Ballerina
The soul of a dancer

By Janice Page, Globe Correspondent / May 1, 2009

As every dancer knows, ballet is a grand contradiction. To master its soft, seemingly effortless, and ethereal moves, one must train impossibly hard, embrace rigid discipline, and perfect contortions that are as inwardly punishing as they are outwardly beautiful.

Alina Somova is one of the five dancers in ''Ballerina.''

Plenty of films have exploited the drama of this struggle. But in Bertrand Normand's raw and revealing 2006 documentary, "Ballerina," the contradictions offstage are as pronounced as anything taking place in the spotlight. And that is especially fascinating because the film goes behind the scenes of one of the world's premier dance companies, the Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg, Russia.

"Ballerina" is simple and straightforward. It highlights five females in varying stages of the journey from student to star to has-been. It's digital Betacam footage, a good portion of it shot by the writer-director himself, and is sometimes home-movie crude; its voice-overs can be flatly pedantic.

But if you want a realistic, stripped-down look at the legendary Kirov (also known more recently as the Mariinsky Ballet), Normand's film delivers some memorable glimpses in its efficient 80 minutes. One particularly unsettling segment exposes the selection process at a prestigious ballet academy, wherein young girls clad only in underwear are posed and picked over like plastic dolls in a factory. Only the perfect ones move on.

And yet what emerges from all this uniform physicality and training is an assortment of women with surprisingly different personalities and dreams. We get to know them only briefly, but the appeal here is that the dancers are seen as individuals - in rehearsals, at home, sitting for candid interviews, and most entertainingly in the context of the art form's daunting national history as each attempts to put her unique stamp on the same classic works.

As dazzling as they can be in performance, the ballerinas are even more breathtaking when a camera catches them alone in the shadows, dancing only for themselves. This isn't the first ballet film to recognize that, but it's a notable addition to the company.

Fateyev Discusses Mariinsky’s Direction in Ballet

By Kevin Ng
Special to The St. Petersburg Times

Yuri Fateyev, in his mid-forties, was appointed by Valery Gergiev, head of the Mariinsky, as the acting artistic director of the theater’s ballet nearly a year ago in, June 2008. A former dancer of this greatest of classical ballet companies, he was a good character dancer and one of his memorable roles was the jester in “Swan Lake.” Fateev was also the main repetiteur for the Mariinsky’s large repertory of ballets by Balanchine, and is a valued teacher to many male dancers including the Mariinsky star Igor Zelensky. He has also taught at overseas companies including the Royal Ballet in London.



I interviewed Fateyev last month in his spacious office in the Mariinsky Theater, not far from the office of his predecessor Makhar Vaziev, who has since become the director of La Scala Ballet in Milan.

Fateyev began by praising the achievements of his predecessor, “I think that everything that has been done by Mr. Vaziev was not bad. I was actually working in Mr. Vaziev’s team. And according to his orders, I was working on the projects that he gave me to do, teaching the new ballets. We were working on the new premieres by Balanchine, Roland Petit and John Neumeier. I was assisting him. The major issue for me now is to keep the company in a good shape, and to achieve the highest standard of performance that has been the norm here for centuries. The other major issue is to bring up new young dancers, which has also been done before by Mr. Vaziev. It’s also most important to me.”

“There are three major policies that have been established for the artistic development of the company. The first is to keep up the classical repertoire as we have it, and to maintain it to the highest standards. The second is to find new choreographers, to introduce new choreographies for the company. The third is to look into the past artistic history of the Mariinsky Theater, and to consider which ballets deserve to be restored or restaged.”

But what new choreographers does he have in mind, besides the in-house choreographer Alexei Miroshnichenko who has created a number of ballets for the Mariinsky? “It’s very difficult to say for choreographers working for only half a year. It takes a very long time to bring up a choreographer. And it’s very difficult to find a good choreographer. I’ve got some names in mind, but I’d rather not say anything till I’ve seen some real results of their work.”

Last autumn, Fateyev promoted Alina Somova to a principal. It was a controversial decision, as there has been a lot of criticism of Somova distorting the classical line in her dancing. Fateyev explained, “I thought that by that time Somova had really grown and deserved the status of a principal.” Fateyev also brought into the Mariinsky earlier this year the star couple from the Mikhailovsky Theater – Denis Matviyenko and his wife Anastasia Matviyenko.

