Maya Plisetskaya Bio/Wiki, Net Worth, Married 2018
Maya Mikhaylovna Plisetskaya (Russian: ????? ??????????? ??????????; born 20 November 1925) is a Russian ballet dancer, choreographer, ballet director, and actress, and is considered one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century. She danced during the Soviet era at the same time as the great Galina Ulanova, and in 1960 took over Ulanova's title as prima ballerina assoluta of the Bolshoi.Plisetskaya studied ballet from age nine and first performed at the Bolshoi Theatre when she was eleven. She joined the Bolshoi Ballet company when she was eighteen, quickly rising to become their leading soloist. Her early years were also marked by political repression, however, partly because her family was Jewish, and she was not allowed to tour outside the country for sixteen years after joining the Bolshoi. During those years, her fame as a national ballerina was nevertheless used to project the Soviet Union’s achievements during the Cold War. Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who lifted her travel ban in 1959, considered her "not only the best ballerina in the Soviet Union, but the best in the world."As a member of the Bolshoi until 1990, her skill as a dancer changed the world of ballet, setting a higher standard for ballerinas both in terms of technical brilliance and dramatic presence. As a soloist, Plisetskaya created a number of leading roles, including Moiseyev’s Spartacus (1958), Grigorovich’s The Stone Flower (1959), Aurora in Grigorovich’s The Sleeping Beauty (1963), Alberto Alonso’s Carmen Suite (1967), written especially for her, and Bejart’s Isadora (1976). Also among her most acclaimed roles was Odette-Odile in Swan Lake (1947). A fellow dancer stated that her dramatic portrayal of Carmen, reportedly her favorite role, "helped confirm her as a legend, and the ballet soon took its place as a landmark in the Bolshoi repertoire." Her husband, composer Rodion Shchedrin, wrote the score to a number of her ballets.Having become “an international superstar” and a continuous “box office hit throughout the world,” the Soviet Union treated her as a favored cultural emissary. Although she toured extensively during the same years that other dancers defected, including Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov, Plisetskaya always refused to defect. Since 1994, she has presided over the annual international ballet competitions, called Maya, and in 1996 she was named President of the Imperial Russian Ballet.
People's Artist of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labour, Order "For Merit to the Fatherland", Lenin Prize, Order of Lenin, Order for Merits to Lithuania, Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas
Movies
Anna Karenina, Stars of the Russian Ballet, Tchaikovsky, Swan Lake (Bolshoi Ballet), The Little Humpbacked Horse, Plisetskaya Dances, Little Humpbacked Horse, Bizet-Shchedrin: Carmen Suite Ballet, The Art of the Pas De Deux: Vol. 3: 10 Great Pas de Deux, A Poem of Dances
Star Sign
Scorpio
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Fact
1
Director of Spanish National Ballet 1988-1990.
2
Sister of choreographer Azari Plisetsky, cousin of Boris Messerer.
3
Her mother was a silent-film actress and her father an engineer who was posted to Spitzbergen, Norway. She spent part of her childhood there. Her father was arrested in 1937 and shot in 1938, a victim of Stalin's purges. Her mother was sent to a labor cap with her infant son, then exiled to Kazakhstan.
4
Among her acclaimed roles were Odette/Odile in "Swan Lake", Aurora in "The Sleeping Beauty" and Carmen in "Carmen Suite".
5
She joined the Bolshoi in 1943, and became prima ballerina in 1960.
6
After retiring from dancing, she became a choreographer and gave master classes around the world.
$14 Million