Background
Vladimir Vasilev was born into a family of doctors - Yudy Moiseevich Staroshklovsky and Evgenia Konstantinovna Vasiliyeva, chief of the physiotherapy department.
Vladimir Vasilev was born into a family of doctors - Yudy Moiseevich Staroshklovsky and Evgenia Konstantinovna Vasiliyeva, chief of the physiotherapy department.
In 1943, Vladimir matriculated in the Igor Moiseev ensemble and at the same time in the dance school of the Bolshoi Theatre. However, wrongly, his name was not on the list accepted into the ensemble, and he began studying at the school. Also, at the insistence of his parents, he matriculated to GITIS (faculty of acting), which graduated in 1953 with a diploma in film and drama.
In 1949 Vladimir Vasilev became an actor of the Bolshoi Theater, where he studied in the class of Asaf Messerer. Vasilev also graduated a course of young writers of Nikolai Karetnikov at the Union of Composers.
Gradually the artist began to put concerted item for soloists of the Bolshoi Theater, and then to compose whole ballets. At this time, he formed a collaboration with the Bolshoi Theater soloist (since 1954), Marina Semenova's student, Natalia Kasatkina, who soon became his wife. Together they put on the stage of the Bolshoi Ballet "Vanina Vanini" to the music of Nikolai Karetnikov (1962), then such ballets as "The Heroic Poem" ("Geologists", 1964, the music of Nikolai Karetnikov), "The Sacred Spring" (music by Igor Stravinsky, 1965), "Tristan and Isolde" to the music of Piard Wagner (1967), "Preludes and Fugues" to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1968), Our Court (music by Tikhon Khrennikov, 1970), and others.
In 1966, in association with the Ministry of Culture of the USSR, the Choreographic Concert Ensemble "Young Ballet" was created, headed by Igor Moiseyev. Since 1971, the ensemble has become known as the Concert Ensemble of the USSR Classical Ballet, headed by Yuri Zhdanov. In 1977, government of the ensemble was resigned to Vladimir Vasilev and Natalia Kasatkina. Ever since, they have been taken charge of this project, which in 1992 become a title the State Academic Theater of the Classical Ballet under the direction of N. Kasatkina and V. Vasilev.