Big - trademark problems of the Bolshoi Ballet - Kickoff - Editorial

Dance Magazine, May, 1996 by Richard Philp

For generations, the Bolshoi Ballet's broad, aggressive style reflected certain truths about Russia under the Soviet system. When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Russians took stock of their shattered assets, including two of their ballet companies--the elegant Kirov and the gutsy Bolshoi. While the Kirov survives today, the Bolshoi seems in more desperate straits: it is without money, its great theater is in dangerous disrepair, and many of its dancers have fled to the West seeking job security. And its artistic heritage is being looted: The Bolshoi name is being used inaccurately abroad and. it is claimed, illegally.

Touring the United States at this time is a company that calls itself by various names--the Bolshoi Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet Ensemble, Principal Dancers of the Bolshoi Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet Ensemble of 50, and Stars of the Bolshoi Ballet. As we reported in our April issue (pages 28-32), these are all the same company, produced by one organization, Columbia Artists Management, Inc. (CAMI). Representatives of the official Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow tell us that their Bolshoi is the only company entitled under international trademark law to use the name Bolshoi and that they have no official relationship with the group now touring in America. We repeatedly tried to reach the CAMI agent, Andrew Grossman. He refuses to answer our calls or to speak with the press, while telling concerned presenters across America who are booking his tour group that CAMI is taking the high road and not dealing with internal Bolshoi politics--until June. By then the CAMI tour is over, incidentally. And CAMI's money will be in the bank.

Who are the main players in this dicey situation? One camp is headed by Yuri Grigorovich, the Bolshoi's former artistic director (from 1964 to 1995), who is now living in London and has been billed on this tour as the "artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet... Direct from the Bolshoi Theater, Russia." Another camp is headed by Vladimir Vasiliev, one of the greatest dancers of this century, who back home in Moscow directs the immense Bolshoi organization in its entirety--orchestra, opera, and ballet companies. It is safe to presume that these men are mortal enemies.

Vasiliev was in New York in early March, negotiating for ballets by Robbins and Balanchine for his Bolshoi back home. He explained to me, through a translator, the problems involved with an unsanctioned company misrepresenting the Bolshoi in America: "This makes it very difficult to organize a tour of the real Bolshoi and the quality of the [Grigorovich] company now touring under the Bolshoi name is very low. This makes our job harder because the audiences and the critics who see [this renegade company] will be disappointed and hold it against us when the real company tours America in 1998. It is a terrible situation, outrageous; it ruins the real Bolshoi's image."

Asked to identify Bolshoi artists from a roster of dancers on the current tour, Vasiliev said that some had danced with the Bolshoi, but none were "stars." Some were retired. Others, unknown.

Is this an important story for dance? You bet it is. Because the plundering for profit of a great dance tradition affects all of us who wish to preserve the dignity of our profession.

True to its name, the former Bolshoi Ballet was a company about bigness. Things tended to be larger than life, the proportions heroic, the content operatic, the breadth cinematic; dramatic spectacle was the cornerstone. Great, spacious, sweeping gestures and epic stories on universal themes such as love and heroism tended to glorify not a single person but the state. Broad, lifted, open chests exposed impassioned hearts. Dancers did not run, they flew: You have only to see Ulanova on film as Juliet making her way to Friar Laurence's cell to understand completely what I mean.

After the Bolshoi first came to America in 1959, it was widely regarded as one of the most exciting dance companies in the world, a reputation that the current touring company in America is milking dry. There were those who didn't buy into the Bolshoi aesthetic, of course, but Bolshoi influence on American dance was profound, and not the least of this influence was generated by Vasiliev himself. Regarded by many as an even greater dancer than either Nureyev or Baryshnikov, Vasiliev established a reputation that dominated generations of performers. Look at Vasiliev in the film of the Bolshoi's Spartacus, the version created for him in 1968 by Grigorovich, and you will see clearly the virtuosity, humanity, masculinity, and passion that were his unmistakable trademarks.

But everything changes. Due to a strangled economy, companies can no longer tour big Bolshoi-style productions with the ease they once did. Of necessity, smallness prevails. That which was big is small, that which swept now chops, technique is being replaced by gymnastics.

All of this could be regarded as a kind of death, the tolling of the end of an era. Perhaps. But not necessarily. Efforts to change this direction, however, are undermined by presenters who practice a kind of artistic necrophilia that has nothing to do with art or dance or tradition, and has everything to do with cynicism and disregard and greed and making a quick buck before the corpse goes cold.