Breathtaking

Svetlana Yuryevna Zakharova performs in Mauro Bigonzetti’s Come un Respiro (Like a Breath) at the Coliseum Theatre in London, England. Photo: Robbie Jack/Corbis/Getty Images.

Breathless

Ana Turazashvili, a soloist at the Bolshoi Ballet, performs her solo in Mauro Bigonzetti’s ballet Come un Respiro (Like a Breath) at the première of the new program Modanse by Svetlana Yuryevna Zakharova at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Russia. Photo: Eugene Odinokov/RIA Novosti.

Carpe Diem Reloaded

AFP Photo (@AFPphoto)

Maria Alexandrovna Alexandrova, principal dancer of Russia’s Bolshoi Ballet performing a scene from the contemporary Spanish dancer/choreographer Blanca Li’s two woman show called “Goddesses & Demonesses” during a dress rehearsal before opening night at the City Center in New York, United States on March 30, 2017. Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP.

A dancer from the Mikhailovsky Ballet of Saint Petersburg, Russia performs a scene from “The Flames of Paris” during a dress rehearsal at the David H. Koch Theatre on November 14, 2014 in New York, United States before opening night. Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP.

The shoes of a dancer from the Complexions Contemporary Ballet before she performs a scene from Dwight Rhoden’s “Moon Over Jupiter” during the dress rehearsal before opening night at the Joyce Theater in New York, United States on November 16, 2010. Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP.

Лебединое озеро (Swan Lake)

Soviet Visuals (@SovietVisuals)

Maya Mikhailovna Plisetskaya (Moscow, November 20, 1925 – München, May 2, 2015) was a Soviet-born ballet dancer, choreographer, ballet director, and actress, who held Spanish and Lithuanian citizenship. She danced during the Soviet era at the same time as Galína Sergéyevna Ulánova, another famed Russian ballerina. In 1960 she ascended to Ulánova’s former title as prima ballerina assoluta of the Bolshoi Theatre. [Read more].

Plisetskaya as Odette in “Swan Lake”. Photo: gorod.tomsk.ru.

Plisetskaya dancing “The Dying Swan” during a Stars of the Bolshoi Ballet performance at Lincoln Center’s Metropolitan Opera House, in New York City, United States, on September 21, 1974. Photo: Linda Vartoogian/Getty Images.

Footsteps

Soviet Visuals (‏@SovietVisuals)

Olga Vasiliyevna Lepeshinskaya (Kiev, September 28, 1916 – Moscow, December 20, 2008) was a Soviet ballerina. She was named a People’s Artist of the USSR in 1951. [Read more].

Olga Vasiliyevna Lepeshinskaya performing as Kitri in “Don Quixote” (1940). Photo: State Academic Bolshoi Theater Museum.

Olga Vasiliyevna Lepeshinskaya performing as Oksana in “Taras Bulba” (1941). Photo: State Academic Bolshoi Theater Museum.

Grand jeté

Moscow, Russia: Students perform in a corridor before class at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. Photo: Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty.

An Acid Rain’s a-Gonna Fall

Film lifts the curtain on infighting at the institution after an acid attack on its artistic director. The Calvert Journal reports What do the Bolshoi and the Kalashnikov have in common? According to a new documentary exploring the aftermath of an acid attack at the legendary ballet company in 2013, they are the two brands that define modern Russia. The film, released in the UK on 8 January, was shot during a time of much soul-searching at the institution and examines what the assault on its artistic director, Sergei Filin, says about the broader state of Russian politics. [Read more].

• Carmen Gray, Brutal Bolshoi: inside the troubled world of Russia’s legendary ballet, The Guardian, December 27, 2015

A scene from Swan Lake by the Bolshoi ballet company. Photo: Tristram Kenton for The Guardian.