Bolshoi Ballet director on injury, race, harassment and a new theatre

A fascinating read, Graham! Than You for having shared!

I agree fully with Vaziev – enough. Petrushka is a fascinating historical piece which brings the baggage of that age with it. How can you whiten the Moor, or put a black dancer into that role? It’s a slippery slope.

Any comment on why there is not a female director of the Bolshoi recently or ever? Harassment viewpoint- love it. Illustrates everthing about the problem right there in one nutshell, self-evident. Patriarchy at its pinnacle. Why not just have a not-blackface bayadere? Who knows.

Let’s get some facts straight, the Bolshoi Ballet actually has black dancers, just saying… also Mariinski and Bolshoi are the staples of ballet quality in the whole world, there simply isn’t anything like it. You watch their corp du ballet and you can see how every single one of them could easily be a soloist in any other company in the world and actually raise the level of quality all together. They also start the earliest from all countries and have special schools just to produce these incredible dancers that will always blow us away. So, coming in with American ideologies that don’t even work for Americans themselves (in spite of the world history of racism on Earth ! cuz sorry I don’t remember Russia flooding entire cities of blacks to literally erase them from history) and denying their level of quality based on outside aesthetics like quotas is quite frankly insulting at this institution. And the premise of it is wrong too, do you actually believe that everything would suddently be perfect if the Bolshoi has a 50% black quota ?! Do you think that would eradicate racism ? Of course for that little black girl it would be so inspiring and amazing to see a black prima ballerina but this doesn’t deny her love for ballet as it is. Let’s not kid ourselves here, especially at Bolshoi they sell a brand, a very very specific brand where children are being tossed out for not having the right feet, or amount of flexibility or aren’t tall enough, or slim enough. Do you think that rejection feels any less painful ? You’d say, oh but if one black dancers fitted the mold, it would be a downright injustice and pure institutionalised racism not to hire them, well, those black dancers, at the required level with the required anatomy and all the needed criteria actually did make it, clearly. And of course, you don’t have as many because how would you get that kind of training to begin with if there is racism at every corner ? AND that my friend is your actual problem, which Americans are trying to solve with their little quotas, i.e. to make up for hundreds of years of actively dismantling all the opportunity blacks could have had to develop in any way. So it’s a bit of a catch 22 at this point, except for the Bolshoi Ballet School from Brasil !! Which has a ton of black people cuz it’s Brasil and it was intended specifically to train the poorest of them all and with that training you can then go on to the Bolshoi Academy and then Company. So I’m sorry, but out of literally all ballet companies on Earth the Bolshoi Ballet is actually the only one actively breaking this catch 22 by solving the issue of well Bolshoi standards ! You can’t achieve them without the Bolshoi School, so they made a school and there are dancers flowing in from Brasil that were trained in their preffered Vaganova Method and so on. And so, how DARE YOU all so easily criticise Bolshoy just because it’s Russian and surely Russia should be criticised for sooo much, but do it right ! Do it justice ! Isn’t it ironic how your own prejudices make you so vile and agressive at an insitution you know nothing about. Mind you, there exists NO OTHER Bolshoi School on Earth other than Moskow and Brasil, that’s it and for me that is just glorious ! Because it truly gives these kids a real chance. Now let’s talk about America shall we ? Where professional ballet dancers work as waitresses at fast food restaurants just to pay their health insurance! Are you kidding me ? Because oh the “patriarchical institution”, well I’m sorry, Russia HAS a real institution of Ballet, what does the US have ? Rich bastards who comission ballets when they feel like showing off, leaving these poor dancers with no work contracts, no health insurance, no perspective whatsoever, and if there isn’t a grand event there is no ballet, and thus no funding so how will you survive ?! Whereas in Europe and Russia and UK Ballet is an actual real stately funded institution who can actually pay their dancers every month regardless of what they’re playing or dancing. So how about you fix your fucking diseased system where no body has access to proper schools or companies and even then they need to hold multiple jobs just to get by, and then talk about the racism in the Bolshoi. I’m sick and tired of the American propaganda of telling everyone else, that they have a problem and not bother for a second with their out disgusting history of abuse both around the world as well as with their own freaking citizens. I mean most Americans think Puerto Rico is a foreign country and that they need a passport to go there… and you’re telling the world about “racism” ?! Really, check your bullshit and maybe, which will never happen, is US ballet companies ever get to that level of quality and perfection, they can have an opinion about how they should go about it, until then it’s just envy and bullshit. So do that, make your own institutions with all the dancers you can get (btw there are less black dancers in the US than possibly Bolshoi so fuck off!) come up with a world leading standard of ballet, that is fair and just and inclusive and then yes, SHOW everyone else on Earth it can be done because you’ve done it ! But you haven’t and won’t, let talk about the rapes and abuses not only in Ballet in the US but in all sports alike ! And racism, I mean black folk in the US never get a chance to a proper training so they can even compete at auditions so they can easily be rejected on grounds of not being good enough. Now that is actual institutionalized racism, which you don’t have the in Russia cuz there’s isn’t enough black people to begin with, and also their companies are far more diverse than any company I’ve seen, from asians to blacks because they don’t care and at the same time have the most discriminatory regulations ever, like again height, weight, general anatomy etc etc. And they serve the whole world which something that is unique. Distroying that in the name of “diversity” is quite very ironic, because how diverse is a company is they all look the same, all have the same quotas for the sake of quotas and all have the same standards because oh well, everything else is “bullying”. And no, I don’t agree with bullying and I DO BELIEVE there has to be a better way that might yield even better dancers, BUT no one has done it recently. So talking about representation, we don’t need black dancers, we need PROOF that ballet can be done suitainably without so many injuries, without all the yelling and shouting, without the DIN standards of body type, etc, and IF you can prove that and be a shining example and represent that things can be done differently and it works, racism dissolves instantly, because racism when it comes to ballet isn’t the issue, it’s just a symptom. And even then I do want to see white ballet, and I do want to see black ballet and I want to see all kinds of things that are surely incredible to look at. Because you are delusional if you think for a second that ballet isn’t about the visuals, are you kidding me ? everything in ballet is done in relationship to how to LOOKS to the audience, so if you think you can achieve the same visual effect of all white skinny swans, with randomely 5 black ones you’re delusional. You’d need at least half the swans black so you could maybe make a sort of checkerboard that is symmetric which would be beautiful in its own right but again it would be beautiful differently. And I do want that TOO, but not solely because I am honest, unlike most people here, because you’re trying to imply that merely enojying Bolshoi is racist which is not, it is however a long tradition than kept morphing and developping into making that mold be and look its very finest! And so what we’re lacking is a a black ballet institution that can built a tradition that makes black folk look jawdropping on stage, and it so happens that in the US black communities have had many moments of great development and great beginning of starting their own and traditions and the US responded by flooding their entire cities, and now as a great self fulfilling profecy claim that oh but the blacks can never do anything right or organise themselves properly. So again, learn some fucking history and maybe don’t attack culture itself, i.e. culture = the summation of the best thoughts, arts and endeavours a country had to offer over the centuries! So attacking this is bullying, is ignorant, arrogant and selfimposed sense of justice, in one word all that is the US, as opposed to what they pretend they are.