Yesterday, Karina Soldatova, the Vaganova Ballet Academy student who was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2016, died after a courageous battle against the disease. During the autumn of 2016 she returned to study at the Academy but earlier this year there was a recurrence, which we reported on here, in May of this year. After various appeals to help […]
Nikolai Tsiskaridze
Bolshoi Ballet’s Vladislav Lantratov on the cancelling of Nureyev: There is nothing worse for an artist…
On 8 July, after the dress rehearsal of the Bolshoi Ballet’s ambitious new ballet on the life of Rudolf Nureyev, the premiere was cancelled. Vladislav Lantratov was to have played Nureyev and, stunned by the announcement, wrote on Instagram, Нет слов…… понимание что ты только полюбил роль, начал вживаться в спектакль, всё начало складываться… и […]
Children banned from the Bolshoi Ballet
A week ago, a group of parents with their young children – 5-11 years-old – were refused entrance to a performance of Swan Lake, and without a refund being offered. The Bolshoi’s General Director, Vladimir Urin, said that varying age restrictions were allotted to the company’s ballets after the theatre had received multiple complaints from […]
Vaganova Ballet Academy to open a new school in Vladivostok – 10,000 km from St Petersburg
by guest blogger Elizaveta Dilanyan On 18 June it was announced that Vaganova Ballet Academy will open a second campus in Vladivostok, the capital of the Primorsky Krai province, in far eastern Russian, almost 10,000 km away from St Petersburg in the extreme west by car or train. The train journey will take almost week, though […]
Nominees of Benois de la Danse 2015
CHOREOGRAPHERS: ALEXANDER EKMAN – A Swan Lake, Mikael Karlsson. The Norwegian National Ballet. JEAN-CHRISTOPHE MAILLOT – The Taming of the Shrew, Dmitry Shostakovich. Bolshoi Ballet. DWIGHT RHODEN – Verse Us, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Nils Frahm, Claude Debussy, Philip Glass, Sven Helbig, Kristian Jarvi. Ballet Nice Mediterrannee. MARTIN SCHLÄPFER – Deep Field, Adriana Holzsky. Ballet am […]
Tsiskaridze: Real ballet dancers are trained in Paris, Moscow or St Petersburg
Forget the Royal Ballet School or the The School of American Ballet, Nikolai Tsiskaridze says there are only three real ballet schools in the world: the Paris Opera Ballet School, the Bolshoi Ballet Academy and the Vaganova Ballet Academy, which he is currently running. I always said there are only three schools in the world: if you […]
Russian Ministry says Vaganova letter against Tsiskaridze is forged
The Russian Ministry of Culture has said that the letter sent to Vladimir Putin by the staff of the Vaganova Academy, asking for the removal of Nikolai Tsiskaridze as its director, is a forgery. The letter said that the announced removal of the director Vera Dorofeyeva, and the artistic director, Altynai Asylmuratova, would cause “irreparable […]
New Russian ballet advisory board created to avoid further scandal?
The Russian Culture Ministry has announced that a new advisory board will be formed to ‘publicly and openly’ give advice on the running of the country’s top dance academies. It is a move which it insists is not related to the recent Vaganova scandal. The new Russian Coordination Council for Choreography and Education may include the […]
Bolshoi Theatre director on Filin, Ratmansky, Tsiskaridze, the opera, the image and more
The new head of the Bolshoi Theatre, Vladimir Urin, has outlined some of his intentions for the theatre’s future, after two months into the job. He talked about creating a group of house singers, about Filin, Ratmansky, Tsiskaridze, and about the Bolshoi’s tarnished image with “Rossiyskaya Gazeta“. Urin has a vision for the future of […]
Ex-Bolshoi star Tsiskaridze returns to dance in The Nutcracker on New Year’s Eve
Former Bolshoi dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze, whose contract was terminated by the theatre at the beginning of the summer, will return for The Nutcracker, as it would give him “the chance to say goodbye to the audience”. A source close to the theatre’s administration told RIA Novosti that Tsiskaridze had asked for the top job at the Vaganova Academy, but Culture Minister […]
