Bolshoi ballerina Olga Smirnova, one of the most renowned dancers of her generation left the famous ballet and joined the Dutch National Ballet.
A star ballerina of the Bolshoi has slammed the door of the prestigious Russian troupe after denouncing the war in Ukraine, a big leap that evokes the defections of ballet legends to the West during the Soviet era.
One of the most talented and admired Russian dancers of her generation, Olga Smirnova, 30, strongly denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early March, believing that “we could not remain indifferent to this global catastrophe”.
The Dutch National Ballet announced in a press release on Wednesday that this “prima ballerina” was joining the Amsterdam-based troupe, becoming the first Russian dancer to take this step since the start of the war.
“Smirnova has been very clear in her recent denunciation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which makes her work in her native country untenable,” the statement said.
“I am against war with all my soul”
“I have to be honest and say that I am against the war with all my soul. (…) I never thought that I could be ashamed of Russia (…) but today I feel that there is a before and an after,” Smirnova wrote on the social network Telegram.
Quoted by the Dutch National Ballet, the dancer, whose grandfather is Ukrainian, clarified that she had been thinking of leaving the Bolshoi for a while but that “the current circumstances had accelerated this process”.
Dutch National Ballet director Ted Brandsen welcomed the move, calling Olga Smirnova an “outstanding dancer”. “It is a privilege to have her as a dancer in our company in the Netherlands, even if the circumstances that led to this decision are very sad,” he said in the same statement.
Trained at the Vaganova Ballet Academy, breeding ground for the Mariinsky troupe, the St. Petersburger was hired very young by the Bolshoi, where she shone in the main roles of the repertoire.
Cataclysmic impact
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, several foreign dancers had announced their departure from the Russian ballets, in solidarity with the victims of the conflict in Ukraine, but Smirnova is the first Russian dancer to take this step publicly.
The Brazilian soloist Victor Caixeta, who was a rising star of the Mariinsky of Saint Petersburg, will also join the Dutch National Ballet.
Pride of Russia and famous throughout the world, the Bolshoi counts among its troupe the best ballet dancers in the world, just like its rival the Mariinsky.
Smirnova’s announcement has echoes of the Cold War: in 1961, legendary dancer Rudolf Nureyev made history by defecting from the USSR at Le Bourget airport, a highly publicized step that had been interpreted as a Western victory. In 1974, the equally legendary Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to Canada, four years after that of another star dancer, Natalia Makarova.
The invasion of Ukraine had a cataclysmic impact on Russian artists and companies, raising the threat of cultural isolation unheard of even at the height of the Cold War.
Avoid amalgams
In less than two weeks, a Bolshoi tour of London, scheduled for this summer, was canceled.
Two big names have seen the doors of Western theaters closed because of their supposed sympathy for Vladimir Putin: the star conductor Valéry Gergiev, deprogrammed almost everywhere in the world and the international soprano Anna Netrebko who preferred to withdraw temporarily from the scene.
And Russian conductor Tugan Sokhiev has left his post as musical director of the Bolshoi and the Orchester National du Capitole de Toulouse, saying he is under pressure to take a stand on events in Ukraine.
Venues have gone even further, with opera Boris Goudonov (1869) by Moussorgski canceled by the Polish National Opera or the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra withdrawing two works by Tchaikovsky from a concert.
Several voices, particularly in France, have called for avoiding amalgams and not boycotting Russian artists as a whole.