Maria Iliushkina’s humble, gracious manner and philosophical intelligence make this promising young ballerina stand out from her peers. After studying rhythmic gymnastics as a child, she shifted to ballet which held greater interest for her. Vaganova Today spoke with her about her career and life philosophy.

Your family isn’t associated with ballet: you initially studied rhythmic gymnastics and then shifted to ballet, why?

“Choreography” is in fact the term used for ballet lessons taken by gymnastics students. Rhythmic, or “artistic” gymnastics as it is called in Russia, is a school of movement that developed as a sport and is closely connected with ballet.  It’s not rare for someone to shift from one world to another –sports to art– many ballerinas on stage here now came from gymnastics and started as athletes. Gymnastics is great for the development of “plastique” (physical expression and flexibility), coordination, endurance, and musicality. It turned out that I enjoyed my choreographic lessons (ballet lessons) much more than the gymnastics. The pedagogue at our gymnastics school was a former ballerina who told me I had the right traitsfor ballet, even more so than for gymnastics. So I attended the Academy of Vaganova. There was a sense of purpose associated with it. 

The majority of ballet films, while showing the rigor, discipline, and endless stamina required for the profession, nevertheless have a tendency to exaggerate certain aspects of the art.  The “glass in pointe shoes” theme from the movie “Black Swan”, and the starstruck relentless stage mother  in “The Turning Pointe” are two that give ballet a bad name, or at least embellish the negative, establishing connotations that are not constants in every ballet company or for every dancer.  Some films include poor acting, bad camera angles, and campy scenes meant only for mass consumption, and few are the films on ballet that truly capture the internal life of ballet dancers.

January 2022 brought some new promotions at the Bolshoi.

Jacopo Tissi, who hails from Italy, was promoted to principal dancer by Makhar Vasiev after just 5 years with the troupe.

Igor Tsvirko likewise was made principal dancer.

Congratulations to both on their new ranks! And Happy New Year!  Vaganova Today is looking forward to what 2022 has in store for all of the ballet companies of the world. Here is to more performances and more promotions!

Starting on the 4th of December, Vaganova Academy students performed three Nutcracker performances prior to the end of 2021 in which, per the usual tradition, former graduates danced Clara and the Prince with students dancing all of the other roles.

The Academy has been plagued with the pauses and restrictions that come with the Covid pandemic– instead of graduation performances on stage the Mariinsky, last year the performance was held inside the Academy’s small theatre. More recently, restrictions have lifted slightly, and in addition to performing in their own “Nutcracker”, the students have also participated in the Mariinsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” and “Shurale” within the span of the same month.

At the general rehearsal of this Vainonen “Nutcracker” –performed to a full orchestra with costumes– Maria Koshkaryova, who will graduate in 2022, danced the first adult Clara. Koshkaryova is a slight, petite brunette, with long slender limbs and a youthful appearance. She shows much technical promise. For the first performance however, Anastasia Lukina, already with the Mariinsky since 2015, danced “big” Clara with professional polish and noble presentation. If not emitting the youthful freshness and raw sparkle of a student, her refinement and  are evident throughout. Lukina has gained greater control of overly flexible feet and limbs over the last five years in the troupe, giving her great command of the  stage, in addition to her natural beauty.

Join Vaganova Today for it’s first-ever video interview with one of the Mariinsky’s youngest stars, Victor Caixeta, who hails from Brazil, trained in Germany, and is now in his 5th year with the company. Victor is a second soloist, but has a huge following both locally and internationally, and above all, is a humble, kind-hearted gentleman. Victor was the last pupil that world-famous pedagogue Gennady Silutsky worked with prior to the latter’s unexpected death in the autumn of 2020. We include here clips of Victor working with Silutsky to give you an idea of the energy and dedication both of these individuals bring to their art form. We hope you enjoy watching the interview as much as we enjoyed creating it with him!

If you like this video, please let us know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel “Vaganova Today” and our Facebook page by the same name. Help us survive by becoming a Patron:click the title, “Interview with Victor Caixeta” then click the red Patreon button on that page. Even a $5 donation will help! We appreciate your support!

