Alexander Bogatyrev - Bolshoi ballet 1(2)

Feature May 2009. Part 1 of 2. Alexander Yurievich Bogatyrev was born in 1949 in Tallinn, Soviet Union. He attended the local ballet academy before moving to Moscow, to the Bolshoi's school. He graduated into the Bolshoi in 1968 and gradually acquired major roles in the classical and modern repertory. His first big part was Vaslav in The Fountain of Bakhchisarai; he went on to Siegfried in Swan Lake, Prince Desire in The Sleeping Beauty, Albrecht in Giselle, and the poet in Chopiniana. When Grigorovich premiered his production of Romeo and Juliet during the Bolshoi's 1978 Paris season, Bogatyrev danced Romeo opposite Natalia Bessmertnova's Juliet. The same couple danced the Russian premiere in Moscow in 1979. Bogatyrev won the Nijinsky prize in Paris in 1967; the third prize in the Moscow International Ballet Competition in 1969 (Mikhail Baryshnikov won the first); and first prize in the 1976 Tokyo Competition. He was the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet 1995-97. He d