The White Nights Festival –two months saturated with performances that run daily on 3 stages simultaneously– offers viewers their choice of ballet, opera or symphonic works. It opened this year with “Swan Lake” featuring the remarkable debut of rising soloist Maria Bulanova (see our interview with her here), and in the opera world, the premiere of the new version of “Boris Godunov” by Bulgarian Orlin Anastasov, an experienced former opera singer in his own right who knows the work inside and out, and now brings his experience to the director’s chair.

Though only half the festival has passed, the ballet stage has already unveiled a fresh mixed bill: “Les Sylphides”, Leonid Jakobson’s “Brilliant Divertissement”, and Roland Petit’s famed “Le Jeune Homme et La Mort“. The latter two are stage premieres, with “Homme“ revived especially for the Mariinsky after a lapse in rights. Luigi Bonino rehearsed the casts first in silence—true to the original—then with Bach’s Passacaglia in C Minor. Happily, the new agreement secures a five-year run, giving local audiences ample opportunity to see this landmark work.

The ability to give 110% to a performance even amidst the more challenging sides of the ballet profession — overwork, urgent rehearsals, injury, fatigue — is one sign of true artists, those who place dedication above personal preference and infuse sheer grit into the process when perhaps not much else is left.  While far from a desirable situation (for safety reasons, if nothing less), sometimes the profession demands just that: determination and strength, mental perhaps more than physical. We always help that those times are few and far between, how much easier ballet would be if casting were always evenly distributed, opportunity plentiful, time more forgiving, and injury absent. Theatre life however, is not this way. On May 23rd, a top level “Bayadere” cast graced the Mariinsky stage with true art. Yes, it was the usual high-caliber delivery, but against the backdrop of exceptional circumstances, and nonetheless drawing a full hall of faithful viewers and loud applause.

Having joined the Vaganova Academy in the tumultuous 1990s in Russia, Alexei Nedviga has witnessed the shifts of several generations of dancers in St. Petersburg. This experienced dancer has performed in works ranging from Forsythe to the entire Petipa repertoire, and 7 years ago returned to his roots – at the Vaganova Academy – where he began teaching the next generation of young male dancers. Now dividing his time between giving company class at the Mariinsky, monitoring rehearsals, and racing to the Academy to teach younger students the “ABC”s of the classical canon, Nedviga is a little-known well of talent in the country’s northern capital. VaganovaToday sat down to learn the details of his story which we’re sure you too will find inspiring. The Russian original of this interview can be found here.

As someone blessed with near-ideal traits for classical ballet, the first question is, do you come from a ballet family?
It’s actually interesting, because my family isn’t balletic at all. My mother is a doctor and my father was in the military. He didn’t serve in St. Petersburg, but beyond the Lake Baikal. When I was six years old, he began attending the Military Academy here, and my family moved. I have a younger sister, she was born just before we moved.

In childhood I was a very active boy. It seems to me that at that time all children were that way, were were constantly in motion, always outdoors. Once my mom lost me and she came looking for me at the construction site, holding my sister in her arms. It was a typical childhood – before today’s “gadgets”.

February 2026 brought with it a flurry of new productions in both opera (Idomeneo, Boris Gudonov) and ballet (Khorovody to music by Rodion Schedrin, choreographed by Slava Samodurov), but one event in particular created a fury among balletomanes and Mariinsky followers worldwide.

In honor of what would have been the late Vladimir Shklyarov’s birthday on February 9th, the Mariinsky held a performance of “Don Quixote” dedicated to him, featuring his long-time partner, prima ballerina Viktoria Tereshkina.  The cast also included  a debut by new second soloist Alexey Orokhovsky who hails from the USA, graduated from the John Cranko School last year, and holds a series of awards from various international ballet competitions.

This move was considered controversial for several reasons: placing a relative newcomer in an evening dedicated to a world ballet star, placing him alongside a tenured and beloved prima ballerina, and doing so on the historical stage, are all points that ballet circles discussed locally in the days prior to the performance.

As it turned out, the decision proved to be the right one: an evening filled with off-the-charts electricity and energy, not just from the performers but from the audience, honored the memory of Vladimir Shklyarov in one of his signature roles.  Prima ballerina Viktoria Tereshkina brought palpable flirtation and an extra expressive sultry nature to her role as Kitri, supporting her onstage counterpart with verve and spice.

Alexei Orokhovsky, tasked with one of the most virtuoso roles in the classical repertoire, did not disappoint. Blessed with an effortless jump that achieves great height seemingly with no preparation, he performs the most technical combinations with great ease.

How a young man trained in Siberia became a principal dancer with Eifman Ballet and is now an in-demand choreographer in his own right. Read on for his inspiring story and click here for the Russian language version of this interview.

