Sex, politics and intrigue at the BolshoiJudith Mackrell
Sergei Filin and Anna Antonicheva in a 2001 performance of Swan Lake by the
Bolshoi in London. Photograph: Tristram KentonTwo months ago the Critics' Circle bestowed three of its annual dance awards on the Bolshoi ballet: for best foreign company; outstanding female dancer; and outstanding male dancer. Yet suddenly this scintillating company appears to have gone toxic. In the last month it has been mired in arguments over the failure to appoint a successor for its departing artistic director Yuri Burlaka. Last week it had to face down the scandal of sexually explicit, gay pictures of its director, Gennady Yanin, being posted on the internet.
Yanin resigned almost immediately. Yet while he claimed he was ready to go, his supporters said that the "scandal" had been a crude smear campaign orchestrated by factions within the Bolshoi trying to gain control. And they had good reason for thinking so. What looks like lurid headlines is actually the latest episode in a 20-year struggle for the company's soul.
That struggle began in the late 1980s, when rebellious dancers wanted to be rid of the then director Yuri Grigorovich. A product of the old Soviet ballet, Grigorovich had maintained an iron grip over the Bolshoi's image for more than two decades – building its reputation for bravura, athletic dancing and blockbuster ballets such as Spartacus, whose themes were rigidly in line with Soviet moral orthodoxy.
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