Lately there have been rumors circulating that the Mariinsky Theater has fired some dancers due to the current economic crisis. Fateyev denied this, however. “No, nobody has been fired at present. We’ll never fire a good dancer. The main task during a crisis for any official of any level, starting from President Medvedev down to the lowest level, is to keep and preserve all the good staff under his control, as well as their working environment, and to protect them from external conditions. It may be remnants of the Soviet system, when we have people in the company who are covered by certain law and we cannot fire them. It’s happening not just in our Theater but also in other companies overseas as well. This is not fair on a company, because they are taking away financial resources from the company. This crisis has made us think more about every detail of the administrative and artistic management.”

The production of “The Sleeping Beauty” that is being danced this season is the 1952 version by Konstantin Sergeyev. In Russia, this Soviet version is more popular than Sergei Vikharev’s reconstruction of the original 1890 Imperial Ballet version which has been acclaimed in the West. Many are worried Vikharev’s reconstructions of Petipa’s 19th century classics have been dropped.

“We have ‘Le Reveil de Flore’ in our repertory in May. This year we are taking Sergeyev’s production of “The Sleeping Beauty” for our overseas tours to Taipei, London, Baden Baden, and Washington next year. So in order to keep it to the highest standard, we have to keep it in our repertory.”

But shouldn’t performances of the reconstructed original version of “The Sleeping Beauty” be kept up in the Mariinsky Theater, which is after all where Petipa created his masterpiece in 1890? As a matter of fact, Vikharev has just reconstructed “Coppelia” for the Bolshoi Theater which has recently taken an interest in the reconstructions of the classics.

Fateyev, in what may come as a relief, mentioned the good news that Vikharev’s reconstructed original version of “The Sleeping Beauty” will continue to be performed. “As you know, we did present Vikharev’s version of “The Sleeping Beauty” at the beginning of the season. We’ve already scheduled this ballet into our repertoire for next season as well. However, I have to say that I’ve not seen the original version, because it was such a long time ago. But, frankly speaking, there is nobody here now who can confirm whether the reconstructed version is really the original version.”

In fact, Stepanov’s choreographic notations of the ballet can be seen in a manuscript kept at Harvard University. But Fateyev commented, “I think one can read the notations in different ways and it’s impossible to reconstruct the original ballet with the notations.”

Moving on to the subject of dancers, does he agree that there is a lack of stars in the Mariinsky nowadays compared to the recent past? Diana Vishneva, for instance, gives more performances overseas nowadays than in St. Petersburg. “Vishneva has actually danced eight performances this season. During this season Uliana Lopatkina is giving two or three performances here every month. Igor Zelensky has done four performances with us here and on tour. Svetlana Zakharova has danced three performances here.” The Bolshoi star Zakharova has indeed guested more frequently with the company since Fateyev took office.

“Besides these world-famous stars, we also have other great stars: Andrian Fadeyev, Leonid Sarafanov, Viktoria Tereshkina, Alina Somova, Vladimir Shklyarov, and Ekaterina Osmolkina.” All these stars should certainly be a big treat for the audiences attending the ballet programs in the upcoming Stars of the White Nights Festival.

The Stars of the White Nights Festival will open on Thursday 21 May with Ratmansky’s ballet “The Little Humpbacked Horse”, premiered in the Mariinsky Festival in March, and will continue till 19 July.

Vaganova, class 2008

featuring an exceptional student Anastasia Nikitina.

Mariinsky Launches New Program to Reach Youths

By Galina Stolyarova
Staff Writer

The world-renowned Mariinsky Theater has launched a grand-scale outreach program with the aim of attracting local students and young people to its two performance venues. Valery Gergiev, the company’s indefatigable artistic director, has devised a program that sees local universities distributing tickets to the Mariinsky at special low prices. Gergiev came up with the idea after working with the London Symphony Orchestra, where he serves as principal conductor.

“London has about ten very strong orchestras who find themselves in fierce competition all the time and they all invest titanic efforts into keeping their audiences and winning more listeners,” Gergiev said. “It is a battle that never stops. It is like a jungle.”

