Bolshoi ballerina Olga Lepeshinskaya dies at 92

[December 22, 2008]  MOSCOW (AP) -- Olga Lepeshinskaya, the Bolshoi Ballet's prima ballerina for three decades during the Soviet times, has died at the age of 92.

Nataliya Uvarova, a spokeswoman for Russia's Culture Ministry, said Lepeshinskaya died Saturday of an unspecified illness. The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that Lepeshinskaya died in her Moscow apartment in her sleep.

Lepeshinskaya was born to a noble family in Kiev in 1916. When she first tried to enter the Bolshoi choreographic school, she was rejected.

The school admitted her shortly afterward, in 1925, and Lepeshinskaya graduated in 1933, immediately joining the Bolshoi Ballet. She was rumored to be the favorite ballerina of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and received the coveted Stalin Prize on four occasions.

Lepeshinskaya recalled in an interview published in the daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta in 2006 that Stalin once affectionately called her "dragonfly."

As Bolshoi's prima, Lepeshinskaya danced Kitri in "Don Quixote," Tao Hoa in "The Red Poppy," Jeanne in "The Flame of Paris," Aurora in "Sleeping Beauty" and Masha in "The Nutcracker" among other parts.

She said that Kitri, first performed in 1940, was her first big success and she was so eager to dance that she asked her friends to hold her offstage so that she wouldn't enter ahead of time.

During World War II, Lepeshinskaya participated in the Bolshoi's traveling company, which performed before Red Army soldiers on the front line.

She recalled in the 2006 interview that she broke her leg during the first performance of "The Red Poppy" in 1953, but managed to complete her part despite four fractures diagnosed later.

Lepeshinskaya married Soviet general Alexei Antonov in 1956. In 1962, when her husband died, she temporarily lost her sight. "During the funerals, I had a nervous breakdown and everything went black before my eyes," she recalled in the interview.

In 1963, she left the Bolshoi Ballet and turned to teaching, spending several years in East Germany before returning to the Soviet Union.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev offered his condolences to Lepeshinskaya's relatives, the Kremlin said.

Bolshoi's premier dancer, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, said Lepeshinskaya's death was a "great loss."

"She will stay in our memory as a virtuoso dancer," he said, according to ITAR-Tass.

Bolshoi's prima, Svetlana Zakharova, said dancers of today would find it impossible to match Lepeshinskaya's fiery manner. "No one can repeat her tempo now," Zakharova said on NTV television.

Uvarova said Lepeshinskaya will be buried Tuesday in Moscow's Vvedenskoye cemetery.

[Associated Press]

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