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Paris (AFP) – Prima ballerina Olga Smirnova has quit the Bolshoi in Moscow to join the Dutch National Ballet, it was announced Wednesday, making her the first Russian to quit the fabled company over the war in Ukraine. “Smirnova was outspoken in her recent denouncement of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is making it untenable for her to work in her native country," the Dutch company said in a statement. Smirnova is one of the biggest stars of the Bolshoi and had already expressed her opposition to the war on messaging app Telegram earlier this month. "I am against...

MOSCOW (AP) — Legendary Russian ballerina Ekaterina Maximova, who graced the stage of the Bolshoi Theater for 30 years, died Tuesday. She was 70. The theater said Maximova died at home and no cause of death was immediately determined. She had been working as a ballet coach and was not known to be suffering from ill health. Ballet directors and President Dmitry Medvedev praised Maximova's work as an artist and a teacher of young ballerinas, and mourned her death as a great loss to Russia. Maximova's dancing career at the Bolshoi spanned three decades, from her debut as Masha in...

Legendary Soviet-era prima ballerina dies Feb 19, 2008 MOSCOW (AFP) - The Russian prima ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova, a leading star of the Bolshoi Theatre for three decades, has died aged 66 after a long illness, the company said on Tuesday. "She died in a Moscow hospital after a long and difficult illness," the Bolshoi press service was quoted as saying by the Ria Novosti news agency. Born in Moscow on July 19 1941, Bessmertnova trained at the Bolshoi ballet school in Moscow, graduating with the highest possible grade, an A+, a first in the institution's history. From the 1960s she...

Poles shun Bolshoi over 'slight' Russia's famed Bolshoi Ballet has cut short a tour of Poland after tensions with Moscow boiled over into a boycott of its performances by local fans. Mass ticket cancellations followed protests at the absence of a mention of Poland's war role at the WWII 60th anniversary victory parade in Moscow. But President Aleksander Kwasniewski played down reports that Polish veterans had been slighted. A Polish impresario for the Bolshoi said the boycott was "scandalous". "It is scandalous to mix politics and art," Cezary Szyjko told AFP news agency. Tour organiser Wojciech Wojtanowski told Reuters news...

Boycott of Russian Ballet 10.05.2005 The audience returns tickets for Polish performances of the famous Teatr Bolshoi from Moscow. This gesture is generally understood as a protest against yesterday’s celebrations of Victory Day in Moscow. The intended performances in Olsztyn, Rzeszów, Kraków and Lublin as already been called off, it is not certain if the performance in Bialystok will take place. Yesterday’s performance in Warsaw took place although many seats were empty. One of the organisers revealed that 80% of guests invited by the Russian embassy failed to arrive.

MOSCOW, Sept. 16 — One of Russia's best-known ballerinas and post-Communist celebrities was fired today by the Bolshoi Theater after a war of insults over whether she was fit for a pas de deux. Theater officials are charging the ballerina, Anastasia Volochkova, with one of ballet's deadly sins: they say she has become too fat. "She is heavy for a ballerina; she is hard to lift," Katerina Novikova, the theater's spokeswoman, said in an interview on Monday. Ms. Volochkova, 27, spoke of mysterious forces working against her — she wouldn't identify them — and also said theater administrators, working on...