Evgenia Obratsova, the darling of the ballet world and idolised by many, is not just a film actress but an accomplished ballerina and mother of two. From her experiences inside the halls of the Vaganova Academy, through her years at the Mariinsky, and now, her status as a prima ballerina at the Bolshoi, Obratsova discusses her life, career transitions, and dreams with VaganovaToday.

You were born in Saint Petersburg, and your parents were involved in ballet. How did you become involved in it?

My parents both danced at the Maly-Mussorgsky Ballet Theatre (now the Mikhailovsky) in Saint Petersburg. My mother graduated from the Vaganova Academy in the class of perfection under Natalia Dudinskaya and my father graduated under Anatoly Nisnevich. They decided I should start ballet and sent me to the Vaganova Academy and I was accepted, so at first it was their initiative.

When did your own desire to dance appear?
During my second year at the Academy the desire to dance arose, I set some goals for myself and decided to forge ahead.

My first grades had not been great because I didn’t have the desire to be there, but after I understood what my profession involved and what it was all for, then I had my first successes and accomplishments, further progressed and became a hard worker.

The 275th Vaganova Academy Graduating class delivered its only performance at the Kremlin Theatre on 21 June after first displaying its talents in Saint Petersburg on the Mariinsky stage. Despite the fact that the performance presents, for all intents and purposes, students who are on the literal verge of becoming professionals, Muscovites nonetheless managed to pack the huge Kremlin hall to the brim in order to get a glimpse of what Russia’s newest generation of graduates have to offer.

In early June, Noah Gelber and Stephanie Arndt, both formerly with the Forsythe company, flew to Moscow for a month to begin to set Second Detail, the first Forsythe work that the Stanislavsky troupe will perform. The premiere will be part of a mixed bill that takes place on 6, 7 and 8 July, along with Serge Lifar’s Suite en Blanc and Jiri Kilyan’s Petit Mort.

Here’s a look inside Second Detail:

The Stone Flower, a decidedly Russian ballet based on the Ural fairtytale by Pavel Bazhov, first appeared in 1957 and is said to have started Yuri Grigorovich on his career as a young choreographer. The work focuses on the story of a young stone carver, Danila, who will stop at nothing to uncover the secrets of his art form, venturing to the underground lair of the Mistress of the Copper Mountain in order to reveal the secrets of the stones, and in so doing, leaving his earthly beloved, Katerina, behind.

While far from Prokofiev’s best work — the great composer seems to trudge through the score at numerous points, lending a heaviness that one does not sense, for example, in his Cinderella — Stone Flower, nonetheless currently runs on at least three of Russia’s major stages: the Mariinsky, Bolshoi, and Stanislavsky Theatres, all of whom perform Grigorovich’s version.

Just as in June every year the Vaganova Academy students appear in 3 graduation performances on the Mariinsky Theatre stage, so too the Moscow State Choreographic Academy, in some ways Moscow’s equivalent to the Vaganova Academy, holds performances for its graduates on the Bolshoi stage every spring. On 17 May the first of this year’s performances took place, featuring a three act programme that covered everything from classical to new works.

Act I began with a Moscovian version of Chopiniana, slightly altering from the classical purity in choreography shown at the Mariinsky. A faster tempo throughout replaced the usual legato flavour of the piece. Here, a swivel step is changed to a clear faillé tombé, and there, the standard first position port de bras shifted to a folded elbow with the hand near the ear. The heads of the corps de ballet sylphs alter positioning based on the breath of their arms (at points where the Mariinsky version does not shift the head position). Port de bras during the tour jeté pose during the Waltz in G Flat major were shifted to an allongé position rather than first position overhead, done at the Mariinsky.

Graduate Ekaterina Fateyeva danced a swift Prelude but maintained the lyrical feel of the section. In the Eleventh Waltz, Camilla Matsi injected sudden puffs of speed when moving from position to position.

The programme notes for the premiere of Paquita at the Mariinsky emphasize the fact that the ballet is not a revival of the mid-19th century ballet by Petipa, but a new creation based heavily on Cervantes’ novella, The Little Gypsy Girl. That much is evident from the libretto, set around the idea of a royal baby stolen and raised by gypsies, who then falls in love with a high-ranking officer and ultimately finds her real parents. This new version differs widely from the original libretto from 1846.

That 1846 ballet also depicts Paquita living with gypsies, but focuses on a visiting French General who wants his son, Lucien, to marry the Spanish governor’s sister (at the time, Napoleon had just occupied Spain, highlighting political ties between the two countries). Lucien falls in love with Paquita instead.

A little known awards ceremony, the “Spirit of the Dance” awards, was held at the Stanislavsky Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre in Moscow on 27 April to honour the winners from 2016 in categories ranging from rising stars to talented pedagogues and even informative ballet critics.

The evening, structured in a format that combined award ceremony with gala concert, interspersed the presentation of awards with short numbers acknowledging each winner. Though running nearly 4 hours, specific dancing highlights punctuated the evening that covered a range of styles from folk to classical ballet.

The first artist to make his mark during the evening, Yuri Kudryavtsev, performed the pas de deux from La Sylphide alongside Ekaterina Bulgutova. Both leading soloists form the Kranoyarsk Theatre of Opera and Ballet, Kudryavtsev is a tall young man with clean beats and light ballon with a promising future ahead of him. Bulgutova evoked a mischievous sylphide with clean delivery and proved a lovely onstage match for her partner.

You directed the ballet troupe at Teatro alla Scala for 7 years. How did that differ from running the Mariinsky?

Everything was new for me: a new system, a new culture, new values. Although there are general human values that are shared as well, there were a lot of revelations for me. As interesting as it was for me in Italy, working in the Bolshoi or Mariinsky Theatre you always know that it is a large empire, and there’s some sort of guarantee — that’s the presence of the Vaganova Academy for the Mariinsky and the Moscow Choreographic School for the Bolshoi, and that’s a huge strength. La Scala also has their own school but it’s not what we have here.

After all, our school, our training system is distinguished by the fact that there is practically no place else in the world where students are taught and graduate on the basis of classical dance through means of a complex system of classes: character dance, historical, duet, ballet and others. There are few schools like these two in the world. Another thing is the repertoire these two theatres have.

On Saturday, 18 February, nearly 5000 people filed into the great hall of the Kremlin Theatre in order to attend the gala concert in honor of Andris Liepa’s 55th anniversary. Film clips of Liepa’s early years greeted the audience pre-curtain — the “Ballet Russes” curtain — referring to the Diaghilev works that Liepa has helped restore over the past few decades in various international theatres.

The upper stage of the Bolshoi Theatre: a small auditorium located under the building’s roof, complete with a small orchestra pit and audience seating that mimics the actual stage where performances are held. It is a hallowed yet impressive space, and today it’s empty except for a small team of six people: Alyona Kovalyova, her partner Yakopo Tissi, two coaches, a pianist, the conductor…and me. It is just five days before Kovalyova and Tissi’s debut in Swan Lake. As the dancers rehearse, their coaches, former Bolshoi soloist Alexander Vetrov and former Kirov ballerina Olga Chenchikova, lead the rehearsals to the sounds of a single piano onstage. The conductor for the premiere, Aleksey Bogorad, sits to mark notes about the score and inquires frequently about the tempo while the rehearsal goes on.