Yuri Grigorovich, who has died aged 98, was one of the most important choreographers of the Soviet era. As chief choreographer and artistic director of the Bolshoi ballet company for some 30 years, he was a major influence on the development of ballet in the Soviet Union and to an even greater extent on its perception in the outside world.
Grigorovich’s first choreographies were welcomed by Soviet critics as a move away from the old drambalet style, which emphasised character dancing, large casts and striking stage effects with little use of classical technique, to a new form which relied purely on dance to indicate character and develop the story.
This was epitomised in his ballet Spartacus, which had its premiere in 1968, and is still perceived by many as the signature work of the Bolshoi. Each of the leading characters is given a substantial solo, a kind of danced soliloquy that reveals the protagonist’s mood and moves the action forward to the next scene.
In choreographing Spartacus, Grigorovich was fortunate in that he had for the title role one of the greatest dancers in the world in Vladimir Vasiliev and an equally strong foil in the Latvian Māris Liepa as the villain, Crassus. How greatly the two men influenced the shaping of their roles is a matter for speculation, but it is fair to say neither has ever been surpassed. The ballet incorporated some truly spectacular tableaux, but much of the work for the corps de ballet, though vigorous and exciting in its attack, could be described as banal.
The son of Nikolai Grigorovich, an accountant, and Klavdiya Rozai, Yuri was born in Leningrad, to a family with connections to both ballet and circus. He studied at the Leningrad Ballet School (later the Vaganova Institute), studying with teachers such as Vladimir Ponomarev and Alexander Pushkin, and on graduating in 1946 was accepted into the Kirov ballet.
As a dancer he performed mainly character roles, but in 1956 he showed his first choreography, in a work for the students of the Vaganova Institute. The following year, the premiere of The Stone Flower, to a score by Sergei Prokofiev, proved such a success that he was invited to stage it for the Bolshoi. In 1961 Legend of Love proved equally successful and resulted in his being appointed ballet master of the Kirov.
Then, in 1964, came the invitation to head the Bolshoi, politically a more prestigious appointment. His first production there was a version of The Sleeping Beauty, followed in 1966 by an idiosyncratic production of The Nutcracker that featured Vasiliev and his wife, Ekaterina Maximova.
A heavily reworked version of Swan Lake followed in 1969, but its premiere was postponed because of official disapproval and alterations were made to bring it into line with Soviet ideology.
In 1975 came Ivan the Terrible, a ballet with a role for the leading male dancer that could be compared to that of Spartacus for virtuosity and drama. Romeo and Juliet (1979), originally created for the Paris Opera ballet, but staged for the Bolshoi shortly afterwards, replaced the production by Leonid Lavrovsky that had been the west’s introduction to the Bolshoi ballet when it first toured to London in 1956.
Grigorovich’s last original work came in 1982 with The Golden Age, to a score by Dimitri Shostakovich, originally premiered in 1930. Grigorovich abandoned the original libretto for a new plot by Ivan Glikman, which embodied Soviet ideology and provided starring roles for his new protege, Irek Mukhamedov, and the ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova, whom Grigorovich married in 1968, after his divorce from his first wife, the Kirov ballerina Alla Shelest. The Golden Age was a big popular success and was shown widely both in Moscow and abroad.
By this time, however, morale in the ballet company was poor and senior dancers such as Vasiliev, Liepa and the leading ballerina Maya Plisetskaya were openly criticising Grigorovich’s policies and his domination of the repertory.
In addition to his original ballets Grigorovich had restaged most of the classics, not to universal admiration. Works by other choreographers had been added to the repertory, but received few performances. Vasiliev himself choreographed several works and Plisetskaya was instrumental in staging three ballets for herself, but it was alleged that dancers who collaborated in these ventures found their progress in the company unaccountably blocked and inclusion on foreign tours denied.
In fact few dancers of the highest level emerged at the Bolshoi during Grigorovich’s tenure and several of these fled the company. Among them were Alexander Godunov, who defected to the US in 1979, and Mukhamedov, who left Russia for the Royal Ballet in 1990. The ballerina Nina Ananiashvili took every opportunity to perform abroad and joined American Ballet Theatre as a principal in 1993 though still retained her links to the Bolshoi.
Grigorovich was finally ousted in 1995 and the following year moved to Krasnodar, southern Russia, to form a company with a repertoire of his choreographies. This company toured overseas but without great success.
Grigorovich headed a large number of international ballet competition juries and acted as editor-in-chief of several souvenir books. After the death of Bessmertnova in 2008, he was invited to return to the Bolshoi, and continued to work as a choreographer there until 2025.
He was made a People’s Artist in 1966 and received the Lenin prize in 1970.
Yuri Grigorovich, dancer, choreographer and ballet director, born 2 January 1927; died 19 May 2025
