Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev leave Bolshoi to team up with Sarafanov and Duato at the Mikhailovsky Theatre

Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev have decided to leave their home theatre and move to the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St Petersburg. Mariinsky star Leonid Sarafanov made the move in January 2011. Defections have increased since Nacho Duato took over at the company's artistic helm.

Natalia Osipova

For me, a native Muscovite, the decision to move to the Mikhailovsky is a serious one. The main reason why I'm leaving the Bolshoi Theatre is the lack of repertoire: everything that I can dance there I have already danced. We want more creative freedom. Life has become too comfortable for me and I feel a great need for something to change it, to eliminate the convenience of repition.”

Ivan Vasiliev

We are evolving and we want to go forward. At the Bolshoi Theatre it is difficult not to be pigeon-holed… We want to dance as much as possible, especially new choreography. For artists, the size of the stage doesn't matter, but opportunity to perform and the quality of the performance.”

Nacho Duato, artistic director

Natasha Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev are real stars, dancers of extraordinary talent, and absolutely devoted to dance. Their possibilities in the classics is virtuosity limitless. We are pleased to be working together with them and are certain that the possibilities for creating choreography on artists of this magnitude will  produce astounding successes. “

Their contract with Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev is signed for 5 years. Their first performance as a soloists of the Mikhailovsky Theatre will be on December 1 at a gala.

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.