Maya Plisetskaya

Maya Mikhailovna Plisetskaya, born on 20 November 1925 in Moscow and died on 2 May 2015, was a Soviet and Russian ballet dancer, choreographer, ballet director, and actress. Originally from Moscow, USSR, she held Lithuanian and Spanish citizenship in her later years. She came from a prominent family of Lithuanian Jewish descent, most of whom were connected to theater or film. Her mother, Rachel Messerer, worked as a silent-film actress, while her maternal uncle Asaf Messerer was a principal dancer at the Bolshoi Ballet and her maternal aunt Sulamith Messerer was a Bolshoi prima ballerina. Her father, Mikhail Plisetski, served as a diplomat, engineer, and mine director. Her brothers Alexander and Azari Plisetski both became renowned ballet masters, and her niece Anna Plisetskaya would later become a ballerina as well.

Plisetskaya's early life was shaped by political repression. Her father was arrested in 1937 and executed in 1938 during the Stalinist purges. Her mother was arrested shortly afterward and, along with her seven-month-old son Azari, was sent to a labor camp in the Akmola Region of Kazakhstan, where she remained for approximately three years. Maya was taken in by her aunt Sulamith Messerer until her mother's release in 1941. Her brothers Alexander and Azari were eventually raised by maternal relatives as well, and both went on to become solo dancers at the Bolshoi.

She began studying ballet at the Bolshoi Ballet School at the age of nine and gave her first performance at the Bolshoi Theatre at eleven. Her teachers included the former Mariinsky imperial ballet dancer Elizaveta Gerdt and her aunt Sulamith Messerer. Plisetskaya graduated from the Bolshoi School in 1943 at the age of eighteen and joined the Bolshoi Ballet company, spending only a brief period in the corps de ballet before being named a soloist. She remained a member of the Bolshoi until 1990. When celebrated ballerina Galina Ulanova retired in 1960, Plisetskaya became prima ballerina assoluta of the company.

Throughout her career at the Bolshoi, Plisetskaya danced under the directorships of Leonid Lavrovsky and later Yury Grigorovich, with whom she eventually came into direct conflict. Despite her stature as a performer, she was barred from international touring for sixteen years following her company debut, a consequence of her Jewish identity, her family's history during the Stalinist purges, and her reputation as a defiant personality during a period of Soviet anti-Zionist campaigns. Beginning in 1959, during the Thaw period, she was permitted to tour outside the Soviet Union with the Bolshoi and later independently. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev described her as not only the best ballerina in the Soviet Union but the best in the world, and the Soviet government used her artistry as a form of cultural diplomacy during the Cold War.

Among the roles she created or made her own were Juliet in Lavrovsky's Romeo and Juliet, Phrygia in Yakobson's Spartacus in 1958, the Mistress of the Copper Mountain in Grigorovich's The Stone Flower in 1959, Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty in 1963, Mahmene Banu in The Legend of Love in 1965, and the title role in Alberto Alonso's Carmen Suite in 1967, which was choreographed specifically for her. She also performed the title role in Maurice Béjart's Isadora in 1976. Her portrayals of Kitri in Don Quixote, Odette-Odile in Swan Lake, and The Dying Swan were among her most celebrated performances. Her husband, composer Rodion Shchedrin, wrote the scores for a number of her ballets.

Plisetskaya was known for the exceptional height of her jumps, her unusually flexible back, her technical strength, and her dramatic presence on stage. She was distinguished by her ability to excel in both adagio and allegro, a combination considered rare among dancers. Her bright red hair and striking appearance made her a prominent figure both on and off the stage.

In 1977, Plisetskaya appeared on Broadway in Béjart: Ballet of the Twentieth Century, bringing her international stage presence to New York. The engagement connected her work with choreographer Maurice Béjart, with whom she had collaborated the previous year on Isadora. Although she toured extensively during the same years that other prominent Soviet dancers defected — among them Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, Alexander Godunov, and Mikhail Baryshnikov — Plisetskaya consistently refused to defect. In 1991, she published her autobiography, I, Maya Plisetskaya.