Do you come from a family of dancers?
In my family, unfortunately, no one was connected with the dance world. My mother is a biology teacher, and my father served in the military engineering troops, he was a sapper by profession. He was sent to the Siberian Military District in Novosibirsk to work. At that time, I was still very young and went to kindergarten there and then secondary school. My mother was always drawn to art, and when I was 6 years old, she sent me to the children’s choir at the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater.  It was my first acquaintance with the theatrical world, first of all with opera, where children participated in many performances, such as “Boris Godunov”, “Khovanshchina”, “Tosca”, etc.

07 December 2025

The number of small production groups in Russia has grown over the past decade, and increasingly contemporary or modern works draw audiences eager to see something new. This is part of the billing strategy for the “Two Sisters” production company who created a one-act dance drama based on Lev Tolstoy’s “Anna Kareninfa”. The performance, called “The Train Will Leave in…” debuted at the Kamenostrov Theatre in Petersburg the first weekend in December. It uses the marketing theme of a departing train, and a black-and-white colour palette with onstage ceramic figures to present a myriad of deep-seated emotions that leaves most viewers spellbound.

Performed by two Honored Artists of Russia, former Mariinsky principal dancer Daria Pavlenko, who has ventured into exploratory contemporary dance forms in recent years, and active Bolshoi principal Vladislav Lantratov, a popular audience favorite in Moscow and abroad,  “The Train Will Leave In…” uses abstract symbolic representation of passion, freedom and longing. Yet the core emotions – love, despair and loss – are palpable mainly through Pavlenko’s expert embodiment of Anna.

In 2017, Camilla Mazzi made history by becoming the first Italian female to join the Mariinsky Ballet. Having studied in her native Italy and polished her mastery in Moscow, Camilla quickly won the hearts of the Petersburg public and is now a leading soloist. Delve into her inspiring story below. For the Russian version of this interview, please click here.

What led you to ballet?

I started dancing when I was 9 years old because I had a small curvature in my spine and the doctor said I needed to either swim or take ballet classes. I swam, but to be honest I didn’t like it because it was boring, so I decided to try ballet and I immediately fell in love with the art form.

Slowly I started to take more and more classes, and then a few years later I decided I wanted to become a ballerina. I was born in Turin, in the north of Italy, but there are no large ballet schools there. I studied in a small school and later I was lucky to learn that there was a good pedagogue in the city named Oksana Kichenko. She had studied at the Moscow State Choreographic Academy and worked at the Bolshoi Theatre.

For their fall visit to Petersburg, the Bolshoi Ballet decided to bring the entertaining Soviet comedy “The Bright Stream,” an atypical production based heavily on pantomime, story line and comic relief, with contemporary dancing vignettes interspersed that include bizarre onstage machinations — a dog, bicycle, and oversized vegetables during the peasant harvest are a few of its features.

The Saturday evening performance (11th of October) featured top names from the Bolshoi: Eleonora Sevenard as the classical ballet dancer with Denis Rodkin as Peter the agronomist, and Daria Kokhlova as Zina with Vladislav Lantratov as the classical dancer, in four of the main roles.  Stemming from 1935 in Leningrad, the production is difficult to follow for those who didn’t grow up in the Soviet Union. Stylistically it’s a recognizable ode to Soviet life with harvesting peasants and Boris Messerer’s typical dress for 1930s individuals. Choreographically it has moments of Grigorovich-flavored danses en masse, especially for the men, but the style is more folk than classical. This is the type of ballet you can bring a child to for a short two-hour performance and leave with smiles. It just doesn’t provide the philosophical or literary pull of the standard classical repertoire.

As autumn sets in, and following three “Bayaderes” which opened the 243^rd season at the Mariinsky Theatre, a short run of “Don Quixote” offered a more upbeat note for local audiences whetting their appetites for more ballet. On September 13^th, prima ballerina Oksana Skorik reprised the role of Kitri alongside Timur Askerov’s Basil on the historical stage.

Skorik, known for her impeccable physique, stunning lines and steely determination, may seem outside her typical emploi in this comic, soubrette role.

The “My Maya” production, created with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives along with a team of professionals and dedicated to what would be Maya Plisetskaya’s 100^th birthday this November, took place ahead of other celebrations in mid-September at the Bolshoi Dramatic Theatre in Saint Petersburg. Produced by Sergey Velichkin, the gala concert evening included 11 short ballets by leading dancers from all across Russia. Shaped by artistic director Alexander Sergeev, known for creating multiple successful ballets including “Not on Time,” “12”, “Concert Dances”, and his full-length Coppelia (2024) set for the Mariinsky, the evening focused on both the classical works in which Plisetskaya herself excelled, and new pieces that underscored her openness to new genres and choreographies.