So 29-year-old Bolshoi dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko will go to prison for six years, and his career obviously ends here. His biography has been taken down from the company's website and soon his picture will disappear from the ‘leading soloists' page.
What a lot of damage he's caused: to himself, the international reputation of the Bolshoi company and Russian ballet in general, and mostly to Sergei Filin, the Bolshoi's Ballet Director. Filin will confront daily the damage to his eyes, face, and probably psyche, that the acid attack, instigated by Dmitrichenko, has caused.
This story, so incredible that it gripped the attention of those far away from the worlds of ballet or Russian politics, had me, almost eagerly, waiting for the next installment. But then, two or three weeks ago, I wrote the last piece on my blog about this story; it was tied in with the incredible goings on at the Vaganova Academy in St Petersburg. This wasn't part of the ballet I loved: the pointes and the sweat, the lycra and the port de bras. This was battery acid mixed with urine disfiguring someone for life because somebody wasn't getting the right roles. It will probably make a good ballet, and certainly a mini-series will be coming your way soon, but I don't know how lawyers do it. Doesn't all that digging around in the dirt get their hands dirty too? They've obviously got stronger moral fibre than this little blogger. This little blogger had had enough.
Dmitrichenko, and the two characters he was in cahoots with, have been ordered to pay Filin three million rubles in compensation. Wow, three million! Well three million rubles is only the equivalent of about $90,000.
Filin is currently in Germany, waiting for yet another operation to save his eyesight.
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.