Additionally, the theater has prepared a series of 16 reduced-price season tickets targeting young people, children and families, which cost between 700 and 6700 rubles and include 6-7 concerts and performances. Striving to reach out to younger audiences, Gergiev has also developed season tickets for children (a bargain at 600-900 rubles) and families. Season tickets for students cost between 800 and 1,800 rubles. More than 2,200 Mariinsky musicians, singers and dancers will be involved in the project, which starts in the new season.

The Mariinsky will thus become the first ballet and opera theater in Russia to run this kind of diversified socially-oriented program.

“Nobody gave me any orders or hints to start something like this,” Gergiev said.”Thinking about the future, we simply must devote our efforts to attracting younger audiences — the people who may have never even been to see a ballet or an opera before. It is our main ambition to turn these people into dedicated theater-goers who grow to love and appreciate opera, ballet and classical music. We are literally ready to fight for every new spectator.”

“We do not expect immediate results; realistically speaking, we may not see any positive changes until three years from now,” the maestro continued. “I have met with a number of rectors of various St. Petersburg universities, and received full understanding and support for our plan.”

Most of the season ticket performances will take place at the Mariinsky’s brand-new, state-of-the-art concert hall, capable of accommodating up to 1,200 spectators. Gergiev stresses that despite the company’s notoriously hectic international touring schedule, and an ever-increasing number of performances in Russia, St. Petersburg will always remain its absolute priority.

“There is a lot of work to be done in promoting the classics; a good indicator of the prevailing taste was, most recently, the New Year concerts and the May 9 concerts,” Gergiev said. “Ninety-five percent of the material was very light entertainment. I am convinced that classical music deserves a greater share of representation in nationwide festivities — like it does in most European countries. The Mariinsky, for one, has enough talent to be proud of. Take, for instance, Anna Netrebko [soprano] or Vladimir Galuzin [tenor].”

“The next season will serve as a general rehearsal before the launch of the Mariinsky II, when we start operating from three different venues,” Gergiev said. “We currently lose up to $1 million every time we close our historic stage for a week to mount the sets for some of our most technically complicated shows, like “War and Peace” and “Der Ring Des Nibelungen.” Our hands are tied by the limitations of the old stage, and we very much hope to leave this period behind within the next two years.”

By 2011, with three different stages in its possession, the Mariinsky will be able to develop individual policies for each venue. Mariinsky II looks set to host the boldest experiments, while the original stage will host the company’s traditional core repertoire. The concert hall will be for the performance of chamber and symphonic concerts, solo recitals and opera productions designed specifically for the venue, like Alain Maratat’s already very successful production of “The Magic Flute.” Sung in Russian, and performed more than 60 times since it premiered in December 2007, the show has become an unrivaled favorite among families with children.

The growing economic crisis may also have played a role in the company’s initiative. “Many people are now out of work, and there is much insecurity in the air,” Gergiev said. “It is hard to predict how many people will be willing to spend their money on theater tickets.”

Russia's Mariinsky Theatre set for London

Surefire classics

Ballet evenings (August 3-15) will feature Mariinsky treasures: two great 19th-century classics, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, a triumphant Romeo and Juliet from Soviet times, and three inspirational works by George Balanchine.

In this definitive version of Swan Lake, Uliana Lopatkina will dance the double role of Odette/Odile. Lopatkina makes one think of the great dancers from tsarist times, or the revelations at the Moscow Arts Theatre. A girl’s inescapable pain is the ballerina’s theme, but it is expressed as an axiom, without sentiment or frippery.

This theme is echoed by the corps de ballet whose technical perfection guarantees the trademark style: soft steps, expressive arms, an impeccable sense of the ensemble. Stylistic purity and dancers breathing in perfect unison distinguished the original Sleeping Beauty created in St Petersburg by Marius Petipa.

This version, by the great Mariinsky dancer-turned-choreographer Konstantin Sergeyev, is no less brilliant. The theatrical universe of Sleeping Beauty, “an encyclopedia of classi-cal dance”, is as complex as it is harmonious. The baroque polychromatic quality of a simple-hearted fairy tale is coupled with the gallant aesthetic of ballet academicism.

