Natalia Bessmertnova

Judith Cruickshank. Thursday February 21, 2008

For more than 30 years Natalia Bessmertnova, who has died in Moscow after a long illness aged 66, was one of the leading dancers of Bolshoi Ballet. She will be remembered especially for the roles created for her by her husband, the choreographer Yuri Grigorovich.

Some idea of Bessmertnova's qualities can be gained from the attention she attracted during the Bolshoi's visit to London in 1963. She was in only her second year with the company and appeared on the opening night as one of a trio of swans in Swan Lake, but immediately stood out for her striking looks and the sheer beauty of her dancing. Later in that season she danced a solo as the Autumn Fairy in Rostislav Zakharov's version of Cinderella and a pas de deux in a gala programme, all to increasing acclaim.

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Bessmertnova was born in Moscow, the daughter of a doctor. She received early dance training at the Moscow Young Pioneers Palace and entered the Bolshoi school in 1952, graduating nine years later, the first pupil to achieve A-plus, the highest possible mark. She joined the Bolshoi straight after graduation and was given her first leading part, Giselle in the ballet of that name, in 1963. Giselle was to become one of her signature roles, and her interpretation was admired greatly for the lightness and delicacy of her dancing. The following year she created the part of Leili in Kasyan Goleisovsky's Leili and Medshnun.

She was coached in her early years in the company by the great Soviet ballerina Marina Semyonova and soon added all the classic roles to her repertoire: Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty and the heroine Kitri in Don Quixote.

In 1968 she married Grigorovich, who had been appointed artistic director of the Bolshoi in 1964. Thereafter she became very much associated with the leading women's roles in his ballets; feminine, submissive, pliant, yearning. These included Shirin in Legend of Love, and Phrygia in Grigorovich's best known work, Spartacus. She also succeeded Galina Ulanova, the greatest of all Soviet ballerinas, in two of her created roles - the sad heroine Maria in Fountain of Bakhchisarai and Juliet in Leonid Lavrovsky's version of Romeo and Juliet, a character she would dance again in her husband's version.

In 1975 Bessmertnova created the role of the Tsarina Anastasia in Grigorovich's Ivan the Terrible. This was followed the next season by The Angara, a ballet about the building of a dam in Siberia, in which she played the heroine Valentina, whose affections are sought by two of ;the young men working on the project. Her last created role was in Grigorovich's reworking of The Golden Age, premiered in 1982, where she played Rita, a nightclub dancer who abandons the decadence of the cabaret for a young fisherman - a part created by the young Irek Mukhamedov. In 1984 she danced the role of the eponymous heroine in the premiere of Grigorovich's heavily revised production of the Petipa classic, Raymonda.

Bessmertnova won the gold medal at the Varna international ballet competition in 1965 and the Anna Pavlova prize in Paris in 1970. She was made a People's Artist of the Soviet Union in 1976; the following year she won the USSR State prize and in 1986 was awarded the Lenin prize.

She continued as a leading ballerina at the Bolshoi until 1995. By this time discontent among some sections of the company over the lack of new works and Grigorovich's management style - seen as unacceptably autocratic - had escalated to the point where negotiations began for his replacement. Grigorovich resigned, and Bessmertnova and a group of his supporters among the dancers led a strike in protest, leading to the cancellation of that evening's performance.

Thereafter she devoted herself to her husband, who returned briefly to the Bolshoi before being appointed to run a company in Krasnodar in southern Russia. She was a judge at the Moscow International Ballet Competition in 1995 and was involved in coaching young dancers, including the controversial ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, who stated in an interview that one of the reasons for her association with the Krasnodar company was the opportunity to work with Bessmertnova.

Bessmertnova accompanied her husband to London last year when a gala was given at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to celebrate his 80th birthday, and was prominent in the front row of the audience at a lecture he gave at Pushkin House in Bloomsbury later that week.

She is survived by him and her younger sister, Tatyana, who was also a soloist with the Bolshoi.

