Maya Plisetskaya

Biography

Maya Mikhailovna Plisetskaya (20 November 1925 – 2 May 2015) was a Soviet and Russian ballet dancer, choreographer, ballet director, and actress, widely considered one of the greatest in classical ballet history. Born in Moscow, she spent many critical years of her career as the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Theatre. Her amazing technical skills, dramatic intensity, and unique expressive arm movements made her stand out from other dancers of her generation. Later in life, she became a Lithuanian and Spanish citizen, showing how her life eventually reached far beyond the Soviet Union's limits.

Plisetskaya's early years were marked by political turmoil. Her father, Mikhail Plisetski, a Soviet official, was arrested in 1937 and executed in 1938 during the Great Purge. Her mother, actress Rachel Messerer, was also arrested, imprisoned, and then held in a concentration camp with her infant son Azari. To avoid going to an orphanage, Maya was taken in by her aunt, Bolshoi ballerina Sulamith Messerer, while her brother Alexander was raised by their uncle Asaf Messerer. Both brothers became solo dancers at the Bolshoi. Despite these challenges, Plisetskaya enrolled at the Bolshoi Ballet School at age nine and first performed on the Bolshoi stage at eleven. She learned under Elizaveta Gerdt and Sulamith Messerer, graduated in 1943 at eighteen, and immediately joined the Bolshoi Ballet company.

She quickly moved up the ranks in the company, and when the famous Galina Ulanova retired in 1960, Plisetskaya took on the role of prima ballerina assoluta. She danced under the leadership of Leonid Lavrovsky and Yury Grigorovich, though her relationship with Grigorovich eventually became openly contentious. During the Cold War, Soviet officials valued her international fame for its propaganda potential. Premier Nikita Khrushchev reportedly called her not just the best ballerina in the Soviet Union but in the world. Starting in 1959, during the political Thaw, she was allowed to tour internationally with the Bolshoi and on her own, performing for audiences across Europe and the Americas.

Besides performing, Plisetskaya was actively involved in choreography and ballet direction. She was the artistic director of the Rome Opera Ballet and later the Spanish National Ballet. She worked closely with her husband, composer Rodion Shchedrin, who composed several major scores just for her, including his adaptation of Bizet for the ballet Carmen Suite in 1967. Plisetskaya's portrayal of Carmen became one of the highlights of her career. She had previously been married to Bolshoi dancer Māris Liepa. Her memoir, I, Maya Plisetskaya, gave a straightforward and often sharp view of life as an artist under Soviet rule.

Plisetskaya continued to perform and teach well into her later years, appearing on stage past the age of seventy. She received honors from several governments, including the Soviet Hero of Socialist Labour, several Orders for Merit to the Fatherland from Russia, Spain's Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic and Golden Medal for Merit to Culture, and Japan's Order of the Rising Sun. She passed away in Munich on 2 May 2015 at the age of eighty-nine.