Star of the Bolshoi

Nikolay Tsiskaridze. Star of the Bolshoi Nikolay Tsiskaridze. Star of the Bolshoi Nikolay Tsiskaridze. Star of the Bolshoi

Nikolai Tsiskaridze, leading principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, talks to Nadine Meisner with typically forthright candour.

When I enter Nikolai Tsiskaridze's Bolshoi dressing room, he is sitting with his feet in a black box, a foot massage machine from Japan. That apart, he looks the way he does wherever you seem him. And he is everywhere: not just on his home Bolshoi stage, but on stages around the world; not only dancing, but awarding prizes and making speeches. Failing that, he's in an auditorium as spectator, or lavishly featured in any number of magzines, or beamed into homes on a television screen. When there is a ballet broadcast, he'll be the presenter, offering detailed background notes. Chat shows, game shows? He's always chatty and game. Currently he - and his specs - are jury members of "Tantsi so zvyozdami" ("Dance with the Stars"), Russian telivision's version of "Strictly Come Dansing". He has to be the most famous dancer in Russia, known to even the most fervent balletophobe.

Celebrity has its downside. "I have a better chance of not being noticed if I don't look people in the eye." His appearance in unhelpfully remarkable: the tall, long-limbed, lean proportions, the black hair, so glossy and thick it might be a wig, but isn't. He owes the hair and characteristic surname to being born a Georgian in Tbilisi 36 years ago, the son of a single mother. (He has had little contact with his father.) Nothing in his childhood prepaired him for the stage, although he did have a French paternal grandmother (Tbilisi was always cosmopolitan) who trained as sn actress. His much-loved, late mother, a mathematics anh physics teacher, wanted him to become a lawyer. All the men on his father's side were lawyers; and lawyers - especially divorce lawyers - lived well in the Soviet Union. "But I saw wonderful stage productions and ballet was like another world, so beautiful and somehow unattainable. It was my choice."

Why Moscow? "After Alexander Pushkin [teacher of Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov] the Leningrad school [the Vaganova Academy] was not so good for boys; Moscow was the best." Rightly, teachers in Russia are always reventially named as shapers of human clay. "My teacher Piotr Pestov [teacher of many male stars] was in the first class that Pushkin taught during the war-evacuation to Perm." And what kind of dancer did Nikolai become? "As a student I went to the US with the school and we were invited to watch a dance concert. I understood that all these dancers were imitating someone else, and I realised that I didn't want to imitate, it's not interesting. Sometimes I might admire something about a particular dancer and I'd try to work it out, but always in order to do it my own way. It wasn't easy. People criticised me, and now other dancers are trying to imitate me!"

Although his teachers had roots in the Leningrad school, he considers himself pure Moscow. "THe difference between the two cities is one of temperament: what Moscow considers boring, St Petersburg considers good; what St Petersburg considers vulgar, Moscow considers excellent." This comes from the theatres themselves. "Moscow's is gold and red, which means that when you step uot to the stage, it feels more emotional, like a bullring. It's also much bigger, with the audience further away. You feel small and in order to make spectators look you have to be really good. Many famous artists from abroad come and find they can't conquer such a huge space."

His dressing room has a little refreshments corner and, foot massage over, he makes me proper loose-leaf tea. Being a star, and intelligent, and kniwing it - "I was an outstanding student not just in dancing but an all academic subjects" - he is not afraid to express his opinions. He dislikes Alexei Ratmansky's choreography and the vogue for ballet reconstructions. "I'll only believe that this Coppelia [staged in March for the Bolshoi by Sergei Vikharev, see Dancing Times, May 2009] is autentic if the people who danced the original tell me." He's against the idea of making concessions to ontemporary taste: either a reconstruction should strive for complete authenticity - he cites the Ballet du Rhin's charming La Fille mal gardee as an example - or not bother at all.

He is not a choreographer. He has no directing ambitions, except for the Bolshoi. "It's a big responsibility to be responsible for other people. But in the Bolshoi it would be possible because it's my home. I know the people here, what they need and can do." He thinks it important to have a clearly defined policy, but believes he has no chance of being director in the near future: "They don't want things to be good; they just want them to be quiet. They don't want someone who will introduce changes, they just want to earn money."

