Maya Plisetskaya. World ballet legend

“There are geographic, temperature and magnet poles. Plisetskaya is a pole of magic.” This quote by Andrei Voznesensky is just as impactful today, on the 100th anniversary of the legendary ballerina’s birth.
 

Sometimes, people only think of Maya Plisetskaya as the Swan or Carmen. But it’s important to remember that her unique talent and creative interests extended far beyond those two roles. As fate would have it, the great Maya first met Leonid Yacobson all the way back before the war, when she was just a teenage girl, taking part in a student performance with a number called Impromptu, set to Tchaikovsky and choreographed by Yacobson.
 

In the memoir of her artistic journey, Plisetskaya dedicated an entire chapter to Yacobson. “I hold Leonid Yacobson above anyone else in the world. He had no need for well-trodden, repeatedly staged ballet. His productions were new, never seen before. His imagination was a cornucopia. The dance moves that he’d create had not existed before him. He did not pause to think, he just crafted dance in an instant. Never again in my whole life would I meet another choreographer who would be as naturally gifted, who would have a genius equal to his.” This is Maya Plisetskaya reminiscing about Leonid Yacobson’s Spartacus at the Bolshoi Theatre, where she played Phrygia. Apart from that, it was his support and improvised dance techniques that motivated Plisetskaya to hold on to her dream of starring as Anna Karenina in Rodion Shchedrin’s ballet (even though Yacobson was not directly involved in that production).
 

With her utter commitment to dance, her boundless creativity, and her vibrant temperament, Maya Plisetskaya was a ballerina like no other during her lifetime. And her thorny personality, complicated life journey, and unusually long on-stage career add even more nuanced brush strokes to her portrait. She is remembered as a world-class legend: passionate, resilient, and enigmatic. “Loud applause rings out in her name,” so begins Andrei Voznesensky’s Portrait of Plisetskaya. His words still hold true.
 

On 20 November, a festival honouring Maya Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin will begin on a massive scale in both Moscow and St. Petersburg. The St. Petersburg State Academic Leonid Yacobson Ballet Theatre will be supporting this momentous celebration. On opening day, we will present our Evening of Modern Choreography programme at the Alexandrinsky Theatre. Out of the programme’s three one-act ballets, the main event is, of course, Cheeky Chastushki set to music by Rodion Shchedrin.