From jets to jetes: Nina Ananiashvili - Bolshoi Ballet principle ballerina

Dance Magazine, July, 1994 by Margaret Willis

The only time Nina Ananiashvili seems to sit still these days is when she's on an airplane flying between engagements: from Tokyo and a tour with her own group of dancers; to London to learn the role of Manon with Monica Parker; to Moscow for clean-up lessons with her beloved teachers and to dance Giselle at the Bolshoi; to Rome Opera Ballet for Swan Lake with Alexsei Fadeyechev; to Copenhagen for The Sleeping Beauty with the Royal Danish Ballet; and to New York City for Swan Lake, Manon, and La Sylphide with American Ballet Theatre, where she has been a principal for two years. And that's only the first six months of the year. Her signed contracts take her up to 1998.

Many Bolshoi dancers, with varying success, have taken steps to carve out careers apart from their mother company without severing their ties to it. After a scandalous event that erupted in the famed theater recently, however, it is now feared that the management will crack down on unofficial foreign touring. (There was a near riot in the house after Gedeminas Taranda, one of the company's leading - and most popular - male stars, was fired by director Yuri Grigorovich because he had allegedly been "absent from work ... without valid reason." Taranda, who has made several independent tours abroad, announced the news himself to a shocked audience, from the hallowed Bolshoi stage before an evening performance.)

Ananiashvili's ties with the Bolshoi Ballet are well and truly secured on her own terms. She recognized early that quality counts more than nationality in today's world and was well prepared for the changes that have occurred in recent years. While she performs her obligatory (but treasured) number of ballets at the Bolshoi each year, she also leads a life more closely attuned to that of an international opera star. Like Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras in their field, Ananiashvili travels from company to company, not as a nationalistic figure - a Georgian-born Russian ballerina taking along her "Russian-ness" (and all the eccentricities that that entails) - but as a professional, one of the elite of her art.

The appearance of a Russian dancer in the West no longer has the same magnetic attraction for the public that it did before glasnost opened Soviet floodgates, sending artists flowing around the world. Western ballet companies, now saturated with offers from these performers, have realized that the word Russian doesn't automatically fill the house while their more discerning public knows it no longer automatically guarantees top-quality dancing. Today it is the professional of the highest caliber who is sought to perform with the top ballet companies of the world - one who adapts and blends with the company, yet still brings sparkle and a prodigious talent.

Ananiashvili well and truly fills that bill, according to Frank Andersen, former director of the Royal Danish Ballet: "I first met Nina at a gala four years ago and thought her charming and very talented. Imagine my surprise when, a short while later, I got a phone call from her, asking if she could come to Denmark for three months to study the Bournonville style. This in itself tells me more than anything about her. She recognizes, as a perceptive artist, that you must constantly continue to work, to train, to expand your knowledge. If you stand still, you are lost.

"She came, fitted in with everybody so well, and took morning class with the company, afternoon class with the apprentices, and any extras that were going! She worked seriously and hard - though arms were a challenge, for she was accustomed to the high Russian arms. After two months she danced not only a Don Quixote with us but also, more importantly, two La Sylphides, for which she received very nice reviews - not just polite ones but truly complimentary."

It's this desire to broaden her talent that has made Ananiashvili a welcome guest in most of the world's top classical companies. With them she has danced not only the great Russian classics but also works by MacMillan, Ashton, and Balanchine. She is sought because she epitomizes the unadulterated and exacting Russian classical heritage, thanks to the watchful eyes of her two Moscow mentors, Marina Semyonova and Raissa Struchkova. These icons of the Bolshoi Ballet have carefully disciplined and polished Ananiashvili's technique over the years - the former instilling in her the refinement and purity of the Maryinsky style, the latter the dramatic and exciting qualities of the Soviet era. These direct links with the past - semyonova was taught by Vaganova, Struchkova by Gerdt - mean that Ananiashvili is a direct heir to the Russian ballet legacy.

It's an enviable heritage, passed down only to those who persevere at perfecting their art. Ananiashvili has proved herself worthy of it. She brings a quality of completeness to her performances, a feeling of intelligent, well thought out role-making, the excitement of technical wizardry, and, above all, the pristine purity of true classicism.