Ex-Bolshoi Pair Try New Works, Enjoy Freedom

COSTA MESA —  Artistic freedom and growth are still very much on the minds of two former principal dancers who left the Bolshoi Ballet in 1989.

“We hadn’t had a new production for 10 years. Ten years!” said Alla Khaniashvili-Artyushkina after teaching a class Tuesday at the Jimmie DeFore Dance Center in Costa Mesa.

Both lay the blame at the feet of artistic director Yuri Grigorovich.

“Of course, he was a great choreographer--20 years ago,” said Vitali Artyushkin, Alla’s husband and also a former Bolshoi principal. “But now time is passing and passing, and he’s not doing new performances. . . . Under his direction, I think the company is going down, too. You can see this when they will be here.”

(The Bolshoi will appear at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Aug. 7 through 19.)

“In the Bolshoi, we were always under pressure,” Vitali remembered. “You couldn’t feel free because of administration stuff and inside fighting. It was not a good situation. Nobody is happy now in the Bolshoi. Everybody calls us and says, ‘A catastrophe is coming. We are all unhappy. We are looking to do something else.’ ”

Alla had been with the Bolshoi for nine years; Vitali, for five. She danced classical roles; he was often cast in character roles. Alla will teach a class in classical variations at the DeFore studios on Sunday.

Since coming to the United States, the two have been doing the new works and productions they wanted as guest artists, including ballets by seminal New York City Ballet founder George Balanchine.

“We danced Balanchine’s ‘Allegro Brillante.’ For us, it was a new performance. It’s very difficult, but it’s beautiful. We danced his ‘Apollo’ and ‘Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.’ He is a genius. The works are good, and we are free.”

The two have been living in Los Angeles and appearing as guests with other companies, including John Clifford’s fledgling Ballet of Los Angeles. (They danced with BLA in New York in April, but did not appear with the company when it made its first appearance in Los Angeles a week later.)

“It’s very difficult and new for us,” Alla admitted. “In Russia, there is no problem. The government sponsors the arts. But here we are free to do appearances as guest artists.”

They are slated to dance the leads in “Giselle” with the Palos Verdes Ballet in September.

“It’s a very small company,” Alla said. “But we like to do ‘Giselle,’ and we like to show the Russian ‘Giselle.’ ”

While Alla declined to give her age (“I’m very young,” she said), Vitali suggested: “An artist is young until he can’t dance.”

Neither is optimistic that the political and economic changes occurring in the Soviet Union will benefit artists.

“Nobody is thinking about dancers and theaters in the Soviet Union,” Vitali said. “It is not a good time for us. There is nothing to eat. There are political problems. All the republics who would like to be independent. Nobody knows which way this independence will go, whether there will be some kind of war between them and what will happen. People are all angry. . . . And the government doesn’t know how to control this, so now is a difficult time in the Soviet Union.”

Both have left their parents behind. She is from the Georgian Republic. He is from Estonia. They brought their 6-year-old daughter with them.

“She dances beautifully,” Alla said. “But she’s too young to study ballet.”

Vitali said: “Maybe she will be a dancer. She likes to dance very much. But nobody knows. We’ll let her go her own way without any pressure.”