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Moscow Honors Bolshoi's 'True Queen'
Maya Plisetskaya, the renowned Russian ballerina, performed "Isadora Duncan," a tribute to the American dancer, in Kiev, Ukraine, in March 1996, when she was 70. She turns 80 today.
(By Efrem Lukatsky -- Associated Press)
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Plisetskaya's Carmen also rattled the Soviet establishment. After the ballet's opening night in 1967, the Soviet minister of culture, shocked by its unembarrassed voluptuousness, demanded its immediate replacement by that stalwart "The Nutcracker."
"This is a failure, a complete failure, comrades," the minister, Yekaterina Furtseva, told Plisetskaya and her husband after the show, according to Plisetskaya's memoir, "I, Maya Plisetskaya." "Total eroticism. The music is almost destroyed. This way is alien to us. Maya, put on a skirt. This is the stage of the Bolshoi Theater, comrades!"
Plisetskaya refused to budge.
"Minister Furtseva said that Carmen will die," she recalled this month. "And I said 'Carmen will die only if I die,' but now I'm saying I can die, but Carmen will continue to live." She added that her version of Carmen was part of the fight for freedom.
She went on to dance in "Carmen Suite" 350 times.
"I suggested that we should change the name of the ballet to 'Gypsy Maya,' " said Alonso, who is in Moscow for the Plisetskaya festival. "Maya was the ideal casting. She understood Carmen's heart."
Plisetskaya toured the West only a handful of times during her long career with the Bolshoi. Russians said the government considered her "unexportable." She became known as the defector who never defected. The KGB shadowed her not only during rare trips abroad, but also at home in Moscow.
This month, rather than dwell on past repression, Plisetskaya spoke of her love for the Bolshoi.
"I have always adored it and still adore it," she said. "I think it's the best stage in the world. Every time I went on stage I felt the joy of existence, joy to dance on this stage."
During the open rehearsal, the latest generation of Bolshoi dancers performed, fluid and natural. Even more interesting were the arms of their aged teacher, just visible offstage. Necks in the audience craned to see those arms, which some have called Plisetskaya's greatest physical attribute, as she gestured to the dancers to strive for the right balance of bravado and believability.
That balance is still there, beating in the pulse of her wrists.
