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Russian ballet maestro Yuri Grigorovich has died at 98, Bolshoi Theatre says.
He served as creative director of the Bolshoi Ballet from 1964 to 1995.
Grigorovich was identified for ballets like Spartacus and Romeo and Juliet.
Moscow:
Russian ballet maestro Yuri Grigorovich, thought of one of many biggest choreographers of the twentieth century, has died on the age of 98, the Bolshoi Theatre stated on Monday.
Grigorovich, creative director of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow from 1964-1995, was famed for productions of Spartacus, Ivan the Horrible, Romeo and Juliet and plenty of different ballets. He was particularly celebrated for his give attention to the male dancer, for whom he made roles requiring extraordinary energy and approach.
His pal Nina Alovert, a celebrated dance photographer, posted a memoir on Fb through which she known as him “the love of my life within the ballet world”.
In Spartacus, she stated, he created “a robust ballet epic, which exhibits a hero who has set himself in opposition to a big and soulless state machine. This theme was completely uncommon for Soviet society, the place the person was all the time diminished.”
Natalia Beizerova, a Russian ballet lover and blogger, informed Reuters: “Every of his ballets is a field of philosophical ideas … His silent ballets say greater than any phrases, that is his absolute genius.”
Grigorovich was born in 1927, a decade after the Bolshevik Revolution, and ballet was all the time a part of his life – his uncle Georgy Rozai had studied with the legendary dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Grigorovich carried out as a soloist with Leningrad’s Kirov ballet earlier than turning into a choreographer.
Throughout his lengthy tenure on the Bolshoi, it staged frequent worldwide excursions and enhanced its status as one of many world’s nice firms. However the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union introduced uncertainty, monetary worries, inner rows and a flight of expertise overseas.
DANCERS’ STRIKE
In 1995, Grigorovich resigned after months of battle with administration over performers’ contracts, triggering the primary dancers’ strike on the Bolshoi in its greater than 200-year historical past. Because the lights dimmed in the beginning of a scheduled efficiency, a dancer stepped via the curtain to inform the surprised viewers there could be no present that night time.
Grigorovich created a brand new ballet firm in Krasnodar, southern Russia, though he finally returned to the Bolshoi in 2008 to work once more as a choreographer and ballet grasp.
He received the very best Russian and Soviet awards, together with Folks’s Artist of the USSR and Hero of Socialist Labour.
By coincidence, his demise was introduced on the identical day as that of considered one of his favorite dancers, Yuri Vladimirov, who was 83.
Grigorovich’s spouse Natalia Bessmertnova, a prima ballerina on the Bolshoi, died of most cancers in 2008. In 2017, the Bolshoi marked his ninetieth birthday with two months of particular performances.
Valery Gergiev, head of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theatres, informed Izvestia newspaper that Grigorovich was “a legendary determine who will proceed to command respect and admiration for many years to come back”.
The Bolshoi stated in a press release that it will “faithfully cherish his reminiscence and defend his priceless legacy”.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)