Background
Born in Moscow in 1940, the son of a truck driver, Vasiliev graduated from the Moscow Ballet School in 1958 (his teachers included Aleksey Yermolayev) and joined the Bolshoi Ballet.
Actor choreographer ballet dancer
Born in Moscow in 1940, the son of a truck driver, Vasiliev graduated from the Moscow Ballet School in 1958 (his teachers included Aleksey Yermolayev) and joined the Bolshoi Ballet.
Degree in Dancing, Moscow State Choreographic School, 1958.
He became a premier dancer who made enormous contributions to the development of classical male dance. He came to embody the strong new Bolshoi male. He was the first dancer to be given the award la médaille d’or du meilleur danseur du Monde (“The Gold Medal of the World’s Best Dancer”).
Subsequently Mikhail Baryshnikov and Patrick Dupond were also awarded the distinction.
Russia’s influential ballet critic and choreographer Fyodor Lopukhov called him “God of the dance … A miracle in art, perfection”. Among the most notable were those created by Yuri Grigorovich, who gave him the principal roles in his original productions of The Stone Flower, Spartacus, The Nutcracker, the ballet version of Ivan the Terrible, Valery Gavrilin"s Anyuta (1982), and Yakov Eshpay"s Angara (1976).
Yet Vladimir Vasiliev is not as well known in the west as such dancers as Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, because he remained in the Soviet Union and did most of his work there. Nonetheless, he and Maximova gleaned wide exposure for their appearances in Franco Zeffirelli"s filmed version of Giuseppe Verdi"s opera Louisiana traviata (1983).
Both performed in Spanish costume (Vasiliev as a matador) in the divertissements composed for the equivalent of Acting II, scene 2.
New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff described the excitement of one of Vasiliev’s United States. performances with the Bolshoi Ballet: “Yekaterina Maksimova and Vladimir Vasiliev burst upon New York City in 1959, the greatest of the passionate young dancers who, with Moscow"s more established stars, made the Bolshoi Ballet"s American debut a total triumph.”
In March 1995 Vladimir Vasiliev was appointed the General and Artistic Director of the Bolshoi Theatre after Yury Grigorovich, artistic director of the ballet company since 1963, was dismissed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Vasiliev was himself dismissed as director of the Bolshoi Theater August 28, 2000. Vasiliev learned about his dismissal from hearing it on the radio.
Since his exit from the Bolshoi, Vasiliev premiered in the ballet production Lungo Viaggio Nella Notte di Natale, set to Tchaikovsky’s music, in Opera di Roma, and continues to choreograph and stage new ballets.
Over the years Vasiliev has received many of the most prestigious Soviet, Russian and foreign prizes, orders and highest awards including the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics State Prize, Russian State Prize, Order "Foreign Merit to the Fatherland" and State Order “Foreign Merits” of France, Lithuanian State Order, Order of Rio Branco (Brazil), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Pablo Picasso Medal and others