The role of Princess Aurora is danced by Ekaterina Osmolkina, known for her soaring leaps and ability to effortlessly subdue the fastest tempos.

For Londoners, Romeo and Juliet is a love that has been handed down through generations. Their genetic memory is still infused with images of the Juliet created by the divine Galina Ulanova. And Leonid Lavrovsky’s popular and powerful staging will never displace their affection for the delicate, Botticelli-style production of Englishman Antony Tudor.

This comes not only from loyalty, but from the English theatre’s attachment to life’s little details, intelligent stagings and the minutiae of the actor’s art.

On this tour, different Juliets will blend ballet traditions with a contemporary view. The lithe, long-legged Alina Somova was only a couple of years ago a dancing prodigy. Today, she has astounding flexibility, a mature understanding of the essence of movement and a seasoned ballerina’s aplomb.

The exquisitely beautiful Evgenia Obraztsova magically submits to the laws of style while subjugating those same laws to the virtues of her dancing: light phrasing, powerful spins, and ethereal lift.

Tribute to Balanchine

Rounding out this grand St Petersburg tour are three one-act ballets by George Balanchine, whose name is historically connected to the city of Peter the Great. After graduating from the Petrograd Conservatory in the early 1920s, the young Balanchine left the Soviet Union for Paris.

There, Diaghilev invited him to join the Ballets Russes where Balanchine was promptly promoted to ballet-master and given the freedom to choreograph. By the time Balanchine reached America, the acclaim had reached a dizzying crescendo and he was known simply as “Mr B”.

His Rubies, set to the music of Stravinsky, is a jazzy take on the American mentality: pounding energy, Broadway abandon and dazzling self-confidence. And not an ounce of the melancholy.

Melancholy belongs to the second ballet, the ever-enigmatic Serenade (music by Tchaikovsky) in which the artist yearns for what he loved best in his past life.

Like a rare piece of hand-made lace, the corps de ballet now weaves together in a round dance, now scatters like the reflections from a string of pearls, now freezes in elegantly lucid poses crowned by wreaths of arms. The outward restraint, the smouldering passion of the water nymphs, speed, synchronicity and a corps de ballet that breathes as one – these were all key concepts in the choreographic world of Balanchine. Symphony in C has four distinct movements and a score by Bizet.

The Mariinsky are brilliant masters of the limpid jumps (giving dancers the look of windblown leaves), arabesques penchées and recumbent poses. Balanchine’s triptych affords the troupe a rare chance to dis-play both its soloists and the corps de ballet.

The Mariinsky dances Balanchine as it did Petipa, revealing the depths of emotion and meaning.

Superstars of dance: The Mariinsky Ballet

The Mariinsky, formerly known as the Kirov, returns to Britain next week. The company that set the standard for classical ballet promises to live up to its glamorous history with a starry new line-up

By Zoë Anderson



Names change, but glamour lingers. The Mariinsky Ballet, formerly the Kirov, has a powerful mystique. This St Petersburg company, and its school, produced so many of 20th-century ballet's biggest stars: Pavlova, Nijinsky, Nureyev, Makarova, Baryshnikov. As the company moves into the 21st century, its visits to the West are still eagerly awaited.

The Mariinsky's forthcoming London season looks recession-proof. This is a safe programme, dominated by blockbusters: Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty. The only mixed bill celebrates Balanchine, with three popular works that have been in Mariinsky's repertory for a while. Advance excitement is less for what they're dancing than for the company itself.

There's particular interest in two young dancers, Alina Somova and Vladimir Shklyarov, who dance Juliet and Romeo on opening night. Both are being promoted as rising stars. Shklyarov is a long-limbed dancer with a clear, high jump and a smooth sense of style. Somova has proved more controversial: tall, thin and blond, she's fond of extreme poses, with sky-high leg extensions. The season also includes established stars such as Uliana Lopatkina, the Mariinsky's reigning diva, whose soul-of-Russia demeanour has won her a huge fan base. The summer season isn't selling new works or risks; even The Sleeping Beauty is the Kirov's standard production, rather than the lavish, curious reconstruction of the 1890 original. This is a chance to see where the company is now. How is it treating all that inherited mystique? Has it kept its vaunted style?

