic director of the ballet S. Yu. Filin and the accusation of committing the crime made against ballet soloist P. Dmitrichenko.

In recent weeks and days in connection with the situation at the Bolshoi Theater, numerous statements in the media have been made discrediting the reputation of the theater, with more than two hundred years of history behind it, and those who work in it. We think the time has come for the people who have worked directly and continue to work with two outstanding artists, who meet daily with them in rehearsals and performances, and who have long-standing creative and friendly ties with them, to speak. The matter concerns the fate of two men, whose formation and career are inextricably linked with the walls of the Bolshoi; for the colleagues of Sergei Filin and Pavel Dmitrichenko to state their civic and moral position is important and fundamental.

For all those who know Pavel Dmitrichenko, even the notion that he could be inspiration and instigator of a crime committed so brutally is absurd. Knowing Pavel personally for many years, we are certain that despite the known features of his personality–vivid temperament, brusqueness and directness–he is a deeply decent man, responsive and always willing to lend a hand. His active work in the community organizations of the Bolshoi Theater is the most eloquent proof of this, and his creative achievements are also evident and cannot be doubted. It is our firm conviction that fundamental differences with Sergei Filin about his artistic and personnel policy could not go outside the bounds of the law. The conclusions of the investigation seem to us premature, the evidence – inconclusive, and the confession of Pavel himself, later changed, to be the result of brutal pressure.

Unfortunately, the history of our country and our society knows many examples where results "needed" by investigators were achieved by unfair and sometimes illegal methods, and the evidence and proof often proved to be fictitious.

We ask for a fair and impartial investigation into the tragedy that occurred to Sergei Filin, a scrupulous examination of all the circumstances and possible motives for the crime, and that all legal and judicial norms be maintained. It is not just the fate of well-known artists that are at stake, but ultimately the reputation of one of the best theaters in the world and Russian culture in general, and any verdict in this case will play a fateful role for the country.

The pitting of two artists—the artistic director and a leading soloist of the Bolshoi Ballet—against each other is in itself flawed, since until a verdict against Pavel Dmitrichenko is reached, the presumption of innocence stands; the hasty conclusions of some media, who describe him as a criminal, violates not only legal, but also moral and ethical standards.

Our support for Pavel Dmitrichenko is not a sign of indifference toward Sergei Filin, who is living through the most difficult period in his life; we wish him a speedy recovery. We hope that the real causes and circumstances of the crime will be established, and that the opinion of the staff of the Bolshoi Theatre, where the tragedy occurred, will help the public to see the situation in a much more objective light, without a media prone to sensationalism and possible pressure from judicial and executive authorities who want to put a quick end to this matter.

We appeal to the government to set up an independent commission to determine the causes that led to this tragedy.

http://www.mk.ru/cul...itrichenko.html

Less than three weeks shy of her 50th birthday, Nina Ananiashvili is preparing to dance Nikiya in Kiev tomorrow. Today she appeared on Ukrainian television on a late-night chat show hosted by Belarusian dissident journalist Pavel Sheremet.

Among the things they discussed were her vineyards and wines, why she likes Makarova's production of La Bayadère, why it is that she has only recently begun to appear in Kiev--this being her third visit, why Denis Matvienko is a good partner, why partnering isn't as easy as it looks (no translation required), her secret of youth (answer: her 7-year-old son), and a delicate question on Georgian politics (her husband having been a cabinet minister in the previous administration), to which she replies that art and politics shouldn't mix, but that the state ought to support the arts for the sake of national prestige.There is a tiny bit of rehearsal footage. At the end Sheremet advises viewers to try their luck with ticket scalpers and thanks Ananiashvili for allowing him to try his hand at being a ballet dancer for a few seconds. My, she looks great.

http://tvi.ua/new/20...balet_bayaderka

...what's depressing is that the Bolshoi is a theater where this kind of plot could even be thinkable let alone succeed

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:

Today the RIA Novosti agency published a statement by Bolshoi Theater press secretary Katerina Novikova regarding the situation around Pavel Dmitrichenko. In connection with this, I, Kirill Filatov, today, 11 March 2013, being of sound mind and firm memory, consider it necessary officially to declare the following:

I had, have and will have no connection to the "collective" and "no one doubts" mentioned in the interview. The honorable Ms. Novikova CANNOT say anything of the sort in my name inasmuch as I hold the opposite view on this point.

I also consider it necessary to add that I, being more than usually sociable, communicate with a large portion of the artistic, administrative and technical staff. I can assure you that among those with whom I have shared opinions on this situation, those who definitely believe that Pavel Dmitrichenko is party to the attack on Sergei Filin are only a handful, a far greater portion at minimum simply doubt his participation, and an even greater number completely reject the possibility of his guilt.

Yes, we may all be mistaken, however the assertion that the entire troupe supposedly does not have doubts about the guilt of Pavel Dmitrichenko is a lie.

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:

No one doubts the guilt of Dmitrichenko, he is involved in this terrible crime and ought to be held accountable. But it appears that he was not alone, and that someone else is standing behind him.

http://ria.ru/cultur...l#ixzz2NFMxTtEI

http://www.mk.ru/cul...-na-filina.html

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?

That's not very helpful.

The entire time Anandurdyev was sitting in the car but didn't come forward: if I were Filin, I'd be livid.

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?

