(Paris) One of the Bolshoi’s star ballerinas, Olga Smirnova, has left the prestigious troupe to join the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam, becoming the company’s first Russian dancer to take this step since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
Posted at 10:41 a.m.
Updated at 11:05 a.m.
“Smirnova has been very clear in her recent denunciation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which makes her work in her native country untenable,” the Dutch National Ballet said in a statement on Wednesday.
“I have to be honest and say that I am against war with all my soul. […] I never thought I could be ashamed of Russia […]but today I feel that there is a before and an after”, had indicated the “prima ballerina” of 30 years on the social network Telegram at the beginning of the month.
“We may not be in the epicenter of the military conflict, but we cannot remain indifferent to this global catastrophe,” she added.
Quoted by the Dutch National Ballet, the dancer, whose grandfather is Ukrainian, clarified that she had been thinking of leaving the Bolshoi for a while, but that “the current circumstances had accelerated this process”.
Several foreign dancers from the Russian ballet troupes had announced their departure in solidarity with the victims of the conflict in Ukraine, but Smirnova is the first Russian dancer to take this step publicly.
The Brazilian soloist Victor Caixeta, who was a rising star of the Mariinsky of Saint Petersburg, will also join the Dutch National Ballet.