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Ekaterina Krysanova on why the world expects the best from the Bolshoi Ballet
EVENING STANDARD ARTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH  logo_hiscox_white_background_office_v01.png
With the mighty Bolshoi’s London season underway, its star, Ekaterina Krysanova, tells Lyndsey Winship about how she lives every role that she performs

Passion: Ekaterina Krysanova says without dance she would "wilt like a flower" Matt Writtle
Cyrillic signs are taped up on the walls backstage at the Royal Opera House, suggesting it isn’t business as usual at Covent Garden. Coming through the stage door you can’t move for bodies and buzz, rails of costumes in the corridor and a sense of mild chaos. The lift doors open on each floor to reveal a different group of slightly confused-looking Russians. It can only mean one thing: the Bolshoi is in town.

Moscow’s 240-year-old company is arguably the biggest name in ballet (“bolshoi” literally means “big”), long known for its panache and showmanship, soaring leaps and virtuoso technique. And more recently for 2013’s acid attack on former artistic director Sergei Filin. The dancers, however, are here to show off the best of Russian culture. Soft power in action. As prime minster Dmitry Medvedev has said, they are Russia’s “secret weapon”.

Five floors up in the Ashton Studio, 30 long, thin bodies are assembling at the barre in a ragtag uniform of padded moon boots, striped woollen leggings and wispy floral skirts. At the very end of the barre is Ekaterina Krysanova: pale skin, deep auburn hair and stern expression. She pulls her leg up to her ear, and stretches it past 180 degrees. On the studio floor she moves unhurriedly, purposefully and precisely through the steps. When everybody pirouettes she holds still at the centre, balanced on one leg in a gracious arabesque, possessing the moment.

Krysanova, 31, has come into her own as a dancer since the Bolshoi’s last visit to London three years ago. The Moscow native, who trained at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy and graduated straight into the company, has impressed in major leading roles, with her fine-tuned technique and dramatic versatility. She’s a ballerina who clearly relishes being on stage. That concentrated face seen in rehearsals replaced by a blazing smile, bright eyes and flashes of fire.

She feels that she’s now in her prime, she tells me, through an interpreter. “I’m at the stage where you have experience and you have technique but at the same time you still have energy and strength.” It’s the short window of a dancer’s life where you’re just old enough and just young enough for technique, artistry and hunger to come together in a magical triumvirate.

Krysanova is the only principal dancer to appear in all five shows in this season, starting with Don Quixote tonight, followed by classics Swan Lake and Le Corsaire, Soviet revival The Flames of Paris and a new Taming of the Shrew.

In a company of so many great dancers there is famously huge competition for roles but Krysanova is obviously doing something right.  “I have a very large repertoire and maybe it’s not modest to say but I’m the only ballerina that has this range,” she says. Each part demands something different, from vivacious Kitri in Don Quixote to the ethereal Odette in Swan Lake. “When I am on stage each role is my favourite in that moment,” says Krysanova. “I just feel that role, I don’t perform it, I live that role.” But the closest to her own personality, she thinks, is Kitri. “She’s joyful, full of life. I don’t have to act at all.”

The competition for casting, and the disgruntled dancers who feel passed over for roles, was one of the themes in the revealing documentary Bolshoi Babylon, which went backstage at the company following the Filin attack, revealing internal fights and factions within the company.

“What a great happiness I have that I didn’t participate in that film,” she says, laughing. I was surprised at the honesty of the interviewees, I tell her. “How will you check if they are honest or not?” she counters. “This film showed a lot of jealousy, that many things are done in ballet through contacts, through money. Which is not exactly true.” So that’s not the case? “No,” she says, firmly. Then why has it been painted like that? “People like negative stories, scandalous stories, like Black Swan,” she says, referring to the Natalie Portman movie. “I want a film about ballet which is optimistic,” says Krysanova. “So that people have a positive impression of ballet. It’s an absolutely lovely profession, although it is probably one of the most difficult.”

But, I remind her, something truly terrible did happen at her ballet company, the attack on Filin. “Of course,” she says, “it was a nightmare. It was a really unique case and I hope it will never happen again. Quite a lot of time has passed [since the attack],” she says, “and life goes on.”

Life does indeed go on. Filin,  whose eyesight is now permanently damaged, was sacked by no-nonsense theatre manager Vladimir Urin and replaced by steely former dancer Makhar Vaziev. But he’s now been offered a post leading a young choreographer’s programme for the company. Meanwhile, dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko, who was found guilty of ordering the attack on Filin, has been released early from prison after two and a half years, and has even talked about wanting to dance with the company again. This episode may not be completely over.

One of the longstanding divisions within the company is the tension between tradition and modernisation. For Krysanova, tradition is hugely important. “Our ballet has such a great history and it is so important to preserve traditions, these great achievements,” she says. “We cannot lower our standards, we have to stay at the top.” The world around them might be changing but all the more reason to hold onto what’s been handed down. “Because the world wants it,” she says. “People want to see it from us. They expect it from us.” And she’s right that sold-out crowds every night in London want to see that tradition, some fans coming to every single performance. The company does perform new and modern works at home, but it’s not what sells on tour.

She thinks right now they’ve got the balance about right. “Recently I thought we had too many new experiments but now I think we will do more classics.” She does enjoy working on new creations, and just danced in a new Ondine made by former Royal Ballet dancer Slava Samodurov. “Without naming any names, some dancers, in order to develop, they commission ballets for themselves, but I am very happy with what the theatre provides for me.”  I assume she’s thinking of Natalia Osipova, a former Bolshoi colleague who left the company to persue starring roles elsewhere and is now based in London.

It’s actually a new work that Krysanova is most keen for London audiences to see, The Taming of the Shrew, by Jean-Christophe Maillot. Maillot normally only makes work for his own company, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, so this one is “very exclusive” says Krysanova. “There are modern elements to the costumes and staging but the movements are built on classical vocabulary. He’s a master choreographer and I enjoyed it very much.”

Krysanova has little time to spend exploring London while she’s here, but, not being a planner, will go “where my heart takes me” when  she finally gets some time off. There is life outside dance, she says, but  not much. “Ballet is such a profession that if you don’t give yourself completely, it will not work. You must dedicate your whole [self] to this.”

“Dance is my passion,” she says.  “It gives me such great pleasure. Without it I would wilt like a flower.  It gives me the strength to live.”