Svet­lana Zakhar­ova talked to Russia’s Izves­tia yes­ter­day about her latest pro­jects, includ­ing bring­ing Fre­d­er­ick Ashton’s Mar­guer­ite and Armand to the Bolshoi.

She danced the role for the first time last sea­son at Milan’s La Scala with Roberto Bolle; this time round her Armand will be Sergei Polunin who scored a huge per­sonal suc­cess with the role with the Royal Bal­let at Cov­ent Garden last month when he partnered Tamara Rojo in her farewell performances.

Mar­guer­ite was cre­ated for Mar­got Fon­teyn when she was 44-years-old as a Fonteyn-Nureyev vehicle, and it was deemed untouch­able until the 35-year-old Sylvie Guillem fam­ously took on the role in 2000. Zakhar­ova got to wear Cecil Beaton’s frocks at 33.  Mar­guer­ites are get­ting younger, and indeed for Dumas’ story there is no reason why not, but these roles are obvi­ously inten­ded for a mature artist, maybe one who is look­ing to the future when 32 fou­ettées are no longer feas­ible. Another ‘mature’ bal­let is John Cranko’s One­gin, though Mar­cia Hay­dée was only 28 when she cre­ated the role. Zakhar­ova will per­form this bal­let for the first time at the Bolshoi in July. Bolshoi Bal­let chief Sergei Filin nego­ti­ated to secure the per­form­ance rights from the Cranko Found­a­tion before the acid attack in January.

Pavel Dmitrichenko, who has con­fessed to instig­at­ing the attack on Filin, has received sup­port with a let­ter from more than 300 com­pany mem­bers to the Bolshoi man­age­ment which stated,

For those who know Pavel Dmitrichenko, even the thought that he could have been the instig­ator and organ­iser of this crime, com­mit­ted in such a bru­tal way, is absurd. The con­clu­sions made by the invest­ig­a­tion seem pre­ma­ture to us, the evid­ence uncon­vin­cing and Pavel’s con­fes­sion, later changed, the res­ult of strong pres­sure on him.

Zakhar­ova decided not to sign the let­ter, and explained her pos­i­tion to Izves­tia.

I try not to sign any let­ters. For me, the crime against Sergei was a big blow. What happened to him is one of the worst things that can hap­pen: the loss health through no fault of his own. Hon­estly, for me it does not mat­ter who attacked him and for what; what is import­ant is that it happened. No-one has the right to do that.

At this time, I just want to express my sup­port for Sergei Filin and his fam­ily. Our doc­tors have done everything pos­sible and now Ger­man doc­tors con­tinue to fight for his health. But des­pite numer­ous oper­a­tions on his eyes, he still con­tin­ues to work.

Return­ing to her new rep­er­toire, she says, it doesn’t mean that she is think­ing of retiring:

The very thought of the end of a career scares me, frankly. I want to go out and dance forever. There are so many won­der­ful pro­duc­tions and pro­jects out there!

But when the moment comes?

I cer­tainly don’t plan to return to polit­ics. I can­not be a cho­reo­grapher, unfor­tu­nately, as God didn’t give me that gift. But I hope that my future will be con­nec­ted with the arts. Also, lately I’ve been doing a lot of char­it­able work to sup­port young artists, stu­dents and also stage veterans.

But right now?

 I open the cal­en­dar and see that in 2015 I go to the theatre to dance-so-and-so, and I think, “Thank God!”

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