· Natalia Igorievna Bessmertnova, ballerina, born July 19 1941; died February 19 2008

Bolshoi's Bessmertnova Dies at Age 66

The Associated Press. Tuesday, February 19, 2008; 9:23 AM

MOSCOW -- Natalia Bessmertnova, a Soviet-era prima ballerina who danced with the Bolshoi Ballet for decades, died Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the ballet said. She was 66.

Bessmertnova died at a Moscow hospital after suffering from a grave illness, Yekaterina Novikova said, but she would not specify the cause of death. Russian media reported that Bessmertnova had kidney trouble.

Bessmertnova was a top dancer at the Bolshoi from 1961 until 1995, the year she and other performers staged a one-night strike after the ballet's longtime artistic director Yuri Grigorovich, her husband, quit during a dispute with management amid plans for his replacement.

Their refusal to perform "Romeo and Juliet" prompted the first cancellation in the ballet's history of more than two centuries.

In addition to Juliet, Bessmertnova also danced the leading female roles "Giselle," "Ivan the Terrible," "The Angara" and "The Golden Age."

Bolshoi director Anatoly Iksanov called Bessmertnova's death "a huge loss for the Bolshoi Theater and to our whole culture," the ITAR-Tass news agency said.

The dancer was "the pride and glory of the company to which she devoted her entire life," he was quoted as saying.

"The Bolshoi Theater mourns the death of the outstanding ballerina, one of the world's most celebrated Giselles," the theater said on its Web site.

Bessmertnova was born in Moscow to a doctor and a homemaker. She showed an early interest in dance and soon displayed talent to match, joining the Bolshoi immediately after graduating from the theater's developmental school.

She was named a People's Artist of the U.S.S.R. in 1976 and was a laureate of the Soviet Union's Lenin Prize and State Prize.

She was a gold medalist at the prestigious Varna International Ballet Competition in 1965 and was awarded France's Pavlova Prize in 1970.

In recent years, Bessmertnova had worked with Grigorovich on projects such as the Benois de la Danse Prize, for which he served as chairman of the jury.

A funeral service, open to the public, will be held Friday at the Bolshoi, the theater said.

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Decidedly Bessmertnova

Friday, Jan. 31, 1964

"That's quite a name you've got there," Bolshoi Ballet Master Leonid Lavrovsky told the young ballerina. "If you turn out to be a good dancer you can keep it." The dancer's name was Natalia Bessmertnova, and since in Russian that means Natalie the Immortal, its owner seemed destined to carry it awkwardly—like a steamer trunk with fancy labels. Last week, with barely two months as a Bolshoi soloist behind her, Bessmertnova was established in Moscow's excited ballet world as decidedly bessmertnova—even more so, said her teachers, than the immortal Ulanova.

Such talk is perhaps a bit excessive. Bessmertnova has appeared in only one solo role—Giselle—and that only five times. But each time she dances she stirs up a storm of acclaim such as the staid old Bolshoi has not seen in years. Even Ulanova raves about her. Lithe, dark, and only 22, Bessmertnova seems the very ideal of ballet—the disembodied spirit choreographers dream of, the ethereal figure that explains the whole logic of the dance.

Bessmertnova studied for ten years at the Bolshoi Ballet School, then spent two seasons in the corps de ballet before her first Giselle last November. At the highly conservative Bolshoi, even this long tour is hardly a complete apprenticeship, and Lavrovsky is sternly resisting the demand for her dancing by allowing her only one or two performances a month. Battling off other Bolshoi ballet masters who plead for her presence, he says: "I don't want them destroying at night what I teach by day."

Bessmertnova is now learning the classic repertory—last week she began rehearsing for her first Odette in a spring production of Swan Lake. She is dutiful and quiet and so devoted to the regime of rigorous training ahead of her that she told the relieved Lieteraturnaya Gazeta that she wouldn't dream of marriage, even to a cosmonaut.

Lavrovsky sees in his great pupil "a body of very beautiful and tender and expressive lines" and a soul of "great content." Beyond that, he has to struggle to praise her enough. "She is a lyric-dramatic dancer," he says, searching for words. "When I speak of lyric-dramatic, I soften the contours of lyric by adding dramatic and soften the contours of dramatic by adding lyric. But in this instance I wouldn't want them softened.