In print he might sound insufferable, but in person he is disarming. There is something about him - his featless unedited openness, his vitality - that makes him attractive. He jumps up several times to peer at the internal TV and watch his "pupil" Artem Ovcharenko as Franz in the live relay of a Coppelia dress rehearsal. He teaches at the Bolshoi school as well as in the company and I would imagine him to be an insciring teacher. His breezy lack of inhibition - "this is what I am" - and fierce commitment make you want to smiled , the way you might have smiled at his appearance in Rubies at the Royal Opera house with red glitter in his hair and in the Balletboyz documentary, wrapped up in a scarf, to work on Christopher Wheeldon's Hamlet ballet for the Bolshoi in 2007.

In reality, the scarf was not so funny, because he was trying to work with 'flu. "I saw this film and it was incorrect." He is referring to being portrayed as exaggerating his illness to pull out of the ballet. "I had 38-40 degrees temperature and every day I went to rehearsals for two or three hours as well as dancing in The Nutcracker. Then I colapsed and it was found I had pneumonia. A nurse came to my home every day for a month to give me injections. But the film didn't say this."

He was, it is true, disappointed in Wheeldon's change of direction for the Hamlet ballet (eventually called Elsinore). "When Christopher arrived he said he was doing Hamlet and I was very pleased. I prepared, I read books, I thought about it. But when after two weeks he changed his mind!" He switches from Russian to ungrammatical French superlatives. "C'est catastrophe! Moche! The auditorium was half full! I am very sorry for Christopher. He needs to come back and makesomething really works." He laments the disappearance of narrative ballets. Not fashionable? "No! It's not a question of fashion," he says. "Younger choreographers don't want to do it because it's too difficult."

Needless to say, choreographers such as Kenneth MacMillan, Yuri Grigorovich and John Neurmeier are particular favourites. Butnwhen he takes on a dramatic role, he doesn't think for himself as an actor. "Very early on I worked with Galina Ulanova and she put into my head that every variation should have its dramatic logic. But once I've learnt a role - and learnt it very conscientiously - I don't like to rehearse much. When you've understood how a character holds himself and moves, the rest comes naturally. A dancer has to be spontaneous in a role, and each time it will be different, because each time I will feel different."

Roland Petit, another admired choreographer, made a revised version of Pikovaya Dama (Pique Dame) for him and a one-man Carmen. "I danced all the variations - Jose, Carmen, Escamillo. It was just 12 minutes but it was hard because there was so much to do." In 2003 he was on the Paris Opera's stage for the dress rehearsal of Petit's Clavigo when he tore the cruciate ligament in a knee. After the operation he stayed two months in an ortopaedic centre in Biarritz. This is where he learnt a lot of his French. "I had never seen so many sportsmen! Very strong, arriving on their crutches, boxers, rugby players, all much younger than me. I was the only dancer, and one day one of them said: 'Why doesn't Nicolas do stretching exercises like the rest of us?' And the physiotherapist said: 'Because he doesn;t need to.' And so I showed them and they couldn't believe it! Because when they had to stretch they would cry and groan!"

While recuperating he danced Carabosse in The Sleeping Beauty at the Bolshoi. He is proud of his large repertory - 70 roles. He is also proud of his association with the Mariinsky, the first male dancer invited from the Bolshoi in 30 years. And what about Londen? He can't resist mentioning the critics. "Many of the new generation are terrible. I don't understand how people who know so little can judge us. But it's the same in Russia." A particular bete noire are the star-scores accompanying reviews. "What is that? Are we talking restaurants? Are we saying four stars for a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh?"

Nadine Meisner
Dancing Times, July 2009

афиша: апрель

21 апреля - гастроли в Литве с проектом "Балеты столетия", "Жальгирис", Каунас;

26 апре­ля, 19.00 - Юбилейный концерт Святослава Бэлзы, Новая Опера.

афиша: май

18 мая, 19.00 - "Жизель" (партнёрша - С.Лунькина), Большой театр;

20 мая, 19.00 - "Жизель" (партнёрша - А.Антоничева), Большой театр.

лучшие люди

Страничка Николая Цискаридзе на сайте проекта "Лучшие люди страны".