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Dance|Yuri Grigorivich, Giant of Soviet Ballet, Is Dead at 98
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/arts/dance/yuri-grigorivich-dead.html
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Yuri Grigorivich, one of the most significant choreographers of the 20th century, who served as the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet from 1964 to 1995, reshaping Russian ballet in the late Soviet era, died on Monday. He was 98.
His death was announced by the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
Mr. Grigorovich was best known for his 1968 production of “Spartacus.” Reporting from Moscow soon after its premiere, the dance critic Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times that it was “a turning point in Soviet ballet,” one of the biggest successes in decades.
The ballet told the story of the enslaved gladiator Spartacus, who led a failed revolt in ancient Rome, a tale that might bring to mind another revolution, one that did not fail: the Russian Revolution of 1917. Compared with earlier Soviet productions set to Aram Khachaturian’s 1954 score, Mr. Grigorovich’s was streamlined and simplified, with obvious good guys (Spartacus and his wife) and bad guys (the rich Crassus and his courtesan mistress).
What made the work most distinctive, though, was the style of dancing: It was big and bold, epic in scale and emotion.
Masses of men filled the stage, in armor or bare-chested, marching, kicking, jumping. Spartacus and Crassus, in soliloquy-like solos, spun like tornadoes and leaped impossibly high, with slashing, stage-spanning, split-kick jumps. Their climactic battle was a dance-off to end all dance-offs.
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