This also caught my attention from Ismene Brown's blog linked above

The company manager Ruslan Pronin is also reported to have surprised the troupe by announcing that Filin yesterday had a phone conversation with another Bolshoi dancer, Batyr Annadurdyev, which has resulted in him being asked to make a statement to investigators.

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

Ismene Brown tweeted a link to her blog with some commentary and a translation of a new "Izvetsia" article in which she documents a meeting called with the Bolshoi dancers, who are not satisfied with answers they got from investigators, and in which the article states that the attack was planned earlier, and that the acid-thrower and driver were planning to beat up Filin in the fall, but the street was too crowded:

http://www.ismeneb.c...lin_before.html

The translation is inaccurate on a couple of points.

"Dmitrichenko cited a concrete example: in the autumn of 2012 Filin supposedly payed premiums to newly arrived artists from the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theater named Zhuk and Voronkova by cutting pay to current members of the ballet company," said a source close to the investigation.

Grigorovich still has a say in the casting of his ballets, no? He would have been the one to have assigned the lead in Nutcracker to Vorontsova, the title role in Ivan the Terrible to Dmitrichenko, etc.

Filin may have promoted Dmitrichenko twice in 2012, but Izvestia implies that Grigorovich has been the driving force behind his career.

In the theater Pavel Dmitrichenko did not lack for roles, but it was not Sergei Filin who enabled his professional rise. Rather the artistic director did not interfere with the artist's advancement. The real locomotive for Pavel Dmitrichenko was Yuri Grigorovich, who currently holds the modest title of ballet master, but who wields indisputable authority within the Bolshoi Theater.

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.

Cygnet, I believe that Yuri Burlaka was the AD of the Bolshoi Ballet when Vorontsova and her family moved from Voronezh to Moscow, so that she could complete her last year of schooling at the Moscow academy, then transition to the company at the beginning of the 2009/10 season. Filin was still in charge of the Stanislavski during this period.

Also, I recall reading in the Russian-language BALET magazine that Yuri Grigorovich was chairman of the jury of the ballet competition won by Vorontsova, that started it all. In other words, Vorontsova caught the eye of Grigorovich, who invited her to move to Moscow, etc. [several competition winners during that timeframe ended up at the Bolshoi, thanks to Grigorovich having been chairman of several competition juries...not just Vorontsova.]

Grigorovich still has a say in the casting of his ballets, no? He would have been the one to have assigned the lead in Nutcracker to Vorontsova, the title role in Ivan the Terrible to Dmitrichenko, etc. I'm not intimating

at all

that Grigorovich had a role in the attack....just setting the record straight that Filin had nothing to do with Vorontsova's move to Moscow.

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.

At one point Sergei Filin, being the artistic director of the ballet of the Moscow Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater, sent for young Anzhelina from the Voronezh Ballet School, found a job in Moscow for her mother, and while she was finishing studies at the Moscow Academy of Choreography, paid her a stipend. All so that Anzhelina, upon graduation, would become a soloist of his theater. But Ms. Vorontsova received an offer from the Bolshoi and preferred it over the Stanislavsky.

http://izvestia.ru/news/546173

Sergei helped not only Dmitrichenko, but also many other ballet dancers, for example, the gifted young Anzhelina Vorontsova. He helped move the talented girl from Voronezh, where she was studying at the ballet school, to Moscow. He rented an apartment for her with his own money, hired teachers, literally fed, clothed and shod her. Not out of self-interest, but as a man of generous spirit. But in his "courting" of Anzhelina there was also the tactical consideration of the artistic director of the ballet of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theater. He saw Vorontsova as a future star in his troupe. But when it came time to take a job, Anzhelina left Filin for the Bolshoi, where she found the patronage of Tsiskaridze, who took her as his student.

http://www.kp.ru/daily/26042/2956452/

I'm curious. Has Vorontsova danced since Wednesday? Was she/is she scheduled to dance?

Yes, she's the blonde who starts second from the right.

https://www.youtube....h?v=QbVXAvyX-Ws

If Filin was in fact so interested in taking bribes from his own Bolshoi dancers in exchange for parts, why did he offer a contract to an outsider, David Hallberg, and then feature Hallberg in the HD broadcast of SB? Under Dmitrichenko's theory, Filin would have saved all lead parts for Bolshoi dancers and sold them to the highest bribe offer.

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

It will be enough to look at the page of Artistic Director’s wife on the Bolshoi’s website: http://www.bolshoi.r...ons/ballet/273/

After joining the Bolshoi in 1996 she remained for 14+ years a reliable and hard-working corps de ballet member: swans, Willis, shades, etc., sometimes dancing in groups of 6 or 8.

Her career took off in that very year of 2011 when she was given parts in ‘The Rubies’ and ‘Symphony of Psalms’, Fairy of Generosity and White Cat in ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ and the French Doll in ‘The Nutcracker’. The year 2012 brought more new advanced roles: one of 4 swans in ‘Swan Lake’, Mona in ‘Giselle’, pas de six in ‘La Sylphide’, pas de trois in ‘The Emeralds’, 1st variation in pas d'aks′on in ‘La fille du pharaoh’, a nymph in ‘Apollo’ and others.

I have written it without delving into guesses and arguments but only in order to state the sober facts as they are.

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.

With Vorontsova instead of telling her she was fat she could have told her she needed additional coaching.

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."

Later, all three defendants in the case wrote a confession.

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