Vladimir Vasiliev (dancer)

Early life

Vladimir Vasiliev was born in Moscow in 1940, the son of a truck driver. In 1947, at the age of seven, he joined the amateur ballet group of the Kirov pioneer group, where he stayed two years. His first teacher was Elena Romanovna Rosse.

Vladimir Vasiliev entered the Moscow Ballet School, commonly known as The Bolshoi Ballet Academy, in 1947 and graduated in 1958, when he joined the Bolshoi Ballet. His teachers at the Moscow Ballet School included Aleksey Yermolayev.

Principal Dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet

Vladimir Vasiliev became a principal dancer in 1959 in his second year with the Bolshoi Ballet.

Career with Ekaterina Maximova

Vladimir Vasiliev and Ekaterina Maximova, both principal dancers, were the dream couple of the Bolshoi Ballet. Dancing as a pair for the first time in 1949 as classmates at the Moscow Ballet School, they were married in 1961.

New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff described the excitement of one of Vasiliev’s United States performances with the Bolshoi Ballet: “Yekaterina Maksimova and Vladimir Vasiliev burst upon New York City in 1959, the greatest of the passionate young dancers who, with Moscow's more established stars, made the Bolshoi Ballet's American debut a total triumph.”

The Bolshoi tour to London in 1969 was dominated by the sensational impact of Aram Khatchaturian's ballet Spartacus as choreographed by Yuri Grigorovich, in which, wrote the leading critic Richard Buckle, "Maximova would melt any tyrant's heart".

The great male dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov recently paid tribute to the couple, saying Maximova, with her "elegant build, beauty, virtuosity and even more so her spontaneity and sincerity", was treated like a "rare treasure" by the indomitable Vasiliev. This gave their performances an almost sacred aura, to which audiences gratefully responded.

Vladimir Vasiliev and Ekaterina Maximova gleaned wide exposure for their appearances in Franco Zeffirelli's filmed version of Giuseppe Verdi's opera La traviata of 1983. Both performed in Spanish costume, Vasiliev as a matador, in the "divertissements" composed for the equivalent of Act II, scene 2.

The couple was filmed in 1988 by French director Dominique Delouche in a film portrait “Katia et Volodia".

In 2008, the Bolshoi hosted a week-long festival dedicated to Maximova and Vasiliev's 50 years on the Bolshoi stage, during which Vladimir Vasiliev commented that the secret of partnering was "the man must not get in the way of the woman – she is the most important person on stage." He added that all his life his wife had been his inspiration for two qualities: her beauty and her capacity for hard work.

The marriage lasted for 50 years, until Ekaterina Maximova died in 2009.

They had no children.

On stage

Numerous roles were created for Vladimir Vasiliev, and he performed throughout the world, usually partnering his wife. Among the most notable were those created by Yuri Grigorovich, who gave him the principal roles in his original productions of The Tale of the Stone Flower, Spartacus, The Nutcracker, the ballet version of Ivan the Terrible, Valery Gavrilin's Anyuta (1982), and Yakov Eshpay's Angara (1976). Besides Maximova, Vasiliev’s famous partners included Galina Ulanova, Maya Plisetskaya, Alicia Alonso, Carla Fracci, Rita Poelvoorde and Ambra Vallo.

Style

Having a body revealing great physical strength, Vladimir Vasiliev did not embody the ideal physical form for a classical dancer.

He made enormous contributions to the development of classical male dance, embodying the strong new Bolshoi male.

“You see — at the beginning we do things only as we have seen them done,” says Vladimir Vasiliev at the end of “Katia et Volodia,” the 1988 film exploring Vasiliev’s artistry and that of his wife and fellow Bolshoi luminary, Ekaterina Maximova. “Afterwards, we do them with what we find inside ourselves.”

Vladimir Vasiliev "God of the dance"

Yet Vladimir Vasiliev is not as well known in the west as such dancers as Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, because he remained in the Soviet Union and did most of his work there.

Nevertheless he is regarded as a classical dancer on the same level as Nureyev and Baryshnikov. Mathias Heymann who has been promoted to principal dancer with the Paris Opera Ballet in 2009, only 22 years old, told in an interview that he takes inspiration from watching all dance videos of Rudolf Nureyev whom he regards as his role model, as are Vassiliev and Baryshnikov.

Russia’s influential ballet critic and choreographer Fyodor Lopukhov called Vladimir Vasiliev "God of the dance" and "A miracle in art, perfection".

Director of the Bolshoi ballet

In March 1995 Vladimir Vasiliev was appointed the General and Artistic Director of the Bolshoi Theatre after Yury Grigorovich, artistic director of the ballet company since 1963, was dismissed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Among the major projects Vasiliev has spearheaded there were such as the large scale exchange of Bolshoi and Mariinsky Ballet companies in 1998, of the Bolshoi and Paris Opera Ballet to be held, first-ever New Year Ball in the Bolshoi on December 31, 1999, foundation of the International Club of the Bolshoi Friends.

At the end of the 1990s, he was one of the first ballet directors who recognized the class and the outstanding qualities of Svetlana Zakharova, then principal dancer with the Mariinsky ballet. Svetlana Zakharova became a principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet in Octobre 2003.

Vladimir Vasiliev was dismissed as director of the Bolshoi Theater August 28, 2000. Vasiliev learned about his dismissal from hearing it on the radio.

Choreographer

Since his exit from the Bolshoi, Vasiliev premiered in the ballet production Lungo Viaggio Nella Notte di Natale, set to Tchaikovsky’s music, in Opera di Roma, and continues to choreograph and stage new ballets.

Coincidence

It seems conincidental, but at the Bolshoi Ballet there is a growing tradition of break-up.

There is another ballet dancer Ivan Vasiliev who was promoted to principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet in 2010.

Ivan Vasiliev and Natalia Osipova, Vasiliev's then-fiancée left their company in the end of 2011, in the search for wider artistic horizons. They both became principals of the Mikhailovsky Theatre, in Saint Petersburg, with plenty of freedom to perform worldwide as guests.

There is another striking coincidence.

Both Vladimir Vasiliev and Ivan Vasiliev are considered the greatest interpreters of Spartacus.

Awards

Honours

Vladimir Vasiliev was the first dancer to be given the award "La médaille d’or du meilleur danseur du monde" ("The Gold Medal of the World's Best Dancer"). Later Mikhail Baryshnikov and Patrick Dupond were also awarded the distinction.

Over the years Vladimir Vasiliev has received many of the most prestigious Soviet, Russian and foreign prizes, orders and highest awards including the USSR State Prize, Russian State Prize, Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" and State Order “For Merits” of France, Lithuanian State Order, Order of Rio Branco (Brazil), UNESCO Pablo Picasso Medal and others.

Filmography