She has both talents in full, and in her future years she should be able to reach the stature of an artist of tragedy."


T I M E

Natalia Bessmertnova 1941-2008

By Chris Pasles. The Los Angeles Times

Natalia Bessmertnova, a legendary prima ballerina with the Bolshoi Ballet for more than three decades, has died. She was 66.

Bessmertnova died Tuesday at a Moscow hospital after suffering from a long illness, company spokeswoman Yekaterina Novikova said. Russian media reported that Bessmertnova had kidney trouble.

Bolshoi director Anatoly Iksanov called her death “a huge loss for the Bolshoi Theater and to our whole culture,” the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

The dancer was “the pride and glory of the company to which she devoted her entire life,” he was quoted as saying.

Bessmertnova danced with the Bolshoi from 1961 until 1995, when she and other performers staged a one-night strike after Yury Grigorovich, her husband and the company’s artistic director, quit after 30 years at the helm during a dispute with management amid plans for his replacement.

Their refusal to dance “Romeo and Juliet” reportedly caused the first cancellation in the company’s history of more than two centuries.

Grigorovich, a former Kirov Ballet character dancer, had become notorious for promoting the careers of his wife and other favorites, some said to the detriment of other dancers. But in Bessmertnova’s case, at least, her formidable talents justified her special position.

Critics noted how her sylph-like figure, long arms and legs and poetic expressivity made her ideal for such romantic roles as Giselle. At the same time, she possessed a nervous energy, impulsiveness and mercurial emotions that could be exploited in more contemporary works.

Reviewing a performance of Grigorovich’s “Spartacus” at the Shrine Auditorium in 1979, Los Angeles Times dance critic Lewis Segal wrote of Bessmertnova: “Only Maya Plisetskaya, in films of a previous version of ‘Spartacus,’ has shown us such interpretive individuality wedded to such technical power.

“No detail in her dancing seemed to be emphasized for mere effect, yet spectators all evening long found themselves applauding her shimmering bourrees, serene balances and brilliant leaps. With reason.”

Even Bessmertnova’s dancing in later years mesmerized audiences and critics.

Reviewing her performance in Mikhail Fokine’s “The Dying Swan” in 1993, Washington Post critic Alan M. Kriegsman wrote: “Bessmertnova, without mannerism or histrionics of any sort, danced it as a somberly reflective elegy, a song of the pain of morality. You were afraid to blink, to miss any of its nuance or telling simplicity.”

Bessmertnova was born July 19, 1941, in Moscow to a doctor and a homemaker.

She showed an early interest in dance and soon displayed talent to match, joining the Bolshoi immediately after graduating from the theater’s school in 1961, one of the highest achievers in the school’s history.

Two years later, she made her solo debut as Giselle, creating the title role in Mikhail Lavrovsky’s production and launching herself as a truly romantic dancer.

She went on to dance all of the leading roles in the Russian classical repertoire - “Swan Lake,” “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,” “Don Quixote” and “Romeo and Juliet,” in particular. But she was equally adept in the more robust theatrical works choreographed for her by her husband, including “Legend of Love,” “Spartacus,” “Ivan the Terrible” and “The Golden Age.”

Bessmertnova was a gold medalist at the prestigious Varna International Ballet Competition in 1965 and was awarded France’s Pavlova Prize in 1970.

She was named a People’s Artist of the U.S.S.R. in 1976 and was a laureate of the Soviet Union’s Lenin Prize and Stage Prize. She was put on a company pension in 1989 and left the Bolshoi in 1995.

In recent years, she had worked with Grigorovich on such projects as the Benois de la Danse Prize, for which he served as chairman of the jury.

In addition to her husband, Bessmertnova is survived by a sister, Tatania, and a nephew, Mikhail, who were also dancers.

A public funeral is due to be held Friday at the Bolshoi, the theater said.

