Vladimir Vasiliev (ballet dancer)

Vladimir Vasiliev (Владимир Васильев in Russian language), a Russian ballet dancer, was principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, and was best known for his role of Spartacus and his powerful leaps and turns.

Biography

Born in Moscow in 1940, the son of a truck driver, Vasiliev graduated from the Moscow Ballet School in 1958 and joined the Bolshoi Ballet. He became a premier dancer who made enormous contributions to the development of classical male dance; he came to embody the strong new Bolshoi male.

He is the only dancer to be given the title “World’s Best Dancer” by the Paris Dance Academy. Russia’s influential ballet critic Fedor Lopukhov called him “God of the dance … A miracle in art, perfection,”

Numerous roles were created for him, and he performed throughout the world, usually partnering his wife, Bolshoi prima ballerina Ekaterina Maximova. Among the most notable were those created by Yuri Grigorovich, who gave him the principal roles in his original productions of The Stone Flower, Spartacus, The Nutcracker, Ivan The Terrible and Angara. Besides Maximova, Vasiliev’s famous partners included: Galina Ulanova, Maya Plisetskaya, Alicia Alonso, Carla Fracci, and Rita Poelvoorde.

Yet Vladimir Vasiliev is not as well known in the west as such dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, because he remained in the Soviet Union and did most of his work there rather than defecting.

New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff described the excitement of one of Vasiliev’s U.S. performances with the Bolshoi Ballet: “Yekaterina Maksimova and Vladimir Vasiliev burst upon New York City in 1959, the greatest of the passionate young dancers who, with Moscow's more established stars, made the Bolshoi Ballet's American debut a total triumph.”

In March 1995 Vladimir Vasiliev was appointed the General and Artistic Director of the Bolshoi Theatre after Yuri Grigorovich, artistic director of the ballet company since 1963, was dismissed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Vasiliev was himself dismissed as director of the Bolshoi Theater August 28, 2000 in a decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Vasiliev learned about his dismissal from hearing it on the radio.

Since his exit from the Bolshoi, Vasiliev premiered in the ballet production Lungo Viaggio Nella Notte di Natale to Tchaikovsky’s music in Opera di Roma, and continues to choreograph and stage new ballets.

Over the years Vasiliev has received many of the most prestigious Soviet, Russian and foreign prizes, orders and highest awards including the USSR State Prize, Russian State Prize, Russian State order “For Merits” and State Order “For Merits” of France, Lithuanian State Order, State Order of Brasil “Rio Branco”, UNESCO Pablo Picasso Medal and others.

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