It seems that true choreographers are born, and not made. At least that’s the case for Maxim Sevagin, now in his sixth season as a soloist with the Stanislavsky Ballet, but with more than ten years’ experience creating choreographic works for various companies. His name is already known well in Russia, and it’s just a matter of time before the West figures out he is one of the most promising young choreographers. Vaganova Today has been tracking his career since his graduation from the Vaganova Academy in 2015, and sat down with him to discuss his career thus far.

You were not born in Saint Petersburg, but in a small city, Rubtsovsk, in Siberia. What caused you to move to Saint Petersburg?

At age 4, I saw some dancers from a local studio performing on the street for a city holiday. I asked my mom to take me to classes, but I never knew what ballet was. Then, when I was about 10, I told her I wanted to dance professionally and receive dance training education. She started to think about what to do because in the provinces where we were located, far from the capital, you might say people aren’t as cultured and don’t know much about ballet. Through my friends, my mother found out about the Novosibirsk Choreographic College and I joined it and spent 1 year there.

Mariinsky White Nights Festival
This year’s “White Nights” festival begins on June 2nd with a series of back-to-back performances throughout the month that include Swan Lake by the Jakobson Ballet Theatre, and on June 10, 13 and 14, the Vaganova Academy annual graduation performances. Currently, Alexei Ratmansky is setting The Pharoah’s Daughter on the troupe, with a premiere set for December 2021.

Bolshoi Theatre
The Bolshoi held a press conference in May, announcing it’s 2021-22 season plans. Alexei Ratmansky will present “The Art of Fugue” in April 2022 set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach. July 2022 will bring three other new ballet premieres, rescheduled from the initial plans for 2020. Vyacheslav Samodurov’s “DanceMania” will appear on a bill along with Anton Pimonov’s “Made in Bolshoi” and principal dancer Artemy Belyakov’s debut work “Russian Seasons”.

Tragic News
On May 12, Mariinsky Ballet soloist David Zaleyev fell off of an electric scooter without a helmet, hit his head on the sidewalk pavement, and was immediately both immobile and unconscious. Two passersby as well as a semi truck stopped to attend to him, and he was taken to the hospital where it was determined he had experienced brain injuries, and was placed in a medicated coma (presumably to stop swelling). On around May 19th or 20th he was transferred to the Polenov Neurosurgery Research Institute in Petersburg, still in a coma. His chances, as the articles claim, are 50/50. We are praying for David, and hope for a miraculous and early recovery, and that he may dance again.

After a short break for the New Year’s holidays — January 1st to 6th were holidays for the Mariinsky and just Jan. 1st for the Bolshoi — Russian theatres slowly resumed their full performance schedule in early 2021 with the 50% capacity rule in most places.*

With the rollout of the Sputnik V this year, increasing numbers of citizens and visitors have been receiving the vaccine against the coronavirus, which will hopefully slow the spread and ease the country back to normalcy.

January and February passed without any notable premieres at the top 2 theatres except for the repeat of last September’s Bolshoi programme, “Four Characters in Search of a Plot”.

March promises some excitement though, when the Bolshoi will premiere “Orlando”, if all goes as planned, on March 24th. The work by Christian Shpuck, currently the head of Ballet Zurich in Switzerland, is based on Virginia Wolfe’s novel about a creature who travels across 350 years of time, changing from male to female along the way. Created and rehearsed during the pandemic, it will premiere on the Bolshoi’s new stage.

Meanwhile, word has it that the Mariinsky Festival will resume this April, which would be great news indeed, since last year’s was interrupted by the start of the pandemic and a national lockdown. But without the ability to import foreign dancers, which is usually the focus of the festival, it remains to be seen what might be presented.

*At the Bolshoi, the upper balconies and box seats are closed permanently and tickets to those seats are not sold. Instead the orchestra seats are sold in a checkerboard pattern, but people re-seat themselves (next to each other) and masks and social distancing are perfunctory measures to get through the door, at best.

In Russia, the quarantine due to Covid-19 continues through 15 June, and some expect the end of the month. At the Mariinsky Theatre, dancers have returned to morning class already, while the Bolshoi troupe was sent on official annual vacation starting 1 June, which will last 56 days.