February 21, 2008
Natalia Bessmertnova
Ballerina who was a leading dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, most noted for her roles in ballets choreographed by her husband, Yuri Grigorovich

Natalia Igorievna Bessmertnova was for three decades a leading dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow.

She was born in 1941 in Moscow, where her father was a doctor. Her eminence began, in fact, even before she left the ballet school, when she became the first dancer there to be awarded an A+ mark in the final examination. She was then about 20, went straight into the company and the following year, 1962, was already picked out by spectators on the opening night of the Bolshoi's London season for the lyrical smoothness of her dancing as one of three solo swans in Swan Lake. She was similarly noticed as the Autumn Fairy (complete with prominent solo) in Rostislav Zakharov's production of the Prokofiev Cinderella.

The contrast between these parts indicates how the gently expressive dancing she commanded was backed up by a completely assured technique.

Another role that season was in a duet, Étude, staged by the company's artistic director, Leonid Lavrovsky, with his son, Mikhail, as her partner. Slender and big-eyed, she showed a simple directness in these early assignments that was not always matched in her late career (although the subsequent roles themselves were relevant in that respect).

Only one year later Bessmertnova had her first leading role, the title part in Leonid Lavrovsky's production of Giselle. With the great ballerina Marina Semyonova as her chief coach, Bessmertnova went on to dance all the old classics: Don Quixote, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, besides Fokine's Les Sylphides and Le Spectre de la Rose. When she played the ballerina role in Swan Lake, she differentiated its two aspects, captured swan queen and seductive rival, by giving them each a stylised quality.

She became noted also in modern Soviet ballets, taking over roles that had been originated by the celebrated Galina Ulanova, as the heroine in Lavrovsky's Romeo and Juliet and as the Polish princess Maria, captured and murdered, in Zakharov's The Fountain of Bakhchisarai. She also appeared as Phrygia, the brave heroine of Spartacus, alternating in the role with her contemporary Yekaterina Maximova (both had supporters who thought each the better), and as the sick Shirin in The Legend of Love, whose life is saved by the sacrifice of her royal sister and the painter Ferkhad whom they both love. The latter work was never brought complete to London, only extracts. These two ballets both had choreography by Yuri Grigorovich, who became director of the company in 1964; Bessmertnova married him in 1968 as his second wife and her second husband.

Unsurprisingly, she now had a series of roles made specially for her. In fact the first choreographer to build a ballet around her had been Kasyan Goleizovsky with Leili and Medzhnun in 1964. Grigorovich, however, featured her in one ballet after another.

She was the Tsar's murdered wife, Anastasia, in Ivan the Terrible (1975, and repeated as a guest at the Paris Opéra in 1976); this was perhaps the most moving of her mature roles. Valentina in The Angara (also 1976) was the heroine of a modern-dress tale that did not survive long in the repertoire. And most memorably, playing to full houses in many countries, she was the cabaret dancer Rita in the highly successful new version of The Golden Age, premiered in 1982 and built around her and Irek Mukhamedov, who both proved vividly dramatic in the ballet. In addition, Bessmertnova took the leading parts in Grigorovich's new versions of The Nutcracker, Raymonda, Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake.

At the Varna international ballet competition in 1965, Bessmertnova won the gold medal. Then, appearing in Paris in 1970, she was awarded the Anna Pavlova Prize. Moreover, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to Soviet ballet over so long a period, she was appointed a People's Artist of the Soviet Union in 1976 and in 1977 was awarded the USSR State Prize, followed in 1986 with the presentation of the Lenin Prize. Many of her performances were recorded on video and DVD, including those in the ballets Giselle (two versions) and Spartacus.

From 1989 Bessmertnova was given a pension from the Bolshoi Theatre, but did not at once stop performing. It was in 1995 that she ceased her connection with the company after leading a one-day strike of dancers protesting against the dismissal of Grigorovich as director.

Thereafter she continued to assist him in his ballet activities, for instance with the annual Benois Dance Award, for which he was chairman of the jury. They moved to Krasnodar in southern Russia where Grigorovich now runs a company that tours widely with his ballets.

