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 […]
Nikolay Tsiskaridze
Maria Mudryak answers the Gramilano Questionnaire… Singers’ Edition
Q&A in italiano When did you start singing? My first performance was when I was three years old, then when I was five I started my musical training, and at six I recorded my first CD featuring twelve children’s songs. Why did you start singing? I started to sing because I heard children singing in […]
19-year-old Vaganova Ballet Academy student fights for her life
Nikolay Tsiskaridze is in town with two of his star pupils from the Vaganova Academy. Eleonora Sevenard and Egor Gerashchenko are surely future stars that will be seen increasingly over the coming years. Tsiskaridze was running up and down the aisle at La Scala yesterday, making sure that the tempi were just right and that […]
Nikolay Tsiskaridze’s first two years at the helm of the Vaganova
The 28th of October 2015 marked the end of Nikolay Tsiskaridze’s first two years as head of the Vaganova Academy and the staff celebrated the occasion with a small get together. His appointment was controversial at the time, and many high ranking dancers and administrators spoke out against the Bolshoi dancer being given the top […]
Nikolay Tsiskaridze on the Vaganova Academy and Russian Ballet
In a recent interview with Our Russia‘s Olga Malik, Nikolay Tsiskaridze spoke once more about the Russian ballet and the Vaganova Academy’s relationship to dance in the rest of the world. I believe that the Russian ballet school is one of the few (if not the only) school that keeps the traditions of the classical ballet […]
Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya dies at 89
Maya Plisetskaya died of a heart attack today in Munich. She was 89. The director of the Bolshoi Ballet, Vladimir Urin, said, She died of a severe heart attack. The doctors tried everything, but there was nothing they could do. Mikhail Shvydkoi, former Russian Minister of Culture, said, I always thought that Plisetskaya would live forever. […]
Meanwhile in Russia… Vaganova & Bolshoi latest
The Russian Ministry of Culture announced this morning that there would be an external inspection of the organisation of St Petersburg’s Vaganova Ballet Academy. It will examine the economic and educational structure for irregularities after “”the emergence of numerous items in the media, which refer to procedural violations at the Vaganova Academy”. Though, bizarrely, the Ministry […]
Tsiskaridze’s reputation is not as high as state officials’ wives would have you believe
Earlier today, teachers at the Vaganova Ballet Academy published an open letter, written in four languages, to President Vladimir Putin asking him to reconsider the appointment of Nikolay Tsiskaridze as the new school principal. Diana Vishneva was one of the first to openly criticise Tsiskaridze’s appointment, saying that it could ruin the future of the renowned […]
Diana Vishneva: the Vaganova Academy gave me freedom to move in any way I choose
Diana Vishneva feels passionately about the Vaganova Ballet Academy, from where she graduated in 1995, and yesterday made it clear that she has doubts about its future under the new school Principal, Nikolay Tsiskaridze. Last year, the historic school celebrated its 275th anniversary, and Vishneva talked to Anna Galaida about its importance. The school is everything: the guarantee of […]
Diana Vishneva ‘outraged’ by the appointment of Tsiskaridze at the Vaganova Academy
Valery Gergiev says he is delighted at the appointment of Nikolay Tsiskaridze as the new head of the historic Vaganova Ballet Academy, but not everyone is so happy. Diana Vishneva, herself a graduate of the school in St Petersburg, is said to be outraged at the appointment, according to RIA Novosti. There was no significant reason […]
