Mikhail Dudko

Mikhail Dudko
Mikhail Dudko and Galina Ulanova in "Eros" ballet, 1923
Native name	Михаил Андреевич Дудко
Born	Mikhail Andreyevich Dudko Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died	September 11, 1981(1981-09-11) (aged 78) Leningrad, Soviet Union
Occupation	Ballet dancer
Years active	1920-1940, 1953-1981

Mikhail Andreyevich Dudko (Russian: Михаил Андреевич Дудко) was a Russian Soviet ballet dancer, born on 31 December [O.S. 18 December] 1902, Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, and died on 11 September 1981, Leningrad, USSR (now Saint Petersburg, Russia).

Mikhail Dudko was accepted into the Imperial theatre school at the St. Petersburg Imperial troupe. His teachers were Samuil Andrianov, Viktor Semyonov (teacher and first husband of Marina Semyonova), and Leonid Leontyev. He showed his outstanding talent and was considered a future star of ballet. During an exam, he danced with a student, Lidya Ivanova, a performance that was so successful that all the teachers believed them both to have great ballet careers ahead of them. The lives of both, however, were tragic.

Lidya Ivanova first became famous for her roles in small ballet. Portraits of her would be painted by famous artists, including several by Zinaida Serebriakova. Poets including Mikhail Kuzmin devoted poems to her, the Russian writer Konstantin Vaginov, even making her the prototype of his heroine. She would later drown in the Gulf of Finland, June 16, 1924.

During the revolution in 1917, Mikhail Dudko was a student. The Imperial theatre school where he was studying became the Soviet school, although the rules and teachers still remained the same. In 1920 he finished his studies and was admitted to the Leningrad theater of opera and ballet, formerly known as the Mariinsky Ballet.

For twenty years, he performed in many ballet roles, including:

After the start of World War II, in the summer of 1941, Dudko fled Leningrad and Nazi occupation for the countryside. In the same area, there was another famous actor and opera singer, Nikolay Pechkovskiy (ru: Николай Константинович Печковский). There were also several other actors present. The Germans decided to force them all to join the theatre company of the town, Gatchina, and the actors agreed because they had nowhere else to go. They continued putting on plays and earned money for their performances.