Bessmertnova also did some coaching of dancers in her famous roles. For some time, however, she had been unwell, reportedly with problems affecting her kidneys. She is survived by her husband and by her younger sister, Tatyana, who also became a dancer at the Bolshoi.

Natalia Bessmertnova: Bolshoi ballerina of exceptional beauty and technique

Saturday, 23 February 2008

The ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova was exceptional for her beauty and her dance technique. With her long, fragile lines and big eyes, she had the lyrical grace of a Russian icon; with her high, lilting jump and expansive arcs of movement, she had a versatility recorded in many videos and DVDs of ballets as diverse as Giselle and Spartacus. The choreographer of Spartacus was Yuri Grigorovich, who directed the Bolshoi Ballet for 31 years and was her second husband.

But her talent was spotted first by her teachers and audiences. Born in Moscow in 1941, she was the daughter of a doctor and the older sister of Tatyana Bessmertnova, who followed the same path into the Bolshoi Ballet to achieve more modest success. At the Bolshoi School Natalia was the star pupil, the first ever to be awarded an A+ on her graduation in 1961. Her début with the Bolshoi Ballet in Chopiniana (known as Les Sylphides in the West) made an equally big impression with the Russian public; and she scored a similar success the following year (1962) during the company's visit to London, as one of three solo swans in Swan Lake on opening night, and as the Autumn Fairy in Rostislav Zakharov's production of Prokofiev's Cinderella.

Her special expressiveness, a concentrated spiritual quality, came to the fore with her début in 1963 as Giselle, her first big role, in which she seemed to revive the essence of the Romantic Ballet. She then went on to dance the leads in the major classics – Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote – bringing her rich, subtle phrasing and occasionally unexpected accents, as if improvising. During these early years she won the gold medal at the second Varna International Ballet Competition in Bulgaria in 1965; and in 1970, appearing in Paris, she was awarded the Anna Pavlova Prize.

She was also admired for her interpretations of Soviet ballets. She succeeded the great ballerina Galina Ulanova as Juliet in Mikhail Lavrovsky's Romeo and Juliet, and as Maria, the captive Polish princess in Zakharov's The Fountain of Bakhchisarai. In 1964, Kasyan Goleizovsky created the central role of Leili for her in Leili and Medzhun, and in Grigorovich's Legend of Love she danced the role of Shirin. In his Spartacus she was Phrygia, brave companion of the titular rebel slave.

Grigorovich premiered Spartacus in 1968, the year of his marriage to Bessmertnova, a marriage that was the second for both of them. (Bessmertnova's first husband, divorced in 1965, was an engineer.) Thereafter Grigorovich made several roles for her. She was the beautiful, saintly Tsarina Anastasia in Ivan the Terrible (1975), a part that she also danced as a guest artist at the Paris Opera in 1976. She was the heroine Valentina in The Angara (1976), a modern-dress ballet about the building of a dam in Siberia, which soon disappeared from the repertory. She was Rita – the last role created for her – in The Golden Age (1982), a version of Shostakovich's ballet score in which she danced opposite the young Irek Mukhamedov and which was performed widely to enthusiastic houses on foreign tours. She also danced the leads in Grigorovich's heavily reworked productions of Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Raymonda and Romeo and Juliet.

She qualified for her pension as a principal dancer in 1989, but continued performing until the moment when, in 1995, Grigorovich was forced to resign. For several years discontent with his autocratic style had been rumbling; when his opponents finally gained their victory, Bessmertnova and Grigorovich's supporters led a one-day strike that forced the cancellation of that evening's performance.

Bessmertnova continued to work with Grigorovich in his varied activities. She assisted him with the Benois de la Danse Award, an annual showcase chaired by Grigorovich, and helped him by coaching roles in Krasnodar, in Southern Russia, where he now directs the local ballet company. She also coached other dancers in roles associated with her and was a judge at the Moscow International Competition in 1995.

She died too young for one whose surname means "immortal". She had been reported to have been suffering for some time with problems with her kidneys. She was made a People's Artist of the Soviet Union in 1976. She was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1977 and the Lenin Prize in 1986.

Nadine Meisner