Yury Grigorovich, choreographer and one of the greatest figures of Soviet ballet, has died

Yury Grigorovich, choreographer and one of the greatest figures of Soviet ballet, has died. He missed his hundredth birthday by little more than a year. Chief choreographer of the Bolshoi Theatre from 1964 to 1995, Grigorovich was the creator of productions and editions of the classical ballets that formed the foundation of the Bolshoi's repertoire, and of "Spartacus", "Ivan the Terrible" and "The Legend of Love".

In 1994-95 Grigorovich endured a most severe press campaign against him, and in the end the Bolshoi was left without him. A few years later he was invited back to the Bolshoi to stage "Swan Lake", and for a time he returned to the theatre as a choreographer. Later Grigorovich moved to Krasnodar, where he built a ballet company from scratch, staged eight ballets and eventually travelled the whole world with his "Grigorovich Ballet". A contract with the Paris Grand Opera followed, and new heights.

Vitaly Wulf, in "The Silver Ball", recalls Grigorovich, a close acquaintance of his, in the period of his departure from the Bolshoi and in the years after:

"Russia buried Svetlanov, lost Rozhdestvensky, Rostropovich, Grigorovich; in their place have come, with rare exceptions, artists of the third rank. Grig is still reproached for repeating everything he did before, for staging nothing new, and when he wanted to stage three new ballets to the music of Shostakovich at the Bolshoi Theatre, the management wavered, and he at once accepted the offer to go to Paris, to the Grand Opera, where in the autumn of 2003 he will begin staging his brilliant ballet "Ivan the Terrible". Why is it possible to invite Roland Petit with his old productions, yet not to revive "The Golden Age" or "Ivan the Terrible" on the stage of the Bolshoi? The directorate of the Bolshoi Theatre will not be able to answer this question.

I watch the life of Grigorovich and his wife, the outstanding ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova, who was prima at the Bolshoi Theatre for almost thirty years, and I admire their ability to live their own life, away from the bustle, away from the "scene", apart, by their own rules and their own laws. Grigorovich has never said a single unkind word about Maya Plisetskaya, who wrote in her book a chapter full of insults directed at him, nor about Vasiliev, nor about Maximova, nor about those who allowed themselves to overstep the bounds of decency. He knows very well that none of them, neither Vasiliev, nor Lavrovsky, nor Godunov, nor Vladimirov, would ever have come into their own had it not been for him. Both Maris Liepa danced his great role of Crassus in the ballet "Spartacus", devised by Grigorovich, and Natalia Bessmertnova danced Anastasia in "Ivan the Terrible", and Shirin in "The Legend of Love", her absolute masterpieces, and Yury Vladimirov showed himself in "Ivan the Terrible" to be a great artist. And all this was devised by Grigorovich by the power of his great gift. His ballets are as contemporary as ever; one only has to distinguish the contemporary from the topical, the spirit of innovation from those novelties that ten years later seem old-fashioned.

Yury Nikolayevich can be gloomy, unsociable, and it is said that he was strongly susceptible to the influence of those who were close to him, but embittered I have never seen him; explosive I have seen, spiteful, no."