A major tribute to Yekaterina Maksimova and Vladimir Vasilyev, “the most beautiful pair in 20th century Russian ballet”, is now being held from 24 to 27 October on the stage of the legendary Bolshoi Theatre here in Moscow. The four-day festival dedicated to the 50 years Vasiliyev and Maksimova have each spent on stage and teaching young dancers pays well-deserved tribute to dancers who have become a symbol of impeccable mastery to the whole world. It was not for nothing that the towering figure of Italian cinema, Franco Zefirelli, invited them to add their dancing brilliance to his famous film La Traviata. Their splendid dancing in the “Ball Scene” shone brilliantly and embellished the segment.
Long a husband and wife, Maximova and Vasilyev are no longer active dancers, but, are still in great demand in training a young generation of dancers in the grand traditions of classical Russian ballet. In addition, Vladimir Vasilyev is a choreographer and he described his new work to us. “A choreographer is someone in whom thought, feelings, and means of expression come together to get his ideal across to the audience. Nonsense will never be understood no matter how you present it. It seems to me that that contemporary ballet can be described as such only if it gets to your heart and soul the way it did decades and centuries ago. If this is present, one can say that the presentation is truly contemporary”.
People started to call Yekaterina Maksimova and Vladimir Vasilyev a unique phenomenon at the end of the 1950s when the Bolshoi Ballet was touring Britain, the US, and China. Since then, the two have headlined the Bolshoi’s numerous tours of the world. Their inimitable dancing has been immortalized in many films, including two documentaries about the artists themselves, one of them made by the famous French filmmaker Claude Lelouche. It’s entitled simply Katya and Volodya, the way the great dancers are usually addressed by their near and dear. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Katya and Volodya are being fêted by the principals of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky ballet troupes, who are joined by the leading lights of Paris’s Grand Opéra and the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma…
25 October 2008
Olga Bugrova
Voice of Russia World Service
http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=rus&q=87474&cid=24&p=25.10.2008 (in Russian)
