Russian choreographer Yuri Grigorovich, the historic name of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, died on Monday at age 98, the theater of the Russian capital announced.
“Yuri Grigorovich, one of the leading figures in the world of ballet in the second half of the twentieth century, died,” the Bolshoi Theater announced in a statement on the Telegram social network.
Born in 1927, in Leniningrado, today St. Petersburg, Yuri Nikolaevich Grigorovich directed the Bolshoi Theater for three decades, since 1964, in the middle of the Soviet era until 1995, after the dissolution of the USSR.
The joint management and team of the Bolshoi Theater recalls that the choreographer is responsible for the creation of “several generations of notable artists”, ensuring that his memory “will always be valued” and “his invaluable preserved legacy”.
Yuri Grigorovich graduated from the former Lenininrencado Dance School, where he studied with Alexander Pushkin. At 19, in 1946, he joined the Kirov Theater (current Mariinsky Theater), in his hometown, where he was the main dancer for 18 years.
The choreography came shortly after, in his career. He stood out in 1957, with the creation of the “Stone Flower” ballet (“The Stone Flower”), with Prokofiev music, inspired by popular tales of the Urals. This first great success was confirmed next with the creation of “Legend of Love” (“The Legend of Love”), about Arif Melikov music.
In 1964, at the age of 37, Grigorovich was appointed director of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, where he remained 31 years. During this period, he renewed the institution’s paintings, his dance body, formed and revealed dancers such as Natalia Bessmertnova, with whom he married, Ekaterina Maximova and Vladimir Vassiliev. It was also a dynamizer of the company’s international digressions.
Throughout his career, he revisited Russian ballet classics such as “The Nutcracker” and “The Lake of Swan”, from Tchaikovsky, made “exquisite reformulations” from Marius Petipa choreography to “La Bayadere” and also for “Giselle”, about Adolph Adam, and created pieces that gave rise to new classics, such as new classics, such as “Spartacus”, about Khachaturian, “Ivan, the Terrible”, from Prokofiev, and “The Golden Age” about Shostakovitch music.
As a choreographer, international criticism considered it responsible for the “exultant style” with which Bolshoi asserted itself in the 1960s: “production is not in large numbers, for western standards, but each work reinforced the exuberant force of Bolshoi,” he read in The Independent newspaper in December 1992, when the Moscow Theater company performed at Royal Albert Hall, In London, for a five -week season.
After leaving Bolshoi in 1995, Grigorovich created his own company in Krasnodar in southern Russia. In 2008, he returned to the Moscow Theater, assuming the position of choreographer of the Ballet Company.
In 2001, Grigorovich presented at the Porto Coliseum, within the European Capital of Culture, his view of “The Lake of Swan”.
Today, the Mariinsky Theater of St. Petersburg reacted to the death of Grigorovich, in a compliment to his artistic legacy, stating that “with the death of the legendary choreographer, an entire era disappears.”
Yuri Grigorovich “attributed an important place to male dance performances” with the creation of papers for dancers, in a classic expression dominated by female roles, remembered Boris Akimov, 78, former main dancer of the Bolshoi Theater, quoted by France Presse (AFP).
Akimov, who is proud to have been a student of Grigorovich, also recalled criticism of authoritarianism made to the corographer, justifying them: “To lead a group you need to be hard.”
Yuri Grigorovich was the nephew of Georges Rosay, one of the main dancers of the Mariinsky Theater of St. Petersburg, in the former Russian imperial capital, and the Russian Ballets of Serge Diaghilev.
