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Bolshoi Ballet Loses Two of Its Leading Stars to the Mikhailovsky Theatre Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, one of the Bolshoi theatre's most promising dance partnerships will leave the newly renovated Bolshoi to work with the Mikhailovsky's new Spanish artistic director, Nacho Duato. In January 2011 Duato became the first foreigner in a century to lead a Russian ballet troupe, vowing to breathe new life into the Russian stage by bringing a modern twist to its classical repertoire.
In telephone interviews Ms. Osipova, 25, and Mr. Vasiliev, 22, who are a couple, said they were leaving for “artistic freedom,” namely the chance to dance with other companies in addition to the Mikhailovsky and to broaden their repertories.
“Life has become, well, too comfortable for me in Moscow, performing a limited number of titles,” Ms. Osipova said. “I just wanted to take a challenge in my life.” She said her busy schedule at the Bolshoi made it difficult to take on more outside assignments. Mr. Vasiliev said he had been typecast in heroic roles. “Now I very much want to develop another side of my artistry — more lyrical characters,” he said, as well as perform new works.
Osipova and Vasiliev officially become part of the Saint Petersburgh-based troupe on December 1, the same day they perform there at a gala. Mikhailovsky theatre director Vladimir Kekhman said he had signed the dancers to a five-year contract following talks that lasted a year and a half. The new position will offer the dancers a chance to expand their repertoires and tour the world's main stages, he said.
Duato is supposed to create a full-length work for them to perform in March 2012. Future repertory was still being decided. Meanwhile, Anatoly Iksanov, the general director of the Bolshoi Theatre claimed that nothing has been signed yet and expressed his hope that both revered ballet stars change their minds. Anyway, the door to Bolshoi remains open for them no matter what their final decision is, he added. Mariinsky Soloist Vishneva to Appear at Stanislavsky Every appearance in Moscow by Mariinsky Theater prima ballerina Diana Vishneva is bound to be an event of great allure to the city’s ballet-going public. And the new program she brings to the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater this week, titled Diana Vishneva: Dialogues, should prove no exception.
Like the ballerina’s previous program, Diana Vishneva: Beauty in Motion, which received a sensational reception in Moscow and elsewhere three years ago, Dialogues, is a three-part show. But unlike its predecessor, which consisted entirely of works specially created by a trio of choreographers, the new program includes just one premiere, a ballet appropriately titled Dialogue, by Hamburg-based American choreographer John Neumeier. For the rest, Vishneva has reached back more than six decades to a work called Errand Into the Maze by legendary American Martha Graham and completes the program with Subject to Change, created in 2003 by the noted English-Spanish husband-and-wife team of Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon for the Netherlands Dance Theater.
Errand Into the Maze, choreographed by Martha Graham in 1947 to a score by Gian Carlo Menotti and with decor by famed Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, takes its inspiration from the Greek myth concerning the venture by Theseus into the labyrinth of King Midas of Crete to slay the monstrous half-man, half-beast Minotaur. In this case, however, it is a woman who undertakes the feat, with the Minotaur seeming to represent her own hidden fears.
Dialogue is a duet in Neumeier’s familiar neoclassical style, set to Variations on a Theme of Chopin by the rather unfairly neglected 20th-century Spanish composer Federico Mompou. Subject to Change was created in memory of a friend of choreographers Lightfoot and Leon who had recently died of an incurable disease. Its music is the slow movement of Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden string quartet as orchestrated by Gustav Mahler. Sources: www. guardian.co.uk, www.nytimes.com, www.gazeta.ru and www.themoscowtimes.com

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