Volodymyr Rakov, a dancer, choreographer, and winner of the Ukrainian show So You Think You Can Dance, was killed in action on 6 January 2025. He was 30.
American organist, music director, choral conductor and academic, Gail Archer, will tour a Concert for Ukrainian Relief from February until May 2025.
Graham Spicer sees Rudolf Nureyev’s The Nutcracker at La Scala – some odd dramatic choices but the company has never looked so good.
Marta Mele sees Rome Opera Ballet’s Nutcracker – “a magic that illuminates social and gender conflicts, opening up with enthusiasm to adult life”.
Ex-Bolshoi dancer Anastasia Volochkova and current Bolshoi star and stirrer Nikolai Tsiskaridze have been on Russian television to add even more mud to an already murky pond. The Bolshoi’s general manager, Anatoly Iksanov, has said that Volochkova’s claims that the company pimped out its ballerinas to rich patrons was “nonsense and dirt”. According to Bloomberg, Volochkova, who was fired in 2003 for…
Alexey Zimakov, the winner of the 1991 American Guitar Association Competition in Miami, and a virtuoso player has had all the fingers on both hands amputated after contracting severe frostbite.
Russian opera legend Galina Vishnevskaya has died today, December 11, at the age of 86. Vishnevskaya was born in St Petersburg (Leningrad) 25 October 1926, and cast out by her parents at six weeks. She was raised in absolute poverty by her grandmother. As a ten year old Galina was presented with a gramophone and…
Montserrat Caballé, now 79, suffered a stroke while in Russia and, while briefly losing consciousness, fell and broke an arm. She was flown last Saturday to the Sant Pau hospital in Barcelona where she is “showing favourable progress, fully conscious and able to speak with her doctors and family members” says the Voice of Russia. Consequently she has…
Nikolay Grishko runs the company he founded by in the late 1980s after accompanying his professional dancer-wife Tamara during a French tour: Russian dancers were bringing ballet shoes from theatre workshops at home to sell to European dancers. Grishko resolved to exploit this market by organising the Russian workshops to make ballet shoes for export,…
The Financial Times visited Milan’s historic theatre to witness Sergei Vikharev‘s reconstruction of Raymonda – a production which is sending ripples of interest and excitement around the ballet community. This blog alone, and its associated YouTube channel, has received thousands of extra visits to read about Raymonda, pushing the associated posts to the top of the most viewed…
The papers are full of interviews with Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, especially during this, the month of her 40th birthday. They are not exactly carbon copies of each other, but very similar: plans to open a restaurant, overcoming geographical boundaries to meet up with hubby Erwin Schrott, and her adopted home, Austria. Peter Pomerantsev, a British…
Bolshoi Ballet’s Ivan Vasiliev will dance Roland Petit‘s Le Jeune Homme et la Mort with English National Ballet tomorrow evening, July 22. He is partnered with English National Ballet First Artist Jia Zhang. Vasiliev wanted to offer the performance as his personal tribute to Roland Petit. Following Roland Petit’s death on 9 July, Vasiliev contacted Zizi Jeanmaire, Petit’s…
The death of a tyrant, abduction by the secret police and insight into the minds of some of the greatest composers in history are all part of the details that Russia‘s Bolshoi Theatre has discovered in the margins of the centuries-old sheet music in its archives. The discoveries have been made during the digitalization of…
Ever since Duato breezed into the “dusty and creaky” Mikhailovsky, he has been tearing the place up. “No need for the classical movements here,” Duato tells a dancer in rehearsal. “Forget the port des bras! Forget that your arms are your arms—just drop them, as though they are something heavy.” Demonstrating, Duato drops his limbs…
Anatoly Iksanov, the general director of the Bolshoi Theatre, has confirmed that what’s seemed like a never-ending reconstruction of the Bolshoi’s historic building is finally coming to an end; he promised that a gala concert in October will cap a tough period in the life of this Russian symbol you can see on the crumpled…
23 countries shared the experience of this broadcast in high-definition from the Bolshoi with 460 cinemas around the globe participating. Imagine the pressure that the dancers of this Don Quixote were under. How they rose to the occasion. Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev added in more difficulties than we saw at the New Stage in Moscow last year (and maybe…
This week the Bolshoi Theatre’s ‘New Stage’ will host the Paris Opera Ballet for a mixed programme, and next week they will present Preljocaj’s Le Parc. It is the first time the company has been in Moscow since the fall of communism. Lifar’s Suite en Blanc, Petit’s L’Arlesienne and Béjart’s Bolero form the triple bill. “Over the…
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