For many, the Mariinsky symbolises ballet's grand past. This was the company where The Sleeping Beauty was created, the home of Swan Lake. In the 20th century, dancers from St Petersburg helped to repopularise ballet across the world. Diaghilev's Ballets Russes brought the art form back into fashion, bringing music by Stravinsky, designs by Bakst and Benois – and choreographers and dancers from the Mariinsky. Pavlova's world tours created a lasting, global image of the ballerina: a dying swan, trained in St Petersburg . Most Western companies cherish links with the imperial Russian past, through repertory, teaching and inspiration.

After the Russian Revolution, ballet became a flagship of the Soviet state. Money and prestige were poured into the two main ballet companies, the Mariinsky – renamed the Kirov – and the Bolshoi. New choreography was limited by political repression, but the schooling continued. Where the Bolshoi became known for its gusto, the Kirov was celebrated for its elegance, its classical purity. It produced huge personalities, but was also celebrated for the rigour of its corps de ballet.

Western tours cemented the Kirov's glamour and reputation abroad – but also lost it major stars. Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov all fled for the greater artistic freedom. You can see why the world was bowled over in a 1983 film of Giselle. The corps de ballet are magnificent. Backs are strong and pliant, heads carried high on long necks. As the wilis, vengeful ghostly women, they have a steely assurance and power. Hopping in arabesque, they look unstoppable: the pose is held firm by the strength of those Russian backs.

Lavish Soviet support came to an end with the USSR , leaving the Kirov facing an uncertain future. Just as Leningrad became St Petersburg again, the company returned to its old imperial name – though Western audiences still cling to the old Kirov brand. And Western money was desperately needed. Dancers were tempted away from the company, guesting abroad or leaving altogether.

By the 1990s, the management, too, was looking abroad. Director Oleg Vinogradov was bowled over by the Parisian star Sylvie Guillem – tall, exceptionally flexible – and decided that he wanted dancers like her. Suddenly, the company's ranks were filled with taller women, such as Uliana Lopatkina or Yulia Makhalina. Legs were lifted higher and higher.

Any style can be pushed to extremes, a signature becoming a trick. Lopatkina can be dangerously diva-ish. She holds her chin perilously high, unfolding long limbs with exaggerated slowness. (In Swan Lake, she's brought Tchaikovsky almost to a standstill.) Her arched Russian back can look affected instead of strong. She's a star, no question: the strong personality is unmistakable, and has won her an international audience. She's also a reminder that Mariinsky style can become mannered instead of pure.

After decades of artistic isolation, the company also started to take on Western choreography, tackling works by Balanchine and Forsythe. In this new repertory, they can be thrilling. Balanchine trained at the Mariinsky before choosing Western exile. Company and choreographer have shared roots, and it's fascinating to see the dancers discovering them. It can bring out their real grandeur. As they whirled through the patterns of Balanchine's Ballet Imperial, you could see the Mariinsky's technical strength, how this corps won its mystique. Nobody struggled with those fast, demanding steps: all their energy went into the scale and energy of the dancing.

The Mariinsky currently comes under the control of conductor Valery Gergiev, artistic director of the entire theatre and its opera and ballet companies. The ballet has its own deputy ballet director, Yury Fateyev, who replaced Makhar Vaziev after clashes with Gergiev. There have been other signs of the star conductor's high-handedness with his ballet company, such as the time Gergiev enforced a last-minute switch of choreographers on a new production of The Golden Age. The Mariinsky Ballet's direction, its way into the 21st century, isn't yet clear.

With its blockbusting repertory, this London season won't show us a new path for one of the world's most famous ballet companies. But it will present another aspect of its future: its up-and-coming dancers. The Mariinsky still draws on its own school, the Vaganova Academy, now under the direction of former ballerina Altynai Asylmuratova. Where most Western companies have become more diverse, taking dancers from all over the world, Mariinsky dancers are more likely to share a background, a training from one of the world's most prestigious academies. There's interest in the young dancers, buzz about rising stars such as Somova and Shklyarov. A new generation is aiming to carry on the Mariinsky's mystique.

