Grigorovich, 77, is one of the world's oldest working choreographers. It was precisely the age problem that caused him to leave the Bolshoi-the age of the dancers not himself. Grigorovich was loyal to the tenets of the old imperial theatre, which held that any dancer that had already danced for 20 years was obliged to leave. There were no exceptions. Even the emperor's unruly favourite Matilda Kshesinskaya retired on a pension without a word when her day came.
By the end of the 1980s, the Bolshoi faced a dramatic situation. All the ballet stars, including Vladimir Vasiliev, Mikhail Lavrovsky, Natalia Bessmertnova, Yekaterina Maximova, Nina Timofeyeva and Maya Plisetskaya, had passed the pension age but were determined to cling on to their leading roles for as long as possible.
The company looked like a zoo of old birds of paradise.
In 1988, Grigorovich made a risky move and dismissed the afore-mentioned stars, including his beloved wife Natalia Bessmertnova who still gives him unfailing support.
His decision prompted a conspiracy: a group of influential stars declared war on the ballet master and succeeded in securing his dismissal. In response, he eagerly fled to an outlying province, the Kuban region, where he breathed new life into a local troupe.
It was a daring deed for a world-renowned choreographer whose productions had already been called classics. His ill wishers expected a fiasco, but Grigorovich gradually turned this young Kuban company into a fascinating troupe that enjoyed success all over the world. The ageing master's fresh passion brought the Grigorovich phenomenon to the fore again and he started receiving invitations to stage his productions in Moscow. These were probably inspired by a desire to see if he could still produce good work.
On returning to the Bolshoi, Grigorovich staged brilliant productions of Swan Lake, The Legend of Love and Raymonda. He was on the brink of being re-appointed as the Bolshoi's chief ballet master, but the theatre's new director Anatoly Iksakov decided to opt for the young choreographer Alexei Ratmansky with his new ideas and taste for Modernism.
Once again rejected, Grigorovich retreated to Krasnodar, but without any regrets. Indeed, he recently invited another outcast to join him, the notorious prima Anastasia Volochkova. Numerous comments attributed to him in the media show that he views her as perfection. He has given her the lead role in Swan Lake and dismissed press speculation that Volochkova has put on weight and lost her shape.
An invitation from the Mariinsky Theatre's artistic director Valery Gergiev to perform in St Petersburg this summer was a pleasant surprise to Grigorovich. He was born in this city, started to attend a ballet school there and made his dancing debut in Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker on the Mariinsky stage in 1937. The ten-year-old Grigorovich appeared in the fir tree celebrations episode.
It might be a strange coincidence, but several decades later the 77-year-old Grigorovich brought to St Petersburg from Krasnodar the same Nutcracker, the happiness of his childhood.
