Word: godunov
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Among problems caused for the Bolshoi Ballet by the defection of Alexander Godunov in New York City last month was finding a replacement for the company's most charismatic performer...
Obviously, political reliability was as important as artistic talent. As the Bolshoi doggedly continued its tour to Chicago and Los Angeles, Artistic Director Yuri Grigorovich settled on a little-known principal to substitute for Godunov Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake. For Grigorovich, the choice proved a disastrous mistake. Leonid Kozlov was intent on playing Godunov's role to the hilt. Following the troupe's last American curtain call in Los Angeles last week, Kozlov repeated Godunov's final grand jete to freedom...
...next day he and his wife Valentina, another Bolshoi principal, requested and were granted political asylum in the U.S. Like Godunov, and the famous earlier defectors from Leningrad's Kirov company -Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov-the Kozlovs were seeking greater artistic freedom in the West...
...keeping the Bolshoi dancers in line, just as happened in 1961, after Nureyev's defection. Grigorovich was already vulnerable because of fierce opposition within the company to his authoritarian rule; the defection could only make his position worse. It was said that he had insisted on taking Godunov to the U.S., and that he had compounded his error by thrusting Kozlov forward. In Moscow, he had previously been attacked in Pravda by one of his dancers for tampering with classics like Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake. Such great Bolshoi stars as Maya Plisetskaya and Vladimir Vasiliev so dislike...
Perhaps Alexander wasn't Godunov...