Anna Antonicheva was born in Baku in 1973. In 1991 she finished Moscow Academic Choreography School and joined the Bolshoi Theatre corps de ballet. Her ballet coaches were internationally famous Russian ballerinas Natalia Bessmertnova and Ekaterina Maximova. Due to her dancing talents she started dancing main ballet roles at the start of her 5th season of work at the Bolshoi Theatre.
International recognition came to Anna when she won Gold medal at the 1998 USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi. The same year Antonicheva successfully toured the US. Back home she received a prestigious title Honored Artist of Russia. At present time At the present time, she rehearses with Svetlana Adyrkhayeva and dances the leading and solo parts in the classical repertory ballets.
One of the greatest 20th Century ballerinas Galina Ulanova was born January 7, 1910 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Her mother, a ballerina of the Imperial Russian Ballet trained her in ballet dancing which Galina continued under tutelage of the legendary ballet teacher Agrippina Vaganova.
Ulanova joined the Mariinsky Theatre in 1928 and was immediately noticed by choreographers and audience that were enchanted by her acting style, grace and exceptional plasticity. In 1944 she became a principal dancer in the Bolshoi Theatre and worked there for the next 16 years reaching the highest status of the prima ballerina assoluta.
Bolsheviks lavishly showered her with prestigious titles and prizes. She was the only ballet dancer awarded as a Hero of Socialist Labor and the highest artistic national title of People’s Artist of the USSR. However, living behind the Iron Curtain, Ulanova was not allowed to travel abroad for many years. Only in the end of her dancing career they let her perform abroad when she was 46 years old.
But even at that age, she tremendously impressed Western ballet audience that named her the best individual dancer since Anna Pavlova. Four years later Galina Ulanova retired from the stage but she trained generations of new brilliant Russian dancers. She died in 1998 and her apartment was turned into a national museum. There are several monuments to Galina Ulanova erected in Saint Petersburg and Stockholm.
41 year old Galina Ulanova performs as Juliet at the ballet Romeo and Juliet.
Famous Georgian ballerina Nina Ananiashvili was born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1963. The beginning of her career was quite unusual, as at first little Nian was dreaming to become a figure skating star. And she even became a champion in the junior division in her native Republic of Georgia. However, at the age of 13 she entered the Moscow Choreographic Institute, successfully graduate from it and got invited into corps de ballet of entered the Bolshoi Ballet in 1981.
She quickly rose through ranks and became a prima ballerina in Bolshoi. With her dancing partner Andris Liepa she was the first Soviet dancer to appeared as a guest performer at the New York City Ballet in 1988 (they were first Soviet dancers invited to show their mastership there). Soon Nina became a principal dancer for the American Ballet Theatre, and in 1999 she joined the Houston Ballet with that same rank.
After her native Georgia became independent Nina Ananiashvili headed the National Ballet Ensemble of Georgia as an artistic director. Since 2006, she has been appointed as an United Nations National Goodwill Ambassador.
This leading Russian ballerina was born in 1938 in a small Northern Ossetian city of Khumalg. Svetlana Adyrkhayeva successfully fisnished Leningrad Choreographic School (which later got renamed as the Russian Ballet Academy) in 1955. Her way to Bolshoi Ballet was not easy, She danced for several years on stages of Chelyabinsk and Odessa before she was invited to Bolshoi in 1960.
This is when Svetlana got her chance to shine. She was soloist and leading ballerina until 1988. Adyrkhayeva got very complex dramatic roles and made them her own. This video presents her dancing in one of those roles as Aegina in Spartacus ballet.
Adyrkhayeva not only danced, she also became a russian balletmaster in 1980. She taught classical dance at Choreographic Academy until she returned back to Bolshoi Theatre where she currently works as a Balletmaster-Repetiteur.
Ballet is a highly technical form of dance with its origins in the Italian Renaissance court, where it emerged in the late 15th century as a dance interpretation of fencing. Later ballet was developed into a very complicated dance works with mime, acting and other components that are set to music. Ballet has graceful, flowing and very precise movements with almost ethereal qualities.
