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Article: Bolshoi! Artistry & Spectacle; Ballet's Colossus Appeals to Soviets and Americans
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- July 19, 1987
- Author:
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The American public doesn't come by its partiality for the
Bolshoi Ballet accidentally, as we'll see confirmed when the troupe
returns to the Kennedy Center this week for the first time in a dozen
years.
According to the company's official biography, "it was the
circus and not the ballet" that first captured the childhood
imagination of Yuri Grigorovich, the Bolshoi's 60-year-old artistic
director and chief choreographer. "The sights, sounds, mystery and
magic of the Big Top fascinated him."
Ballet is often said to be a "high" art, while the circus is
commonly regarded as occupying a "lower" plane of public
entertainment. Whatever one makes of such distinctions, the
connections between ...