Mariinsky Ballet: my illicit love affair with the Russians

By Rupert Christiansen
Published: 12:22PM BST 03 Aug 2009


Alina Somova

As I often explain to sceptical male friends, my lifelong passion for the Royal Ballet is akin to their devotion to Arsenal or Chelsea. The Royal is my team, always has been, always will be, whether I'm roaring with joy at its triumphs or blaming the manager when it all goes belly-up.

However, when they're out of town, as they are at the moment, I sneak off to resume a thrilling affair on the side with St Petersburg's Mariinsky Ballet (formerly known as the Kirov). They're just about to invade Covent Garden for a two-week season, and I'm unhealthily excited at the prospect.

first saw the Mariinsky in 1970 at the Festival Hall. By luck, I caught an unforgettable Giselle, with the peerless Natalia Makarova in the title role and the astonishing Mikhail Baryshnikov in the Act I peasant pas de deux. It was a life-changing initiation.

Since then, over 40 years, I've watched the Mariinsky on all its British seasons, and in its exquisite cream-and-gold home theatre, too. There's a constant influx of new talent into the company, and I love spotting it: 10 years ago, we were knocked for six by the rapturous intensity of Uliana Lopatkina; then came the dazzling Diana Vishneva and the elegant Leonid Sarafanov; this year, who knows?

It's not so much a matter of what they dance, as how they dance it – the Mariinsky embodies the classical style at its purest (though in recent years dancers such as Vishneva and the latest sensation, Alina Somova, have been busily stretching the rules). To understand this, you have to watch the company in the inner sanctum of its morning class – a rare privilege that I have occasionally been granted.

There's something both serenely Zen and disturbingly erotic about this daily ritual in the mirrored studio, directed by a ballet master or mistress calling out instructions in the heavily accented French that is this art form's lingua franca. The simultaneous narcissism and self-abnegation of the dancers' attitude to their bodies, the slow loosening and lithening of their limbs, the gradual discarding of leg-warmers and baggy T-shirts, the quickening passage through pliés and arabesques to jetés and fouettés – all this is part of a process that shapes human beings into instruments of transcendent beauty.

Above all, class is a revelation of the inexorable technical foundations out of which the magic of ballet grows – and a sharp reminder of the old adage that art is 90 per cent perspiration, 10 per cent inspiration.

Alina Somova: dancer or circus pony?

Some abhor her style, but Mariinsky Ballet principal Alina Somova, in London for a series of ballets, will prove her detractors wrong.

By Ismene Brown
Published: 9:25AM BST 03 Aug 2009





It is a curious feeling to go to meet a hated figure and find a delicate, blonde girl with a sweet face. On Monday, 23-year-old ballerina Alina Somova opens the batting for the legendary Mariinsky Ballet’s Covent Garden tour in Romeo and Juliet, needing to defy her critics who line up from West to East accusing her of vulgarising the majestic, poised St Petersburg style that defines classical ballet worldwide.

Even for a ballerina, in an art where physical evolution seems to move twice as fast as anywhere else, Somova is peculiarly flexible. She throws her leg high over the vertical, even in a long skirt. She leaps more like a hurdler than a drift of silk, her very long legs flying weirdly above horizontal. Eye-catching it is; classical, beautiful, musically eloquent it is not.

Hence, during Somova’s rapid rise in the past three years, the loud protests that her promotion as the new face of Russia’s grandest tradition debases it.

It is not her fault. The Mariinsky only spotlights ballerinas when the director chooses to, and the current director, Yuri Fateev (not a man known for flash), insists that young Somova is special. Much the same used to be said about Sylvie Guillem. Fateev tells me he has full confidence: “You’ll see Alina’s potential in London.” Maybe. Last year I thought Somova 40 per cent intriguing and 60 per cent circus pony. This year as the Princess in Alexei Ratmansky’s new The Little Humpbacked Horse for the Mariinsky, she was a delight, as dewy as a milkmaid. After the show, ballet’s grande dame Maya Plisetskaya plucked her diamond earrings off her ears, handed them to the awestruck girl and told her to go grab herself a brilliant career.

