Vladimir Vasiliev (ballet dancer)
| Vladimir Viktorovich Vasiliev | |
|---|---|
Vladimir Vasiliev in 1972
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| Born |
April 18, 1940 Moscow, Soviet Union |
| Education | Moscow Ballet School |
| Occupation | Principal dancer Ballet director Choreographer |
| Spouse(s) | Ekaterina Maximova |
| Former groups | Bolshoi Ballet |
Vladimir Viktorovich Vasiliev (Russian: Влади́мир Ви́кторович Васи́льев), born 18 April 1940 in Moscow, Soviet Union, is a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer. He was a principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet and its director from 1995 to 2000.
Vladimir Vasiliev was named "God of the dance" and is regarded as a classical dancer on the same level as Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
He was best known for his role of Spartacus and his powerful leaps and turns.
At the height of their careers, Vladimir Vasiliev and Ekaterina Maximova were the golden couple of Russian ballet.
Vladimir Vasiliev was born in Moscow in 1940, the son of a truck driver. In 1947, at the age of seven, he joined the amateur ballet group of the Kirov pioneer group, where he stayed two years. His first teacher was Elena Romanovna Rosse.
Vladimir Vasiliev entered the Moscow Ballet School, commonly known as The Bolshoi Ballet Academy, in 1947 and graduated in 1958, when he joined the Bolshoi Ballet. His teachers at the Moscow Ballet School included Aleksey Yermolayev.
Vladimir Vasiliev became a principal dancer in 1959 in his second year with the Bolshoi Ballet.
Vladimir Vasiliev and Ekaterina Maximova, both principal dancers, were the dream couple of the Bolshoi Ballet. Dancing as a pair for the first time in 1949 as classmates at the Moscow Ballet School, they were married in 1961.
New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff described the excitement of one of Vasiliev’s United States performances with the Bolshoi Ballet: “Yekaterina Maksimova and Vladimir Vasiliev burst upon New York City in 1959, the greatest of the passionate young dancers who, with Moscow's more established stars, made the Bolshoi Ballet's American debut a total triumph.”
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