Fateev said: “Maya told me that in her times they danced worse than they dance now. That dancers now have such fantastic bodies which they never had before, long limbs, flexibility, this amazing material to work with. Art is volatile, it’s a live thing. We have to use this material to the utmost.” Somova, then, has enough gold-plated endorsement not to let detractors worry her, and she is changing.

Last year when I saw her she was dancing with the Mariinsky at the Lowry on a memorable night for St Petersburg, when its top football team Zenit was beating Glasgow Rangers up the road at the Manchester City stadium. During Balanchine’s Diamonds, a roar from an offstage television tuned to the match ripped through the Lowry and all the dancers on stage broke into grins. Somova, bright blonde with glittering fingernails, claimed the ballerina role like a born WAG.

“Yes! We were dancing but really we were all at the football match! We celebrated at the hotel afterwards with the players.” Endearingly, Somova is a fervent Zenit fan. She regularly shrieks from the football stands, and has football’s anthemists Andrea Bocelli and Luciano Pavarotti on her iPod.

She’s the first in her family to dance, and says her reed-like build comes from her father – he’s in construction – and they both pile into blinis without ill effect. In Russia “usually it’s children from simple families who achieve most”. Her mother, she says, is a tough character, and she has inherited her determination. “People do say I am a hard worker. Without that you could never be a ballerina.”

A recent documentary about the Mariinsky, Bertrand Normand’s Ballerina, showed a nervous young Somova in the company reigned over by the fastidiously elegant Uliyana Lopatkina and Diana Vishneva; three years later she is ranked principal alongside them.

How does she answer the charge that she overeggs the physical side and distorts a glorious tradition? “Hmm,” she pauses, “I think I would like to be thought of as able to dance, to really dance, not just do a combination of gymnastic movements. But we will never dance like they used to in the past.

“Yes, in a ballet like Sleeping Beauty I agree, I need to control it. My natural flexibility doesn’t suit the artistic demands of that style but at the same time I can use it, développé my leg more slowly and fully, and it could be high but still carefully développéd – not snapped up like in Don Quixote, for example.” Clearly, then, with a recent change of coach to Tatiana Terekhova, Somova is beginning to use her head. As she says, in life 23 may be young, “but in ballet it’s no longer an aspiring young girl”. She tells me that she broke up with her boyfriend over her work ethic.

“Ballet can’t interest everyone – it is a life for a certain group of people, it’s a high art. But people will always want to watch classical ballet. For me classics have an eternal appeal. Most of all I love Balanchine – I feel as if his ballets were made for me.” Somova’s shooting star contrasts with the steadier rise of 24-year-old Vladimir Shklyarov, who shares the opening-night honours with her.

At the Mariinsky he stands out in the 10am class not just for his high carefree leaps and instinctively graceful carriage, but for his ferocious concentration.

Afterwards, he says he has forced himself to take the daily repetitions seriously: “It’s the beginning of my working day; the whole day will depend upon the way I prepare my body in the class.” The Mariinsky theatre is a combination of lethal jungle, survival course and political minefield, where to come out on top takes more than just shining artistic talent. Under the previous director Makhar Vaziev, Shklyarov struggled to survive his first years: “It was up one night, down in the corps the next, you never knew why.” But in the past two years, he has become the Mariinsky’s new man to watch.

He is less slash-and-burn than Somova about past dancers: he avidly searches out treasured snippets of past dancers on YouTube. He says that even though repeated watching underlines even great icons’ flaws, “you also can analyse little professional things that people do which suddenly fire the show – I think of Igor Zelensky, Faroukh Ruzimatov, Vladimir Malakhov, the Cojocaru/Kobborg partnership. Plus, of course, our grand heroes, Nureyev and Baryshnikov. They may belong to the history of ballet… but we can still learn a lot from them, their attitude to work, their intense effort to find out new things.”

I ask Shklyarov when he first took ballet seriously – not until he joined the company and actually performed, he replies. What if he hadn’t got in? “I’d have killed myself,” he says. “Only kidding. Of course, I have a lot of other interests, but I think I would have just vanished in any other life.”

I try to imagine Shklyarov and Somova vanishing in another life, and somehow it seems unlikely.